<TITLE>05. Par 16-20</TITLE>L-16 Let's give a little drama so the children will get it. It's Monday morning we see at the temple. Oh, there's a great crowd of people. There's about two million something Jews in Palestine at that time, perhaps maybe two or three hundred babies were borned overnight. And every day, that would mean two or three hundred babies standing up, maybe, for circumcision and so forth, of male children.
Let's take it Monday morning. The temple's real busy, everybody coming and going. Down along the line stands a great long line of women waiting for their purification, circumcision.

L-17 Let's look down along the line now, with a--with a mental vision. I see standing along the line, rich women with babies with little lace handwork garments, holding a lamb, a rich baby's offering. Way down along the line, I see a little girl about eighteen years old with a veil over her face, poorly dressed, holding something in her hand, not in fine needle work, but in swaddling's cloth. Swaddling's cloth is what they take off the back of the yolk of an ox. When it's plowing, it'd rub it's shoulders, they put cloth on there.
And when He was born, the King of heaven, the richest of all the world, He was born in a manger. I wonder why? He was a Lamb. Lambs are not born in houses; they're born in barns. He was the Lamb of God. He was borned on a straw pile. He came in by the way of a stable door and went out through capital punishment. The world knew Him not, and the world knows Him not yet tonight.

L-18 Look at Him, the lovely One, wrapped in swaddling's cloth, and laying in a mother's arms was two little turtledoves for a purification, a peasant's offering. She had kind of a black name along. You know, it just kinda seemed like that all along in there, there was kind of a black name followed Him anyhow. And when He come along to that time when He was walking on there with that black name following Him... What a time, poor little Fellow, His mother had a--a name of having this baby by Joseph, even not even being lawfully married to him yet. That didn't bother her. In her heart she knowed whose Son that was. I can see the mothers keeping their distance from her. "There's that girl," in disgrace.

L-19 Here it is. If I'm getting this right, so is it today. A man or a woman who really tries to live a Christian life, and abstain from the things of the world, the world backs off and says they're a fanatic. Every man that tries to trust God, his fellow man will call him, "Goody-goody," or, "a sissy," or something like that. Sissy? I don't judge man by the callous in his hands, it's by the bag of the knee in his pants, whether he bows and prays or not. Men's not judged by statue, he's judged by character. I seen men that weighed two hundred pounds, and didn't have an ounce of man in him: ravish a mother with a baby in her arm. A man's judged by character, what he is inside.

L-20 Watch this case. They pass on by, but way over in a prayer room, let's think, in the temple, there was an old man setting there reading in the Scriptures. His name was Simeon. "All we like sheep have gone astray. The Lord has laid upon Him the iniquity of us all. He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquity. The chastisement of our peace upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed." I can see Simeon say, "Wonder who that meant? Is that the Messiah?" If God has told Simeon that he was going to see the Messiah, and the Messiah for the first time was in the temple, it's God's obligation to see that Simeon sees Him. Is that right?


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