We have, in these verses, the story of a birth--the birth of the incarnate Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. Every birth of a living child is a marvelous event. It brings into being a soul that will never die. But never since the world began was a birth so marvelous as the birth of Christ.

We read, in these verses, how the birth of the Lord Jesus was first announced to the children of men. The birth of a king's son is generally made an occasion of public reveling and rejoicing.

The first point which demands our attention in this passage, is the obedience which our Lord rendered, as an infant, to the Jewish law. We read of His being circumcised on the eighth day. It is the earliest fact which is recorded in His history.

We have in these verses the history of one whose name is nowhere else mentioned in the New Testament, "a just and devout man" named Simeon. We know nothing of his life before or after the time when Christ was born.

The verses we have now read introduce us to a servant of God whose name is nowhere else mentioned in the New Testament. The history of Anna, like that of Simeon, is related only by Luke. The wisdom of God ordained that a woman as well as a man should testify to the fact that Messiah was born.

These verses should always be deeply interesting to a reader of the Bible. They record the only facts which we know about our Lord Jesus Christ during the first thirty years of His life on earth, after His infancy.