In Luke 2:25 and 2:38 we find two people who were at the point of their Advent—two people who were waiting for Christ to appear, the Messiah. This was Simeon, and this was Anna.

We find in Luke 2:21 “Eight days later.” Now, that means that eight days before something special happened, and we all know that the eight days before was when the shepherds met the angels in the field and they declared the birth of the Savior. So now, this is eight days later, when Joseph and Mary are going to the temple to get Jesus circumcised and to have Him presented before the Lord. The Bible says:

Luke 2:25

“At that time, there was a man in Jerusalem named Simeon, and he was righteous and devout, and was eagerly waiting for the Messiah to come and rescue Israel. The Holy Spirit was upon him and had revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen the Lord’s Messiah.”

That day, the Spirit led Simeon to the temple. So when Mary and Joseph came to present the baby Jesus to the Lord, as the law required, Simeon was there. He took the child in his arms and praised God, saying,

Luke 2:29–32

“Sovereign Lord, now let your servant die in peace, as you have promised. I have seen your salvation, which you have prepared for all people. He is a light to reveal God to the nations, and He is the glory of your people Israel!”

So we are at the temple with Simeon, a man who is described as righteous and devout, a man who is waiting to be rescued—not by any army on the earth, but by God Himself through the giving of the Messiah.

Like Simeon, we are living in a world longing for rescue. When you look at the news and you look at our country. When you look at all that’s going on in our streets, even to the point of—I think it was last week—a mother walking her two children home from school being attacked by a group of children, pummeled, kicked, beaten and left lying in the street. We are in a time where many people want to be rescued. They are wanting to be relieved from the oppression and the anarchy that we find in our homes, in the streets, in our schools. It is a time where we are all looking to God for rescue.

In this scripture, we find that God is finally, finally answering the prayers of many, and He has sent the Messiah. And Simeon the devout, righteous man who stayed in the temple to behold this—he has witnessed the Messiah here. And in that moment, he knew that everything that he was worried about was getting ready to be demolished.

When I was in the military, there were two phrases that were ingrained in our souls—not in our minds, but in our souls, in our minds, our will, and our emotions. And those two expressions were: The first one was “Hold the line.”

Hold the line.
That means that we are under attack, and we cannot allow the enemy to get any further. We have to take our stand right here. We have to lock arms so he cannot move against us and gain any more territory. Hold the line.

The second expression was:

We can’t stay here.
We can’t stay here means that we are in enemy territory, we are being pinned down, and it is not safe for us to be here. We must move, and we must evacuate.

These two expressions have guided my life in terms of my Christian experience, and I’m sure perhaps unknown to you, have guided a bit of your life as well. Hold the line is what we do every morning when we are in our six o’clock prayer. We are not allowing the enemy to go forward. We are like Simeon in that temple, waiting for a rescue, but we are going to fight until that rescue comes. And just like Simeon, when we get the rescue, what will we do?

Do we remain anxious about the situation of the day? Or do we begin to praise God and move forward? That is the joy of Advent. The joy of Advent is understanding that not only has Jesus come once in His birth, but that He’s coming again for us. And we have to remember that we are not left up to the things that are going on in this world. We have an advocate, we have a Messiah who has come here, who has freed us, and we don’t have to wait for Him anymore. Like the song says, “He’s already here. He’s already here.”

So we don’t have to languish under the pressures of this life. We can move forward now and go and take the territory that God has given us. When we go back to our scriptures in verses 36-38, and we find out that Simeon was not by himself as he waited for the Lord.

Luke 2:36-38

“Anna, a prophet, was also there in the Temple. She was the daughter of Phanuel from the tribe of Asher, and she was very old. Her husband died when they had been married only seven years. Then she lived as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the Temple but stayed there day and night, worshiping God with fasting and prayer. She came along just as Simeon was talking with Mary and Joseph, and she began praising God. She talked about the child to everyone who had been waiting expectantly for God to rescue Jerusalem.”

So we have another devout person who found herself holding the line in prayer, in fasting, and in waiting for the Savior to come. And when she found that Savior, when she found the answer to all her prayers, she didn’t just stay in the temple as she was accustomed to. The Word of God said that she talked about the child to everyone who had also been waiting expectantly for God to rescue Jerusalem.

So there is a time where we hold the line. There is a time where we pray, we fast, and stand firm, and we don’t let the enemy gain any territory; and we get our answer, we get our deliverance, we get our rescue, and then there’s a time that we have to move out and move forward.

Pastor talked about going the distance and one of the things he said was, “There will be opposition,” and not only just opposition; opposition that is unique to each one of us in our calling. And he said, “Despite that opposition, that is tailor-made for us, we must go the distance. We must move forward. We cannot stay here.”

In the waiting, and watching, and expecting, God is already here. He has put in us everything we need to win this battle and to move forward.

There is a part in The Lion King that I love when Mufasa takes Simba up high on the mountain, and he looks at the valley and the land and he says to his son, “Everything the light touches is in your hands, is in your responsibility, in your rulership. Everything the light touches is yours.”

When you look at your life, when I look at my life, everything the light – Jesus—the light, the Word of God—the light touches… is mine. And the enemy’s job is to put out that light and to keep us from receiving our full inheritance in Christ. Ephesians says something about our inheritance.

Ephesians 1:1-4
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him.”

Ephesians 1:11
“In Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, so that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be to the praise of His glory. In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of His glory.”

We were not made to stand still. We were made to move forward. We were made to go the distance. And in going the distance, we do it according to the counsel of God’s will. What is the counsel of God’s will mean? It means that we go through his advice, his guidance, and it is often related to serious matters. When the word council is used, that means something can be lost, if we do not go according to these instructions. In the Greek, the word council means a resolve, deliberate plan or purpose; a design that is purposeful and intentional. It’s not impulsive. It’s not impulsive.

So be resolved, be deliberate. There’s an immutable, unchangble, divine plan over your life. And when you find your answer, when God gives you your rescue, be resolute and move forward. Don’t stand wandering, waiting, God is already here with you. In the midst of that opposition, God is there with you. And you do not have to shudder. You do not have to shrink back. You do not have to be paralyzed with fear. You can move forward.

Hebrews 10:36–39
“You need to persevere, so that after you have done the will of God, you will receive what He has promised. For ‘In just a little while, He who is coming will come and will not delay. But My righteous one will live by faith; and if he shrinks back, I will take no pleasure in him.’ But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.

Who do we belong to? But those who have faith and are saved, that’s who we are. We are not designed shrink back. We are designed to break under the pressures of life. We are designed to move forward.

When Moses was at the Red Sea with the Israelites, he was in enemy territory, he was pinned down, and he was crying out to God and crying out to the people, stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.

In Exodus 14:15 God gives His response to the declaration, that we all stand on so many times. And he says,

“The Lord says to Moses, ‘why are we crying out for help? Tell the people to move forward.'”

We’re in a time where we don’t need to cry out for help any more. Help is already here. Help is telling us to go the distance. Help is telling us to move forward. We are pinned down in this earth – yes. We are in the enemy’s territory – yes; but still, in the midst of that, we can’t stay here. We’ve got to move forward.

So I want to encourage you today. Do not give up. God is here. He’s already here, and He is with us, and He is allowing us to see His salvation in many and various ways.

So as we end this meditation, I would like you to go through those scriptures again when you get time. Go through each and every one and understand that you are not meant to stay here in this earth, and I was not meant to stay here in this earth. When we were rescued by our Lord to Savior, like Simeon, and like Ana, we praise God and we go and tell all the people about Christ, and we all move forward together. God bless you.