The Gospel Project® for Adults
Leader Guide CSB, Unit 19, Session 2
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27 Guided by the Spirit, he entered the temple.
When the parents brought in the child Jesus to perform for him
what was customary under the law,
28 Simeon took him up in his arms,
praised God, and said,
29 Now, Master, you can dismiss your servant in peace,
as you promised.
30 For my eyes have seen your salvation.
31 You have prepared it in the presence of all peoples—
32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and glory to your people Israel.
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Simeon praised God because He recognized
bold words fill in
In Jesus, Simeon saw that God was being faithful to His promise
In order to bring salvation, Jesus had to live a perfect life.
All non-Jews are Gentiles.
that Jesus was God’s promised plan
to bring salvation to all people.
Discuss:
Explain:
to send a Messiah who would bring salvation—first to the nation of Israel
and then to the entire world.
Discuss:
because this is in keeping with His character)Transition:
Though He is God, He was also fully man,
so His obedience allowed Him to fulfill the law on behalf of His people.
GENTILES
The Jews tended to hate the Gentiles because they thought they were impure,
or because they had often been oppressed by Gentiles,
or because Gentiles during Jesus’s time and before did not believe in the one true God,
or because they thought they alone should have a special relationship with God.
But those who studied God’s Word well would have understood that God had a plan to save Israel
and all nations who trust in Him.VOICES FROM CHURCH HISTORY
“It is an encouraging thought that God never leaves himself entirely without a witness.
– J. C. Ryle (1816-1900)
See more.
Small as his believing church may sometimes be,
the gates of hell will never completely prevail against it.
True Christians in every age should remember this and take comfort.” 2
Verses 27-31 / Verses 25 and 26 introduce a seemingly skippable figure in the Bible—Simeon. He is virtually unknown, and like John the Baptist, his sole intent in this passage is to point attention to Jesus Christ. He had been told by God’s Spirit that he would live until the Messiah was born. You can imagine that Simeon was looking for that Messiah. He trusted God to keep His word because Simeon was a devout man. Among the many who might have stopped looking and lost all hope, Simeon was still holding on to God’s promise.
Then the day came, and Simeon entered the temple and met Jesus and His parents. We are not told what caught Simeon’s attention. Maybe Mary and Joseph described Jesus’s birth; maybe it was the mere mention of Jesus’s name; maybe something about His countenance marked Him as the Messiah. Somehow Simeon knew.
Verse 30 is a play on words, since the name Jesus means salvation. “My eyes have seen your salvation” means the same as “My eyes have seen your Jesus.” Jesus can never be separated from His purpose of bringing salvation to the world.
Simeon then attributed Jesus’s presence to God’s activity. Jesus did not merely show up of His own accord or in His own time or in His own way. Instead, Jesus was prepared by God. Everything about Him—when He was born, how He was born, where He was born, to whom He was born—everything was prepared by God in full view of the watching world for those who had eyes to see it. It was as if God was intent on putting His faithfulness on display in the most remarkable way possible.
Verse 32 / Seeing the Bible as one consistent story that from start to finish tells of God’s work to save sinners and fix the world through Jesus Christ is essential. While Jesus’s birth doesn’t happen until roughly two-thirds of the way through the Bible, all of the stories leading up to that point are preparing the reader for His arrival.
The unity of the Bible is seen most clearly in verses like Luke 2:32. Way back in Isaiah 42, the prophet described the coming of Jesus as One who will “bring justice to the nations” (v. 1) because He will be “a light to the nations” (v. 6). Then again in Isaiah 49:6, God, through the prophet, said:
It is not enough for you to be my servant raising up the tribes of Jacob and restoring the protected ones of Israel. I will also make you a light for the nations, to be my salvation to the ends of the earth.
Simeon, a faithful Israelite, knew these promises. He knew that God’s Messiah would fulfill these promises and that God was faithful to do just what He said He would do. So when Simeon found Jesus, he knew what this Messiah would do.
And what would the Messiah’s mission be? Simeon, in quoting this Old Testament prophecy, pointed out that Jesus would do two things. 1) He would bring God’s salvation to His people, the nation Israel. Even though many of these people would not believe, Jesus would come first to the Jewish nation and declare Himself to be the long-awaited Messiah. But His mission would extend far beyond Israel. 2) He also would bring God’s salvation to the nations. While the clear epicenter of God’s activity throughout the Old Testament was Israel, and this would also be the focus of Jesus’s earthly ministry, Jesus’s saving activity was not meant to stop with Israel alone. His salvation offer extends to all the nations of the earth. Through faith in Jesus and repentance from sin, all people can be united to God and can become His children.
This mission doesn’t stop with Jesus. In the book of Acts, the apostle Paul applied this mission to himself and the church (Acts 13:47). The church continues the mission of God through Jesus to bring the offer of salvation to all the nations of the earth (Acts 1:8).