A Most Godly Woman

Luke 2

The name Anna is the same as the Hebrew “Hannah,” no difference.  In fact, if you go back to 1 Samuel 1 and look at Hannah, you'll see that she was characterized by prayer and fasting and so was Anna.  The Hebrew name is a lovely name.  The name means grace.  And this Anna had been graced by God.  She had been graced by God to be a prophetess.

Now what is a prophetess?  It's not somebody who predicts the future, not a fortune teller. It's not somebody who works on the psychic hot line.  It's simply somebody who speaks.  She was a teacher.  She was a speaker.  She spoke God's truth.  She spoke God's Word.  She may have been a teacher of the Old Testament to other women.  She is not a source of divine revelation. There is no revelation that has ever come from her, and none comes in this passage.  But she was known as one who taught, one who spoke.

If you go into the Old Testament, there are only three women who prophesied.  One is Miriam, Exodus 15, sister of Moses.  Another is Deborah in Judges 4, one of the judges before the monarchy in Israel. And the other is a woman named Huldah.  You only have three, and if you study them you don't find an ongoing prophetic ministry such as you do with the men who were prophets in the Old Testament who were largely life-long prophets.  You find that they prophesied at some event or some moment or some important time.

But God occasionally and at times did use women to prophesy.  Even in the New Testament the daughters of Philip prophesied, it says.  And God does use women to teach, occasionally using them in remarkable moments of redemptive history for remarkable purposes.

I say all that not to discount the purposes and role of women but only to emphasize that this is not the primary method of God.  We know that, for example, of the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament, none was written by a woman.  We know that Esther and Ruth are named for women but we have no indication they were written by women, certainly not by the women whose name they bear.  And of all the books written in the New Testament, none is written by a woman.  Of all the Old Testament prophets with an ongoing prophetic ministry and revelatory ministry, none is a woman.  Of all the apostles of the New Testament, none is a woman.  Of all the elders of the church, none is a woman.  God has given headship, as it were, from Adam on, according to 1 Timothy 2, and that the woman would come alongside to help.  But she would be delivered from any second-class status because though she is not the head, and maybe not the spokesman, not the one who speaks for God in the assembly of the people, she is the one who by virtue of raising children has the greatest amount of personal influence.  That's why Paul says she'll be saved through her childbearing.

This dear lady is a prophetess and it could mean nothing more than that she was a teacher.  She becomes the prophetess in the sense that she speaks of this child as the Messiah. 

Now she is further identified for us, and just an interesting note, Anna the daughter of Phanuel of the tribe of Asher.  Phanuel is the name Penuel, also Peniel, another Old Testament name, of the tribe of Asher.  Now you say, "Is this important?"  Yes, it's important.

Asher was one of the ten tribes of the northern kingdom.  Remember the kingdom was split after Solomon's reign?  Ten tribes went north, two tribes stayed south and the south was Judah and Benjamin. All the other ten tribes went to the north.  In 722 B.C. the northern kingdom was taken into captivity by the Assyrians.  And that really was devastating. The ten tribes went north and in 722 B.C. Assyria came under Sargon II and destroyed them and carried them away captive.  Their capital city was Damascus. The northern kingdom was taken captive and never returned.

Prior to that there had been a steady migration of those people down into the southern kingdom.  If you know your history of the northern kingdom called Israel, you know that there were how many good kings?  Zero.  They were deep into idolatry.  There wasn't one good king.  There was a remnant of believing Jews up there who weren't happy with that.  And there were those who wanted to be a part of the temple.  And so there was a steady migration downward because of the city of Jerusalem, because of the temple, and because of the priesthood.  They came to the south so that by the time the northern kingdom was taken into captivity, there were people from every tribe, families from all ten tribes who had systematically migrated south.  In fact, in the 30th chapter of 2 Chronicles we read, verse 6, "Couriers went throughout all Israel and Judah with the letters from the hand of the king and his princes and even according to the command of the king saying, 'Oh sons of Israel, return to the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel that He may return to those who escaped and are left from the hand of the kings of Assyria.'"  There's a warning, turn back to God.

Part of that turning back to God was going south.  In verse 11 it says, "Some of the men of Asher, and Manasseh, and Zebulun humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem."  And that's just one little glimpse of a rather steady migration so that eventually people from all twelve tribes had migrated.  Particularly that occurred also during the revival under the King Josiah.

Good thing there was a migration of a remnant, or there would only be two tribes.  The northern kingdom fizzled away.  In Revelation we see all 12 tribes and the 144,000, and that wasn’t possible if not for those who headed south.

By 586 BC all those taken captive to Babylon represented all twelve tribes.  At the end of seventy years of that captivity when they come back, there are people from every tribe that come back under Nehemiah to reestablish themselves in the land so that 700 or so years later this woman still knows she is of the tribe of Asher.  When they stopped knowing it was in 70 A.D. when all of the massacre of the Jews, one million 100 thousand Jews were killed in the slaughter of Titus Vespasian in 70 A.D., the destruction of Jerusalem, and over the next series of years, 985 Palestinian towns were literally massacred. And in the massacre and destruction of the temple and the slaughter that followed, they lost the records, they were all destroyed.  And today Jews don't really know what tribe they're from. 

This lady was from Asher, just a little reminder that the ten tribes weren't lost, they're still there today. They don't know what tribe they're in, God knows, and there's still enough from every tribe that in the future there will be twelve thousand selected during the time of tribulation to preach the gospel.

By the way, Asher is a good name, it means happy.  And Asher was the second son of Leah's handmaid, Zilpah, and the eighth son of Jacob, according to Genesis 29 and 30.

Well, let's meet this little old lady. She was advanced in years.  In fact, she lived with a husband seven years after her marriage.  Now they got married young, right?  So she was about twenty and she was widowed.  She’s either 84 or 104, depending on how you read v. 37. And what is especially remarkable about her is she never left the temple.  That's an emphatic statement.

Now, the only thing we can surmise from that, the reasonable thing to surmise from that is that she lived there.  At the very least she was constantly there. Around the temple grounds there were some apartments. They were normally dwelling places for priests, around the outer court.  You know, when a priest came to do his two weeks of service at the temple, he needed a place to stay. And they had quite a number of these porticos around the temple.  It just may well have been that because she was a widow so many years and because she was continually at the temple, they just decided that she was so devout that they would just provide a place for that widow in the temple and she never left.  She wasn't there idly. She was serving night and day with fastings and prayers.

Now I would say this is a fairly singular lady, wouldn't you?  She didn't have a very complicated life.  Never went anywhere.  She was completely devoted to the service and worship of God. 

Here is a passionate woman.  She’s been this way for decades.  She's a part of a small remnant of devout Jews.  She's one who takes the Old Testament seriously.

What do you think she's praying about?  She's praying for the fulfillment of Abrahamic promise, Davidic promise.  She believed in the coming of Messiah.  And she's there and she's praying and fasting for it to come to pass.  You know, the remnant knew they were small and they knew there was apostasy in Judaism. They knew that the Pharisees were corrupt legalists. They knew that the Sadducees were corrupt liberals. They knew that it wasn't right to politicize the Old Testament like the Zealots.  They knew that.  They knew what it was to know God.  She knew God.  And all the years of her life since she was widowed she apparently had no interest in marrying anybody else.  I mean, you talk about spiritual devotion. This has got to be... This has got to be the most devout person on the pages of Scripture.  You know anybody else that prayed and fasted for decades?  Now if you're looking for someone to testify as to the authenticity of the Messiah, this is her. If anybody knew the mind of God and the heart of God, she must have.

She approaches right when Simeon is there giving his blessing to the child. V. 38 says in that instant. Well, there must have been something between "she came up" and "began giving thanks," like they told her who this was, right?  And all those many, many years of petition turn now to praise.  Her praise is added to the praise of Zacharias, praise of Mary, praise of the angels, praise of Simeon and she's filled with praise and thanks to God.  She began giving thanks to God.

You can only imagine after all these many years of one focus in life, what a rush it was.

From then on this little woman who had spent all her years talking to God started talking to everybody else.  God had answered prayer.  The Messiah had come.  She continued to speak of Him to all those who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.  God's timing is so amazing, so thrilling and so incredible. 

And so Luke gives us three witnesses to indicate that this indeed is the Christ, the Son of God, the Son of the Most High, Son of David, Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world; the parents, and old Simeon and Anna. 

v. 40  The greatest testimony that will ever be given to the identity of Jesus Christ comes not from Joseph and Mary, comes not from Simeon and Anna, comes not from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The greatest testimony ever given to the identity of Jesus Christ in all His glorious perfection comes from the Father whose favor is on Him and who said of Him at His baptism, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased."