Jesus Proclaimed The Messiah, Luke 2:25-32

²⁵And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was upon him. ²⁶And it was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord's Christ. ²⁷And he came by the Spirit into the temple: and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for Him after the custom of the law, ²⁸Then took he Him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said, ²⁹Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word: ³⁰For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, ³¹Which Thou hast prepared before the face of all people; ³²A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel.

     To those who may not know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and to those completely outside of any sort of spirituality, it may seem that there is some controversey as to whether or not Jesus is indeed the Savior of the world, the Christ, the Messiah of Israel. Surely, they say, this is something that He indeed claimed to be, but how can we be sure He was not just some mad man proclaiming to be God? After all, there had been many before Him and many after that had done so. There is that passage of scripture where Jesus is baptized; the Spirit of God descends upon Him like a dove as God speaks out of the heavens saying, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased". But how can we know that this really happened? It could have been that the people were just mistaken in what they saw and heard. Many people will try to deny the diety of Christ by humanizing and rationalizing His miracles and His life on earth. But despite how much they may argue whether or not the disciples were behind a lot of His being made out to be our Savior or that Jesus Himself was a mad man proclaiming to be God, proclaiming to take away the sins of the world, the Bible clearly shows us that this is not something Jesus or His disciples made up, but rather that the Messiah, our Savior, was long-awaited by the Jewish people and that Jesus indeed is that Messiah, our Savior.
     In the story of the faithful and devout servant of God, Simeon, we see that the hope for redemption and the coming Redeemer was real and alive before even Jesus' birth. This man, filled with the Holy Spirit, was told that he would not die until He saw the Messiah, the Lord's Anointed One. There were many ideas of what the Messiah would look like, I'm sure, and one of them was that He was to be a powerful military leader which would overthrow Rome. Before Jesus' coming, understanding of the two different types of Messianic prophecies was largely veiled, and people didn't fully comprehend what was being told them. They would read of His victory over the enemy and His righteous rule and reign, but then also of His being cut off and rejected. Unsure what to make of these seeming contradictions, they naturally hoped moreso for the military leader which would deliver them from the opression of Roman rule.
     Simeon would not die until he saw the Messiah. To him this may have meant that he would see the day that Rome fell and that the Messiah reinged in righteousness and glory. But on that certain day, the Holy Spirit called him into the temple to reveal something that I'm sure was completely different than what he'd expected: a newborn baby and a young teenage couple, dedicating their child to the Lord.
     When Simeon saw the child, he knew by revelation from God that this child was the hope of Israel, the hope of the world. And he took the baby Jesus and lifted Him to God, and by faith blessed the child and prophecied, proclaiming that Jesus, this little newborn baby, was the light to the Gentiles and the glory of all Israel, the Savior of the world.

     There was absolutely no reason for Simeon to choose the baby Jesus as the Messiah, or to claim that He was the Savior of the world. There was probably nothing that even struck his mind that told him a baby child would be that which he awaited. He had never seen the couple Mary and Joseph before, and he had no personal ties with them or Jesus. He had a completely unbiased opinion, not based on miracles performed or prior knowledge of Jesus' birth or any such thing. He had absolutely no motive for thus proclaiming Jesus to be the Messiah. Yet he did.
     We can have assurance in our faith that Jesus is indeed the Son of God, the Savior of all mankind because not only did Jesus proclaim to be God, not only did John the Baptist proclaim Him to be the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world, not only did His disciples and the crowds witness the miracles and make that assumption, but before He ever said a word or performed a single miracle, He was proclaimed to be the Lord's Christ by one devout and just, Spirit-filled man named Simeon.