A sword shall pierce through thy own soul also.” Luke 2:34-35 KJV
A sword will pierce even your own soul. Luke 2:34-35 NASB
Simeon’s words were full of worship to God and encouragement to Mary and Joseph. Had he stopped at verse 33, all would have been pleasant, and Joseph and Mary would have left with the awe and wonder that verse 33 describes. But Simeon had more to say. To a young and tender mother, he prophesied that a sword would one day pierce her own heart as a result of her child. (Perhaps the lack of mention of Joseph was because he would be home in heaven by then).
More than a millennia earlier, a father and son had walked to a mountain in Moriah. It was a knife and not a sword which Abraham carried. He was about to plunge that knife into his son Isaac when an angel intervened and stayed his hand. The knife he wielded would have been as painful to the soul of Abraham as to Isaac. But it was sheathed.
Centuries earlier, in the land of Moriah, an angel stood over the city of Jerusalem with a sword. It had slain 70,000 men. But a moment came when God instructed the angel to “stay now thy hand,” and the sword was sheathed once again (1 Chron 21:15, 16).
It is very likely that both Abraham and David were in the same exact spot, a location which the New Testament would call Golgotha and Calvary. Once again, it is the place where a sword is seen. There is a sword which pierces a mother’s heart, causing her to feel grief inexpressible and unimaginable. She plumbs the deepest depths of maternal sorrow, watching as the One she loved as a Son and Savior was impaled to a tree.
But there was another sword. Its piercing much deeper. Its sorrows even greater than a mother’s, its demands exceeding Moriah, the threshing floor, or human sorrow; this is the sword wielded by an omnipotent hand, falling with unerring accuracy, penetrating with irresistible force on its victim. This is the Christ of God on a cross, enduring the awakened sword of divine judgment.
Greater than the Everest Death Zone Rescue – Gelje Sherpa
Consider:
1. “That the thoughts of many hearts might be revealed.” Think of some hearts revealed at Calvary. Think of the Father’s heart; think of the Son’s heart. What of the hearts of men, of the disciples, and the leaders?
2. The prophecy of Simeon is prefaced by the expression, “Simeon blessed them.” We would hardly think that the words that follow concerning sorrow are a “blessing.” But in what way were they a blessing?
3. “A sign spoken against.” Simeon was giving a warning from the very beginning of the Lord’s life that He was going to be despised and rejected. Trace the accusations against Christ which follow in the Gospel of Luke.
