THE COST OF COMFORT | Luke 2:36-38

``Believe in Christ. The world offers you many false comforts. You can turn to many consolations. I want you to understand, if you cuddle up with anything besides God, the father in heaven, if you get close to, if you draw your meaning and your significance from anyone or anything else besides Christ, You might as well be cuddling up with a radioactive isotope to keep you warm at night because the end is the same. Believe in Jesus. [00:45:45] (34 seconds)  #BelieveInJesus

She doesn't have any other natural recourse. This is the first thing we learn from from Anna. If any of you would seek to draw near to God to have this deep, intimate, personal relationship, and it demonstrates it for us perfectly, we must be willing to abandon and let go of all self reliance, all self righteousness. We must be willing to hope in him. God draws near to those who acknowledge that they cannot save themselves. [00:27:38] (39 seconds)  #SurrenderToGod

And then you realize in that moment, God comes to you and he begins to show you to yourself the deepest needs that you have you're not even aware of until you've tried to say no to certain things. And in that moment, God reveals himself to you, and you have this assurance that he is there. He is your comfort. He is your consolation for all that is within you that is evil and corrupt and broken. He has healed it, all of it, on the cross. [00:32:46] (31 seconds)  #HealedByTheCross

People always stand back, and they're kind of puzzled at Anna. How did she know? You know? Like, when Mary and Joseph walk in, she sees this baby, and she just knows that's the Christ. God can reveal anything to anyone. I'm sure that God could have revealed to Anna exactly who the Christ was the moment she laid eyes on him. But I think we would be wrong to discount the years of persistent faithfulness, of constant spiritual endurance, what I like to say, obedience, long obedience in the same direction. [00:34:54] (46 seconds)  #LongObedience

Mary and Joseph walk into the temple. They're just carrying this little infant. Looks like probably any other baby you'd ever see on any given day. Of course, it's cute. You're gonna coo at it. You know? But she comes up at that very hour, she sees what looks like just a typical ordinary baby. But because she is so close to the heavenly father, he reveals to her, this child is all your comfort and all your joy. He is the treasure you've been waiting for all your life. [00:43:42] (34 seconds)  #TreasureInChrist

We have pursued comfort. We have looked for consolation in so many things, and we found some degree of satisfaction. Although, if we're willing to be honest with ourselves, that thing we're chasing after, it doesn't fully satisfy. It kind of satisfies us for a time, but then we're looking for the next thing. And we're always chasing after the next release, the next updated iPhone, the next gadget, the next whatever, the next romance. [00:37:20] (26 seconds)  #ChasingEmptyComforts

The fact that she's even here, seven hundred years after Asher was wiped off the map, testifies to the fact that it doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't matter what tribe you come from, it doesn't matter what people or group you hail from, if you come to God the Father with sincerity, if you come to him in repentance and faith, it does not matter your background. He will be good to you. Anna is here. [00:21:22] (26 seconds)  #FaithBeyondBackground

But understand what we're seeing here with this woman. Her tribe is gone. Her family is gone. She has nothing, but she has God, which is everything. [00:45:13] (18 seconds)  #GodIsEnough

In other words, our spirituality is being reduced down to something akin to a drive through. We want it cheap. We want it easy. We want it fast. We want it convenient. That is not the spirituality we encounter here with Anna. She was devoted. There was persistence, and it would require a lifetime of endurance. [00:34:24] (30 seconds)  #EnduringDevotion

Despair, however, despair is inconsolable because it comes when you lose an ultimate thing, when you lose the ultimate source of your meaning, the ultimate hope. When you lose that, there are no alternative sources to turn to, and it breaks your spirit. [00:41:23] (24 seconds)  #DontLoseHope

I started off that way this morning because I think that for many of us, we find ourselves in an equally deadly trap, though we wouldn't see it for what it is just as they didn't see this for what it was. You see, all of us have a hunger deep in our hearts. There is a thing we are striving after. We understand, each of us, if we're willing to be honest with ourselves, that the world is broken fundamentally in some way, and it creates a sort of a heart sickness in us, a sort of a longing for something more, something better. That's a good thing. But in seeking to meet that longing, we dare not turn to anything that this world has to offer as a comfort or a consolation. We must pursue Christ. [00:08:48] (58 seconds)  #PursueChrist

When we look at her, what we find in this woman is an individual who was not content to find her consolation or her comfort in anything that the world had to offer. She would pursue it in God and God alone. She was interested in knowing Christ. She was interested in worshiping Christ. This is who we meet today in our study of the gospel of Luke. Luke introduces us to Anna. It's just three short verses. [00:09:55] (30 seconds)  #SeekGodAlone

She is not just going to church once a week. She is not just showing up on Sunday for worship. Worship for her is not an activity. It is a posture that she seeks to maintain at all times. And this is really what I want you to see. [00:24:51] (23 seconds)  #WorshipAsLifestyle

We are looking at a woman who became a widow at a very young age. She has no children. She has no husband. In this society, this is the most vulnerable of all people groups. It's in a society society that values family, that values children, and looks upon those who do not have children as somehow being under the curse of God. All of her friends, all of her neighbors, everyone she knew would have looked at her sideways. Sideways. There would have been suspicion regarding this woman. Who is this woman? Why has God afflicted her? She had every reason to doubt. She had every reason to turn bitter and cynical. But that's not what we encounter when we come across Anna. Just the opposite. God has taken her husband. She has no kids. She has no family. No problem because she knows the one who holds all of her days in his hands. [00:26:27] (65 seconds)  #HeldByGod

We contrast that with a woman whose husband died when she was in her early twenties, and she goes on to be somewhere between 84 and 105 years old, celebrating, praising, and worshiping Jesus. She does not have a penny to her name, but she has more going on for her than all these wealthy executives. [00:42:29] (25 seconds)  #RichInFaith

Jesus teaches in the beatitudes in Matthew chapter five. He says that those who mourn are the ones who receive comfort. This is not to say that grief is a virtue in itself, but honest grief acknowledges that our circumstances, the days of our lives often exceed our capacity to manage and that we must trust in God to take us through the valleys. [00:28:29] (31 seconds)  #ComfortForTheMourning

And I want you to understand, it's not like I was driving home from work and I was like, god, I tried, but I just can't. I'm the flesh is it wasn't like that at all. It was that my body revealed that it has a mind of its own, and it's content just to go on autopilot and do its thing. Sin nature, there's a monster in each of us. [00:32:15] (24 seconds)  #FightTheFlesh

Sorrow is a pain that all of us have felt. In fact, some of you some of you might be feeling it this morning. Sorrow is a pain in which we can overcome it by turning to other sources of comfort and consolation. For example, you lose your job, [00:40:44] (18 seconds)  #FaceSorrowWithGod

We're going after all these things. And in the end, because we are not waiting on Christ, because we are not patiently focusing on him, we're finding that scratch getting itched by the world and it's shaping us. It's shaping us in such a way that we will not be content with Christ in the long run. [00:37:45] (20 seconds)  #WaitOnChrist

for however lost most of the inhabitants of Asher were, they weren't all lost. Because when Jesus comes, there's one woman at least, maybe more, who are left. There's a remnant. God is faithful. [00:20:43] (22 seconds)  #GodIsFaithful