The Messiah Simeon Waited For

Psalm 16:10-11 For You will not abandon me to Sheol;
You will not allow Your Faithful One to see decay.
 You reveal the path of life to me;
in Your presence is abundant joy;
in Your right hand are eternal pleasures. (HCSB)

On the very first post, I named an old tree Simeon. I did that because the faithful man kept reaching for the heavens and truth even when quite old. He was willing to declare the truth of the Messiah’s birth when many others would not.

However, I want to take another stance on trees now because Scripture calls Jesus our forever tree.

For the next few posts, I will use the Bible prophecies about the Messiah that call him the tree, the root, or the branch.

Just writing that, a thought occurred to me. All these green things have one major thing in common with the Lord. They are alive!

That’s the reason I included the verse from Psalms above. Psalm 16 foreshadows the resurrection and eternality of the Christ.

The book of Psalms itself begins with a reference to healthy growth. In Psalm 1 we are given the example of the perfectly godly person. (Which, in truth, only was completely fulfilled by Jesus.)

Psalm 1: 2-3 Instead, his delight is in the Lord’s instruction,
and he meditates on it day and night.
He is like a tree planted beside streams of water
that bears its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers. (HCSB)

True life lived for God hunkers down next to the living water of Jesus and digs its roots into the Word and the Lord’s instruction. I don’t think it’s any accident that Jesus made sure we knew that he was the Word and the Water of Life.

We need to remember that the spirit that resides in God’s teachings is secure for the future because its forever is safe. The temporary does have problems. Jesus never denied that in this world we would have trouble. But our focus and our roots should be on the promises of God which point to eternity.

There, we will be secure. There we will drink from the water of life and hear the Word of the Lord in the peace of his heavenly kingdom.