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Once again, we come to our time where we can open up the Word of God; and will you take your Bibles and turn to Luke chapter two. In his providence, we now arrive at verses 21 through 38; and actually, we're only going to examine 21 through 24 this morning, but I want to read the entire text to you, and this is really part one of a two-part series on the testimonies of a believing remnant. Might I say from the outset, it is so good to be able to come together and hear truth when all week long, you hear things that are some a lot of times just downright lies or twisted truths, you don't know who to believe, right? All of the scams and all of the deception in the news. And although our country now is is recovering to some degree from the devastating democratic DEI climate change social engineering campaign that has been so devastating, we still find our country just reeling from all of the immorality, all of the all of the craziness, and it's so good to be able to come and hear the truth of God from his Word. And that's what we're going to do this morning. It's going to be an interesting journey. It'll be a little bit different, because we're going to be looking at some obscure passages, even out of the Old Testament, in the context of understanding some of the law that God has given and why he did what he did, and therefore why Joseph and Mary did what they did, and ultimately how that even impacts each of us. So let me read the text to you, and then we will endeavor to understand it and apply it to our lives. Luke two, beginning with verse 21,

"And when eight days had passed, 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 turtle doves or two young pigeons.'

"And there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; and this man was righteous and devout, looking for the consolation of Israel; and the Holy Spirit was upon him.

"And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that He would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ.

"And he came in the Spirit into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to carry out for Him the custom of the Law,

"then he took Him into his arms and blessed God, and said,

"'Now Lord, you are releasing Your bond-servant to depart in peace, according to Your word;

"'For my eyes have seen Your salvation,

"'Which You have prepared in the presence of all peoples,

"'A light of revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of Your people Israel.'

"And His father and mother were amazed at the things which were being said about Him.

"And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary His mother, 'Behold, this Child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and for a sign to be opposed--

"and a sword will pierce even your own soul--to the end that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.'

"And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years and had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage,

"and then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple, serving night and day with fastings and prayers.

"At that very moment she came up and began giving thanks to God, and continued to speak of Him to all those who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem."

Most Americans, including many so called evangelicals, really have no understanding of the true Jesus of the Bible; he has been grossly distorted in so many ways. I was reading a 2022, LifeWay research study, and it said that 80% of Americans say Jesus is the Son of God the Father. And 72% say the birth of Jesus is a historical fact, but only 41% believe the Son of God existed before Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Even among evangelicals, just 65% agree. It also said in that study, more than half of Americans, 53%, say Jesus was a good teacher but not God. More than two in five evangelicals, 44%, agree that Jesus was a great teacher but not God. Now, mind you, they may be called Evangelical, but they are not born again; and given all the confusion and the stubborn disbelief of our age despite 2000 years, shall we say, of evangelism, imagine what it was like when Jesus was born. The confusion when they first heard about Jesus. Beside the polytheistic paganism of the Romans that essentially controlled the Gentile worlds, there were five political/religious Jewish groups that really defined and dominated Jewish society, and each of them opposed one another, and yet they were all galvanized together in the rejection of Jesus, kind of like today we have Republicans and Democrats and Marxists and I don't know, Muslims and communists, and everybody fights against one another, but one thing they all agree on is we can't have Christianity, not biblical Christianity. We can have the phony Christian, but you can't have the real Christianity.

So in the first century, you've got these groups. Let me tell you a little bit about them, so that you get the context of why what Luke is telling us is so important with respect to having credible witnesses to testify of who Jesus really is. First of all, you had the Herodians, and they were a Jewish political faction that supported the dynasty of Herod the Great and they favored the Roman backed rule and Hellenistic culture that influenced them so strongly. And then you had the Sadducees, and they were the aristocrats, the wealthy ones. They were very powerful. They were closely tied to the temple in Jerusalem, and they typically compromised with Rome. They were the ones that essentially ran the Sanhedrin. And you might say they were the theological liberals of the day. They rejected the oral traditions. They only accepted the Torah - the first five books of Moses - and they denied the resurrection of the body, they denied any kind of afterlife, and they denied the existence of angels and so forth.

So you have the Herodians and the Sadducees, but then you have the arch enemy of the Sadducees, and that would be the Pharisees, the self-righteous legalists who believe that somehow by keeping the law you could merit salvation by observing rituals and ceremonies and all of that. And beyond the roughly 613 they typically say, laws of the Old Testament, they added 1000s of rules and ridiculous regulations that people would have to follow in order to somehow earn their salvation. And of course, they criticized anybody that didn't agree with those rules. And then you have the zealots. The zealots were, I don't know they would be kind of like a Jewish Antifa today, all right? They were the Antifa of that day. They were the political revolutionaries, and they advocated the violent overthrow of Roman rule and and the recovery of of Israel's sovereignty. You can read about them in in Acts 21 for example. And they were the ones that spearheaded the first Jewish Roman war that happened in, I believe, 66 to 70 ad or so. And that as you will recall, it culminated in in AD 70, just the ruin of Jerusalem by the Romans, and you remember their final stand at Masada.

And then you have the Essenes. The Essenes were a devout, mystical, apocalyptic Jewish sect. They believed they were living in the end times. They were the ascetic hermits that lived out in the wilderness in a commune, various communes, very isolated areas, including Qumran, where we found the Dead Sea Scrolls. A lot of you have been there as I have to see that area. Well, none of these groups liked each other. And my point here is none of them believed that Jesus was the Son of God. They thought that was absolutely ridiculous; the idea that he was the Messiah of Israel, oh, come on. You know, I could maybe add a sixth group, but they were so small that sixth group, I guess you could say, would be the godly remnant, because there were a few that did believe. God always preserves a remnant, doesn't he? Even among the Jewish people of the of that day. You had Joseph and Mary. You had you had Zacharias and Elizabeth, right? And we're going to read more about Simeon. We're going to read about Anna, you might even add the shepherds. And I find it interesting that the confusion and the cold-hearted disbelief of the Jewish people in that day continues, for the most part today.

Another piece of research that I was reading, and this is six years old, this is the best I could find, in 2020 Pew Research released their report on Jewish Americans. In it, they found that there are 5.8 million Jewish adults in the United States and another 2.8 million Americans who have Jewish background. In other words, one Jewish parent, but they weren't raised Jewish. And they say of the nearly 6 million Jewish adults, 27% were raised Jewish, but now consider themselves something else. And of those 19% say they are Christians. So they say there's nearly 300,000 Jewish believers in Jesus. And they went on to say that of the 2.8 million Americans who have Jewish background, 52% are Christian. I would want to put quotes around that, all right? 4% are Messianic Jews, which are probably the true believers, and 1% consider themselves both Jewish and Christian. And that totals 1.6 million Jewish background Americans who believe in Jesus, is what the report says. I wouldn't buy all of that, but you get an idea of the flavor here. And of course, Jesus made it very clear in Matthew seven that most people who call themselves Christians will never enter the kingdom because they're self-deceived.

Now, the amazing claims surrounding Jesus' birth and his identity were beyond anything anyone could possibly believe. So Luke provides in his gospel verification through credible witnesses, and again, think about it, who's going to believe that Jesus was the Son of God? You know that he was conceived by the Holy Spirit, that he was born of a virgin, that he's God in human flesh, that he's the long awaited Messiah of Israel that would save sinners. And so what the Spirit of God does through his inspired writer Luke, is provide credible witnesses, and we're going to see them, and we've already seen some of them, certainly Joseph and Mary, you've got Zacharias and Elizabeth. We're going to see later on, Simeon and Anna and even the numerous shepherds, even though they wouldn't be considered credible witnesses in that culture, since they had no political or religious agenda. It'd be kind of hard to just completely rule out their testimony of what they heard and what they saw.

Now, another component here, and this is all background so that you can understand what the Spirit of God is saying here through Luke, realize that Jesus came to fulfill the law, something that we could not do. He came to obey it perfectly. He came to the world to remove the sins of the people and their guilt rested upon him. He came as the last Adam, the one that could keep the law perfectly where the first Adam had failed, and he came to bear the curse of the law for sinners. So he had to obey the law perfectly. And this would mean that he would also be required to have the proper witnesses that would validate his claims.

Let me remind you a little bit about the Mosaic law. In Deuteronomy 19:15 we read that that, "'A single witness shall not rise up against a man on account of any iniquity or any sin which he has committed; on the evidence of two or three witnesses, a matter shall be confirmed.'" And we see the same thing, allegations of a sinning member in a church, for example, Jesus said in Matthew 18:16, "But if he does not listen to you...." In other words, when you go and you try to hear, you try to confront and deal with a person, bring them to repentance. If they don't listen to you, ".... take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses, every fact may be confirmed." "Every fact" it could be translated literally "every word" so there needs to be confirmation. Paul spoke of this in Second Corinthians 13:1, "This is the third time I am coming to you. Every fact is to be confirmed by the testimony of two or three witnesses." We even see this with respect to allegations of sin on elders. First Timothy 5:19, "Do not receive an accusation against an elder except on the basis of two or three witnesses." In other words, "receive" means don't accept it, don't acknowledge it, unless there are other people that know the specifics of what the allegation might be, they're intimately aware of that, and they can be, therefore, a credible witnesses. So what we see here in in our text, is the Spirit of God providing, through Luke, the corroborating testimonies of other credible witnesses, and these are witnesses that that we be considered devout followers of the Mosaic Law; and we see all of this play out in the context of the temple. So that other Jews that are hearing this are saying, "Wait a minute, who agrees with this stuff?" Well, let me tell you, here they are.

So we're going to look over today, and next time we're going to look at, number one, the testimony of Joseph and Mary. That'll be today. The next time we will look at the testimony of Simeon, and then thirdly, the testimony of Anna. And as we focus on these things, I just hope that your heart will be drawn all the more to the glory of Christ and all that he is and all that that he has done for us and continues to do. So under that first heading, the testimony of Joseph and Mary, look at verse 21, "And when eight days had passed, before His circumcision, His name was then called Jesus, the name given by the angel before He was conceived in the womb." Jesus, of course, is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word, or name Joshua, which means "Yahweh saves." And as I was thinking about this, immediately, and I've just got to share this with you, immediately my mind, as it often does, goes to a hymn, and this is one that we used to sing when I was a child. Maybe you did as well.

"We have heard the joyful sound: Jesus saves! Jesus saves!

Spread the tidings all around: Jesus saves! Jesus saves!

Bear the news to every land, Climb the steeps and cross the waves;

Onward! 'tis our Lord's command: Jesus saves! Jesus saves!"

How many of you sang that when you were young? Oh, good. Quite a few of you did. By the way, folks never assume that your child isn't listening to you. You know those great hymns that we sing, and all the things, it's in there; the Lord will use that. And so here I am as an old man, and I'm still remembering "Jesus Saves, Jesus Saves." "Jesus, There's Something About That Name," right? Another one we're familiar with. And indeed, Yahweh Saves is the fitting name for the one who was born to quote, "save His people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21).

Now I also want to add just as a footnote here, contrary to the opinion of many false teachers in evangelicalism, Jesus did not come to save us from our unhappiness, from our lack of purpose in life, from our loneliness or our poverty or our health problems, even though many times in his graciousness, he does those things. But that wasn't the primary reason why he came; and he did not come to save us from social injustice. I mean, there's a far greater problem than social injustice, much of which is grossly exaggerated and distorted today for political reasons. But unlike the heretical prosperity gospel as well as the heretical social justice gospel, those things, especially the social justice gospel that focuses on how to somehow be delivered from the social injustice of man. The true gospel is how to be delivered from the righteous judgment of God. And that's why Jesus came. Our God is a saving God. He is a redeeming God. Hallelujah, that is true. Otherwise we wouldn't be here today. Think of the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 45:15, he is described as, quote, "the Savior of Israel who has saved His people" verse 17, "with an everlasting salvation." Verse 22, "Turn to Me and be saved all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is no other." And Jeremiah tells us, in Jeremiah 14:8 that Jesus is, "the hope of Israel, its Savior in time of distress." And you will recall in John 1:29, when John the Baptist sees Jesus coming, he said, "'Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." And in Luke 19:10, Jesus said, "'For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost." Jesus saves. John 3:16, "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life." And one other, and there are so many. First Timothy 2:3-4 Paul described him as, quote, "God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth."

I also want to add something very important here to make this very practical for you in your daily life and our culture, Jesus is the only one that saves. There is salvation in no other name. John MacArthur made a very important observation along this line, as it relates to Mary being considered a co-redemptrix, in other words, a co-redeemer with Jesus, which is what the Roman Catholic theology teaches. I've had to deal with this on many occasions, and my family and friends, you have as well. Here's what MacArthur said, “One of the most egregious misrepresentations of biblical truth by the Roman Catholic Church is its portrayal of God as a reluctant Savior. The implication of Catholic theology is that the Father is angry, vengeful and hostile towards sinners, but Jesus is slightly more sympathetic. But the truly gentle, compassionate, approachable one is Mary. Sinners are thus well advised to approach her for salvation, because Jesus cannot resist his mother's requests. So pervasive is this view that Rome elevates Mary to the status of co-redemptrix with Jesus." Folks, it's just a blasphemous lie, all of that type of thing, and yet many people believe that sadly.

Now back to the text, verse 21, "When eight days had passed, before His circumcision..." it says. Now, a question comes up, why would Jesus need to be circumcised? You know, I thought circumcision was a sign of the need for cleansing of sin. It symbolized that, there's no sin in Jesus. So why would that need to happen? Well, the answer is, it was a sign of the Abrahamic covenant, for one thing, a mark of Israel's national identity, but also, it's because he came to fulfill the law, and this was the law. Now you will remember, according to Galatians four, beginning in verse four, it says that Jesus was, quote, "...born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law..." And we know that he came as a curse for us not to die for his own sin; not as a curse of himself because he somehow violated some minute portion of the law. No, he had to fulfill it all perfectly. And so his circumcision really served to, quote, "fulfill all righteousness" (Matthew 3:15). And later on, by the way, he chose to be baptized for the same reason. And so we see here in this text that at his circumcision, "His name was then called Jesus, the name given by the angel before He was conceived in the womb."

Then, verse 22, "And when the days of their purification, according to the law of Moses were completed, they brought Him up to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord." Now, first of all, what's this? What's this purification according to the Law? What's that all about? And why was that? I mean, why did God want that? Well, according to the Mosaic law that God had given the people, the couple was required not only to have Jesus circumcised but also present their first born to God. Exodus 13 speaks about this. And then 33 days later, to bring an offering for Mary's purification after childbirth. Read about that in Leviticus 12. I know all of this is totally foreign to us but let me explain why God did this and why this was important, and why this added credibility to the witnesses that were telling people who Jesus was. You see, like all the laws pertaining to purification this illustrated the need for the cleansing of sin. After the birth of a son, the mother was considered ceremonially unclean for seven days, until the circumcision, like that of menstruation, as you would read in Leviticus 15, and then she had to stay at home for another 33 days, and then she could offer a sacrifice. Let me read just a passage here in Leviticus that gives you a flavor of this Leviticus 12, beginning in verse one. By the way, I like to take you to some of these passages, because I know typically people don't read these things, but it is important. It's part of the Word of God, right? Leviticus 12, beginning in verse one,

"Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 'Speak to the sons of Israel, saying:

"'When a woman gives birth and bears a male child, then she shall be unclean for seven days, as in the days of her menstruation she shall be unclean.

"'On the eighth day, the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised.

"'Then shall then she shall remain in the blood of her purification for thirty-three days; she shall not touch any consecrated thing, nor enter the sanctuary until the days of her purification are completed.

"'But if she bears a female child, then she shall be unclean for two weeks, as in her menstruation; and she shall remain in the blood of her purification for sixty-six days.'"

Now, why would she be ceremonially unclean for twice as long in the birth of a female child? We don't really know, perhaps, in some ways, it took the place of the circumcision, which obviously a female child would not need to do, and perhaps it reflected the stigma on women for Eve's part in the fall. And that's what many theologians would believe. And I think there's merit to that, a stigma, by the way, that is removed in Christ. Let me take you to a passage. And we see this kind of in this in the section there, in First Timothy 2:13 through 15, for example, in verse 14, it says, "And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression." It's interesting, in the Greek it says, and it was not Adam who was deceived, which is "apataō," but the woman being deceived, "exapataō"; it means "totally," "thoroughly," "utterly" deceived, she fell into transgression. So not only did Eve choose to rebel against God by eating the forbidden fruit, but she acted on her own, apart from the protection and leadership of Adam; and as a result, she was left vulnerable to the deception. And Adam also violated his leadership role in that union and followed Eve. So both of them perverted God's design, you might say, for the role of males and females. I mean, as we study scripture, we see that by nature, God designed men to protect, to provide and to lead. And by nature, God designed women to affirm and to receive and submit to the leadership and nurture and so forth. So they both violated their God ordained roles for men and women. And Adam was no less culpable than Eve, but because he was the head in their relationship, he bore the responsibility. So again, in First Timothy 2 we read that, and it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being quite "deceived, fell into transgression." In verse 15, "But women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint." In other words, although a woman led the race into sin, women have the magnificent privilege and responsibility of leading the race out of sin by bearing children and raising them to be godly men and women. What an unspeakable joy and privilege that is of raising children in the discipline and the instruction of the Lord, which delivers women from the stigma of sin.

Now another frequently asked questions is, "What are all these distinctions between clean and unclean?" Which, again, is really foreign in our evangelical mindset. Why is that? Well, it's because God was teaching the people to live antithetically, to teach them to live separately from the rest of the culture, apart from the pagan idolaters who had no restrictions, who have no morality. I mean, we see that in our culture, do we not? No fear of God? So all the dietary laws and all of the rituals reinforced what it is to live separately in your daily life, it was a learning tool. To learn to obey God in the mundane ways means that you're likely going to obey Him in the crucial areas of life; to live differently from the rest of the world, and that's what we're to be. We're to be distinct because the Lord is our God. Because God is holy, we are to be holy, right? Outwardly and inwardly. And I might even add that holiness is the theme of Leviticus. Leviticus comes from the Latin Vulgate version of the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint, which is "Leuitikon" meaning "matters of the Levites." But frankly, we know very little of holiness in the pagan culture in which we live in. Even in evangelicalism, if you stop and think about it, there's nothing transcendent anymore. There's nothing really sacred, nothing really off limits. I always smile, as some of you tease me about this, but today, everything is "awesome." In fact, for a lot of people, they could not say one sentence without using the word "like" at least four times, and "awesome" at least three. Today's sins need to be tolerated, it even needs to be celebrated, and as a result, you see just the devastation: marriages, families, culture. I was thinking about the whole Bad Bunny thing that where I, of course, I didn't know the language, but I've heard that, that what he was saying was so vile and so vulgar that if the FCC really knew what he was saying, they wouldn't have allowed it to be spoken or sung. I don't know what it was he was doing, I didn't listen to it, but that's just a celebration of depravity that destroys marriages and families and societies. But we're to be separate from that. Let me remind you of that just briefly here. Second Corinthians 6:14, "Do not be bound together with unbelievers for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness?" None. Second Corinthians 7:1, "Let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit and perfecting holiness in the fear of God." In other words, pursue holiness with reverential fear of God. And obviously we're to cleanse ourselves from immorality and sin and so forth. But in that particular text, it's especially referring to cleansing yourself of all associations with any kind of false religion or false religious teachers. And the cleansing of both flesh and spirit speaks of both an inward as well as an outward cleansing. You want to ask yourself, "Is that the priority of my life?" But that's the reason why you have all of these clean and unclean and all of these purification ceremonies, all of these laws. God is trying to teach the people that "I am holy, the world is not, and you need to live separately from the world. And I'm going to give you illustration after illustration, law after law, so that you live that out in such a way as to get it." Aren't you thankful Jesus came to fulfill the law, and we don't have to do all of that? We're under Grace now. But look, God is still every bit as holy as he was, so nothing in that regard is changed.

Now back to our text, "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')..." If you go to Exodus 13, beginning in verse one, we read, "The Lord spoke to Moses saying, 'Sanctify to Me every firstborn, the first offspring of every womb among the sons of Israel, both of man and beast.'" Very important phrase, "...it belongs to Me.'" Now this was yet another pedagogical opportunity - a teaching opportunity - to remind the people, especially the next generation, and to teach the next generation about the character of God, about his holiness, about who he is, what he has done, what he is doing and what he will do. And since the first born of Israel, as you will recall, of both man and animal, since they were spared of the 10th plague, God set them aside to be special unto him. That's why it says it "belongs to Me." Now later in Exodus 13, beginning of verse 14, we read this, "And it shall be when your sons ask you in time, saying, 'What is this?'" You see the point here? This is, as I say, a teaching opportunity, and your kids are going to ask, "What are we doing this? What's this all about?" "Well, I'm glad you asked son, let me tell you."

"'What is this?' Then you shall say to him, 'With a powerful hand the LORD brought us out of Egypt, from the house of slavery.

"It came about when Pharaoh was stubborn about letting us go, that the LORD killed every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of a beast. Therefore, I sacrifice to the LORD the males, the first offspring of every womb, but every firstborn of my sons I redeem.'"

Folks, we need to not only remember, but we need to rehearse the great deeds that God has done that are revealed to us in Scripture and revealed to us even in our own life, and then rejoice in them, so that our children and our children's children will know who God is.

So, "...they brought Him up to Jerusalem to present Him to the LORD," verse 24, "and to offer a sacrifice according to what was said in the Law of the Lord, 'a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons.'" Now what in the world is that all about? Well, essentially, this is a tax. Remember, they were living in a theocracy, so this is a tax. Now, bear in mind that during the Exodus, the firstborn of Israel was to act as the family priest, but when the full ministry of the Mosaic’s economy was instituted that duty was transferred to the Levites. They would then become the priests, and maybe God chose them because of their zeal for holiness and the whole fiasco with the golden calf, we're not told. And we see in Numbers 3, verses about 12 through 13, that the that the Levites took the place of the firstborn of the rest of the tribes, and the Levites were thereby set aside to serve God, and they would govern the people. They were basically the governors of the theocracy. But since the first born of the other tribes were exempt from priestly duty, as Jesus would be - he was of the tribe of Judah, not the tribe of Levi - a redemption price of five shekels in silver had to be paid by their families to help support the priests and to help, shall we say, defray the cost of operating the government.

By the way, a shekel was 100 grams of silver, and I looked it up today, that's there. That's about eight to $10 per shekel. So five shekels would be about $50 now today, that's not much money. Back then, is a lot of money. So Joseph and Mary probably paid the five shekels redemption fee for Jesus. But then, after 40 days of her uncleanness following Jesus' birth, she was also required, according to verse 24 to, "offer a sacrifice according to what said in the Law of the Lord, 'A pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons.'" Now, what does this symbolize? Well, Scripture tells us this is a sin offering. It symbolizes the need for forgiveness. It pictured the need for an atonement where the blood of an innocent substitute, would temporarily satisfy the wrath of God against the sinner. And as I think about this, don't you know that somehow, in the mind of Mary, she realizes that this is pointing to her son? I mean, think about that. Of course, Jesus was the perfect and final sacrifice, and his death fully satisfied, fully placated, the wrath of God that we deserve. The wrath of God that fell upon him. He was the propitiation for our sin.

So here's the sequence, if I can make it real simple for you in what Luke is describing here, under the inspiration of the Scripture. All of this talk about Mary's ceremonial uncleanness, pictured sin, and Mary's sacrifice pictured salvation. So all of these things God is using to communicate great truths to his people. Let me give you a little summary of God's law here in Leviticus 12, beginning in verse six,

"'When the days of her purification are completed, for a son or for a daughter, she shall bring to the priest at the doorway of the tent of meeting a one year old lamb for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or a turtle dove for a sin offering.

"'Then he shall offer it before the LORD and make atonement for her, and she shall be cleansed from the flow of her blood. This is the law for her who bears a child, whether a male or a female.

"'But if she cannot afford a lamb, then she shall take two turtle doves or two young pigeons, the one for burnt offering and the other for a sin offering; and the priest shall make atonement for her, and she will be clean.'"

Now, since Mary offered a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons, she probably couldn't afford a lamb. I was thinking about this. You know, it would have cost a considerable amount of money for them to make, remember, it's about a six-day trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem. You got to save enough money to get back home too, and you've got costs associated with food and lodging for an extended stay in Bethlehem. And I might also add, they were not yet in possession of the rich gifts of the Persian king makers, because they hadn't come yet, all right, so they didn't have that. That didn't happen until, as we read in Matthew two and so forth. So I'm sure they didn't have a lot of money, but obviously they saved enough to honor the Lord, because that was the priority of their heart. I was thinking about different passages that might have gone through their mind, like Psalm 119:77, "May Your compassion come to me that I may live. For Your law is my delight." So this wasn't a duty, it was a desire. So Joseph and Mary's scrupulous adherence to the law really validated their righteousness, which therefore added enormous credibility to their testimony that their son Jesus was indeed the Son of God, that he was indeed the long awaited Messiah of Israel; the one prophesied by Jeremiah in chapter 14:8, "...the hope of Israel, its Savior in time of distress."

Now also, in a very practical note here, by offering a sin offering she acknowledged that she was a sinner in need of a Savior, which refutes the heretical dogma of the Roman Catholic Church that asserts Mary was immaculately conceived and lived a sinless life. Folks, there is no evidence of that anywhere in Scripture. It was a concept that was completely unknown by the apostles, and frankly, it was alien to the church for centuries, until they invented it. Jesus said in Luke 18:19, "No one is good except God alone." Pretty well rules out everybody but God alone. Romans 3:10 through 12,

"'There is none righteous not even one;

"'There is none who understands, There is none who seeks for God;

"'All have turned aside, together they have become useless;

"'There is none who does good, There is not even one.'"

Verse 23, "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" and so forth. So this means Mary cannot be a co-redeemer of sinners, since sinners are, according to Romans 3:24, "...justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus." It doesn't say, "and Mary." The Roman Catholics get this co-redemptrix idea out of Luke 1:28 in case you're wondering. "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you." The Roman Catholics use this salutation as the basis of the familiar Roman Catholic prayer known as "Ave Maria," Hail Mary, and they base this on the Latin Vulgate's rendering of "favored one" as "gratia plena," which is "full of grace." And they wrongly interpret that to mean Mary has been granted and possesses fullness of grace, which she then bestows on others. That's the idea; Mary, you are filled with grace, which is at your disposal now to bestow on other people. But that's not at all what the text is saying. It's simply saying you're full of grace which you have received through no merit of your own, and you're in therefore, a unique sense of a divinely favored person. That's all that that's saying. And then Luke immediately adds, "The Lord is with you," referring to his enabling grace. The Lord is with all of us. It's not referring to her ability to dispense grace to others.

By the way, they also believe Mary is the mediator of all graces. Ludwig Ott, one of their theologians, said, "Since Mary's assumption into heaven, no grace is conferred on man without her actual intercessory cooperation." Total lie. First Timothy 2:5, "For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." So folks, don't be deceived.

Well, in summary today, we've examined just the testimony of Mary and Joseph, and Luke provides several acts of obedience here to the law that validates their testimony, which really confirms their assertion concerning their son, the Messiah, the Savior of the world. And I want to challenge you very practically. I mean, in this historical narrative, you see so much emphasis on God's holiness and the importance of obeying his law, and why they did that in those days, and what that pointed to in Christ fulfilling the law and now with grace and all of these things. But you must understand that every one of us must see the holiness of God, or we'll never understand the wretchedness of our sin. In fact, we will only see our sin in proportion to our willingness to see the holiness of God. If you have a low view of God, you're going to have a high view of self. If your God is small, sin is insignificant. But when we see God for who he really is - it's the thrice Holy God of hosts whose glory fills the earth (Isaiah 6:3) - that we will respond like Isaiah and say,

"'Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.'"

Folks, this is the vision that each of us must have in our Christian life if we're going to live a life that honors the Lord and does not forfeit blessing because of our worldliness. We need a soul terrifying vision of the purity and the holiness of God, and only then will we see the staggering ugliness of our own sin, and only then will we truly be amazed at his grace. And frankly, there is just so little of holiness today in evangelicalism. I have a burden for this; and as a result, we see worldly lives, and we see professing evangelicals calling into question, you know, who God really is, deconstructing their faith. And when you see that, it really calls into question the authenticity of their faith. The authenticity of your faith is determined by what you do, not what you profess.

Well, in closing, I want to read an observation by AW Tozer, "The church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshiping men. This she has done, not deliberately, but little by little and without her knowledge, and her very unawareness only makes her situation all the more tragic. The low view of God entertained almost universally among Christians is the cause of a hundred lesser evils everywhere among us." He went on to add, "With our loss of the sense of majesty has come the further loss of religious awe and consciousness of the divine presence. We have lost our spirit of worship and our ability to withdraw inwardly to meet God in adoring silence."

So I pray, Dear friends, that you will examine your heart and let us cleanse ourselves of all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God, amen? Amen, let's pray together.

Father, thank you for the eternal truths of your word that you reveal to us. And I pray that you will help each of us to not just understand them theologically, intellectually, but Lord, may they move upon our heart in such a way as to help us know you more fully, worship you more completely, and enjoy your blessings more and more every day, until we are ushered into your presence. And Lord, if there be one here today that knows nothing of what it means to be reconciled to you through faith in Christ, if they know nothing of what it means to experience the miracle of new of the new birth, if they know nothing of what it means to enjoy your presence and power in their life and the hope of eternal life, Oh Lord, be merciful to them. Overwhelm them with conviction, move upon their spirit by the power of your Spirit, through regenerating grace and cause them to be born again. We thank you. We give you praise in Jesus’ name. Amen.