The song of Simeon was very beautiful in its arrangement. First the believer's personal appropriation of a promise, "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word: for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation;" next the expansion of a Christian's Catholic spirit, "A Light to lighten the Gentiles," and then the holy patriotism of a Jewish heart, "and the glory of Thy people Israel."
I. The question will naturally arise, What is the distinction, if any, between Christ as the "Light of the Gentiles" and Christ as the "Glory of Israel?" Is it only a difference of degree? Sight, growing into deeper intensity and glow, becomes glory. So Christ illuminates, indeed, all people, but not with that lustre with which He will one day encircle Jerusalem. And it is therefore "a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel."
II. Or, once more the actual presence of the Lord, in beauty and power, is glory. Where shall that Presence be at the last? At Jerusalem. Very great will be the irradiation of the whole earth. But still it will be only the distant beam of a full meridian sun, which is blazing in Palestine "A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel."
III. As Gentiles then, we ask, What is our proper privilege and portion? And we have the answer Light. Christ a light; of these simple words no one will know the power who has never felt the narrowing in of a moral darkness on his mind. But ask the man who has ever known a season of deep sorrow which shrouded all his earthly prospects, and left nothing before him but a thick night over the future and one rayless expanse. Or, still more, hear the soul, which, under the conscious hiding of God's countenance, has felt the shadows of conscience deepen over his spirit into the blackness of despair. And those are the men who will understand the words, "Christ a Light."
IV. Turn next to Israel's glory. When Abraham's outcasts and Judah's dispersed ones shall all come back come back first in their unconverted state, by a political restoration, to their own country; then to trials and afflictions commensurate with the deed which their fathers perpetrated; then to majesty unprecedented upon this earth when, the subjects of the visible King of kings and Lord of lords, they shall hold high court and be supreme among the nations of the world, that Infant Jesus, in Simeon's arms, shall be "the glory of His people Israel," when He "reigns in Mount Zion, and before His ancients gloriously."
J. Vaughan, Sermons,1871, p. 217.
References: Luke 2:32. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xiv., No. 826. Luke 2:33. Preacher's Monthly,vol. vi., p. 341.