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"Behold," Simeon had said,
"this child is set for the fall and rising again of
many in Israel;22 and for a sign
which shall be spoken against."
page 57
They must fall who would rise again.
We must fall upon the Rock and be broken before we can be uplifted in Christ. Self must
be dethroned, pride must be humbled, if we would know the glory of the
spiritual kingdom. The Jews would not accept the honor that
is reached through humiliation. Therefore they would not receive their Redeemer.
He was
a sign that was spoken against.
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Simeon sees the wonder that shines out in their astonished looks;
and, the spirit of prophecy imparted—that spirit which had been mute in Israel since
the days of Malachi, but which now once more lifts up its voice within the temple—he
goes on, after a gentle blessing bestowed upon both parents, to address himself
particularly to Mary, furnishing in his wordss to her fresh material for wonder,
while opening a new future to her eye. "Behold," he said
to her, "this
child of thine is set for the fall and rising again of many in
Israel"22 He may have meant, in saying so, that the
purpose and effect of the Lord's showing unto Israel would be the casting down
of many in order to the raising of them up
again; the cast down of many in order to the
raising of them up again; the casting down of them down from their earlier,
worldlier thoughts and expectations, in order to the lifting them to higher,
worthier, more spiritual conceptions of
his character and office. Or, perhaps it was to different
and not to the same persons that he referred, the truth revealed being this: that
while23 some were to rise, others were to
fall; that stone which to some was to be a foundation-stone elect
and precious, was to others to be a stone of stumbling and rock of offence; that
Jesus was to come for judgment into the world, that those who saw not might see,
that those who saw might be made blind; his name to be the savor of life unto
life to the one, the savor of death unto death to the other.
Page 38
From all Mary had yet heard, she might have imagined that
her child would be welcomed by all Israel—so soon as the day for his revelation
came—as its long-looked for deliverer; and that a career in whose honors and
bliss she could scarcely help at times imagining that she should have a share.
But now, for the first time, the indication is clearly given that all Israel
was not to hail her child and welcome him as its Messiah; that hostility was
to spring up even within the ranks of the chosen people; that
he was to be
a "sign which should be spoken
against;"24 or
rather—for such is the more literal rendering of the words—a butt or mark at
which many shafts or javelins should be launched. Nor
was Mary herself to escape. Among the many swords or darts levelled at his
breast, one was to reach hers: "Yea, a sword shall pierce through thine own
soul also." Strange that in the very centre of so broad and comprehensive a
prophecy concerning Christ, such a minute and personal allusion to Mary should
come in; a high honor put upon the mother of our Lord that her individual
sorrows of her Son; and a singular token of the tender sympathy of Him by
whom it was prompted, that now when her heart was filling with strange,
bright hopes, now while her child was yet an infant, now ere the evil days
drew on, when she should have to see him become the object of reproach and
persecution, and stand herself to look at him upon that cross of shame and
agony on which they hung him up to die—that now to temper her first-born
joy, to prepare and fortify her for the bitter trials in store for her, this
prophecy should have been thus early spoken.
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And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his mother,
Behold, this child is set for the fall
and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign
which shall be spoken
against. (Luke 2:35)
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