Anna and Simeon: Growing Old with God Luke 2:21-40 1.

"I wonder what I will be like when I am old? What do you want to be like when you are old?

2. Read Luke 2:21-35. Why did Jesus and his family go to Jerusalem?

3. Was Simeon already prepared to meet Jesus (Luke 2:25-27)?

4. What did Simeon know about the pastand the future (Luke 2:29-35)?

5. Simeon's prayer is the Nunc Dimittis, a Latin term meaning "now dismiss." Why did Simeon feel that he was ready for God to dismiss him from this life in peace?

6. Read Luke 2:36-40. What can we say about Anna's life?

7. How did God use Anna?

8. How did the next stage of Christ's life prepare him to do and be what Anna and Simeon had predicted (Luke 2:3940)?

9. What do you admire about the characters in this story?

10. What could you do now to prepare for an old age that is at peace with God? A Marys purification (2:22a); B Jesus consecration (2:22b); b Jesus consecration (2:23); a Marys purification (2:24). 2:22 When the time of their purification according to the Law of Moses had been completed. This would have been forty days after Jesus birth (seven days after birth, circumcision; thirty-three days after circumcision, purification; cf. Lev 12:34 3 On the eighth day the boy is to be circumcised. 4 Then the woman must wait thirty-three days to be purified from her bleeding. She must not touch anything sacred or go to the sanctuary until the days of her purification are over. When the days of her purification for a son or daughter are over, she is to bring to the priest at the entrance to the tent of meeting a year-old lamb for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or a dove for a sin offering. 7 He shall offer them before the Lord to make atonement for her, and then she will be ceremonially clean from her flow of blood. These are the regulations for the woman who gives birth to a boy or a girl. 8 But if she cannot afford a lamb, she is to bring two doves or two young pigeons, one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering. In this way the priest will make atonement for her, and she will be clean.
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Since Bethlehem lay so close to Jerusalem, there is good reason to think that Joseph and Mary would have sought to perform these rites in the temple. The law is mentioned five times in this account (Luke 2:22, 23, 24, 27, 29) Isa 49 6 he says: It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.