Sermon Tone Analysis

dignity | ˈdiɡnədē | noun (plural dignities) the state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect:

disgrace | disˈɡrās | noun loss of reputation or respect as the result of a dishonorable action: he left the army in disgrace

Caesar: Augustus was the one who recieved Rome as a city of mud bricks and turned it into a marble city.

He was the first Caesar to be called “Augustus” when the Roman Senate voted to give him that title.

Augustus means “holy” or “revered,” and up to that time the title was reserved exclusively for the gods.1 It was under Augustus’ rule that decisive strides were taken toward making the Caesars gods.

In fact, at about the same time Luke was writing these words, some of the Greek cities in Asia Minor adopted Caesar’s birthday, September 23, as the first day of the New Year, hailing him as “savior.”

An inscription at Halicarnassus (birthplace of the famous Herodotus) even called him “savior of the whole world.”

Historian John Buchan records that when Caesar Augustus died, men actually “comforted themselves, reflecting that Augustus was a god, and that gods do not die.”

So the world had at its helm a self-proclaimed, widely accepted god and savior.

Luke, the historian and theologian, wants us to see this as the tableau for understanding the coming of the real Savior.

The contrast could not be greater.

Hughes, R. Kent.

Luke: That You May Know the Truth.

Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1998.

Print.

Preaching the Word.

Augustus is celebrated for bringing in the Pax Romana, yet this peace came at the cost of total control and the elimination of all opponents.

This peace came only after years of brutal war.

This fact has helped historians narrow down the time of Jesus’ birth.

80 miles journey

So was there a rude and gruff innkeeper, as many Christmas plays have portrayed?

Was he born in a cave, or outside in the open air?

The explanation given for this unusual resting place is cryptic and carries no great weight in the story, κατάλυμα is a flexible word and can denote any kind of place where one might stay, from a primitive inn (Exod 4:27; 1 Kgdms 1:18) to a guest-room of a house (cf.

Luke 22:11) to a totally unspecified place where one might stay (Sir 14:25; and cf.

Exod 15:13).

If we are to understand that Mary and Joseph were excluded from the κατάλυμα, then the definite article favors reference to the public inn at Bethlehem (cf.

Jer 41:17), though the guest-room of the family home remains possible (K.

E. Bailey, NESTR 2 [1979] 33–44).

Was the coming of Christ a loss of dignity?

Or was God disgraced by it?

The Christian believes that all life has dignity, because we believe the Bible, that all humans bear the image of God.

Yet Jesus did willingly endure shame, but shame is not the same as guilt.

Jesus felt the shame of being condemned by people, yet he never suffered shame before the Father God, but rather was esteemed.

And the prophet Isaiah had foreseen this shame Jesus would suffer.

When did Isaiah prophesy?

A day before it happened?

A week? no, but over 700 years before Jesus came as Immanuel, God with us, Isaiah foretold of the shame and disresecpect that Jesus would suffer at the hands of people.

Jesus never lost his dignity before God, yet in the sight of people, he was disgraced.

His life appeared to begin and end with disgrace, yet he was eternally dignified.

But the way he was born was certainly very humble.

Jesus showed us by example what true humility is. he was in the form of God, and yet, humbled himself to be born in what we would call scandalous circumstances if it were any child of a king or dignitary today.

If we were to learn of someone, even today, born in Palm Beach county, who had to give birth outside, or next to a dumpster, we would all shake our heads and say it was horrible.

We have been so convinced that the baby is in great danger if it isn’t born in a perfectly sterile room.

And yet, Jesus was born in this way: Listen as I read this from Kent Hughes.

It is a long quotation, but it was said so much better than I could on my own, so all credit to Mr. Hughes, who God gifted to put it in these words:

Joseph probably wept as much as Mary did.

Seeing her pain, the stinking barnyard, their poverty, people’s indifference, the humiliation, and the sense of utter helplessness, feeling shame at not being able to provide for young Mary on the night of her travail—all that would make a man either curse or cry.

If we imagine that Jesus was born in a freshly swept, county fair stable, we miss the whole point.

It was wretched—scandalous!

There was sweat and pain and blood and cries as Mary reached up to the heavens for help.

The earth was cold and hard.

The smell of birth mixed with the stench of manure and acrid straw made a contemptible bouquet.

Trembling carpenter’s hands, clumsy with fear, grasped God’s Son slippery with blood—the baby’s limbs waving helplessly as if falling through space—his face grimacing as he gasped in the cold and his cry pierced the night.6

My mother groaned, my father wept.

Into the dangerous world I leapt.7

It was clearly a leap down—as if the Son of God rose from his splendor, stood poised at the rim of the universe irradiating light, and dove headlong, speeding through the stars over the Milky Way to earth’s galaxy, finally past Arcturus, where he plunged into a huddle of animals.

Nothing could be lower.

Luke finishes the picture in verse 7: “She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.”

Mary counted his fingers, and the couple wiped him clean as best they could by firelight.

Mary wrapped each of his little arms and legs with strips of cloth—mummy-like.

No one helped her.

She laid him in a feeding trough.

No child born into the world that day seemed to have lower prospects.

The Son of God was born into the world not as a prince but as a pauper.

We must never forget that this is where Christianity began, and where it always begins—with a sense of need, a graced sense of one’s insufficiency.

Christ, himself setting the example, comes to the needy.

He is born only in those who are “poor in spirit.”

The Incarnation provides a marvelous paradigm for Christ’s work in our lives.

Every Advent season, and hopefully at other times as well, we are brought again to the wonder of the Incarnation.

See the swaddled Jesus, lying in the feeding trough in the stable, the birthplace of common livestock.

Look long and hard with all your mind and all your heart.

From early times the paradox of the Incarnation has given birth to mind-boggling expressions.

St. Augustine said of the infant Jesus:

Unspeakably wise,

He is wisely speechless.8

Lancelot Andrewes, who crafted much of the beautiful English of the Old Testament in the King James Version, preaching before King James on Christmas Day 1608, picked up on Augustine’s idea and described Christ in the manger as:

the word without a word.9

He is in his person the Word of God!

Luci Shaw, in her beautiful poem “Mary’s Song,” says:

Quiet he lies

whose vigor hurled

a universe.

He sleeps

whose eyelids have not closed before.10

The one who asked Job, “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?

Tell me, if you understand … when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness” (Job 38:4, 9) now himself lay wrapped in swaddling clothes.

The wonder of the Incarnation!

The omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God became a baby!

Jesus suffered from apparent indignity throughout his ministry.

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

So when you pray to him, when you feel rejected, when you feel despised, when you are grieving, know that Jesus the Savior has experienced these emotions as well, and he knows what pain is, both emotional and physical pain.

and he bore our griefs, he carried our sorrows.

He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities.

Do you see, my friends?

This is a sum of all the gospel, and it was told by Isaiah over 700 years before it happened: Is53.5

This verse speaks of transgressions and iniquities.

Transgression means crime.

Violating God’s law is a crime, as RC Sproul often said, Cosmic Treason.

The word could also be translated evildoing.

Jesus was pierced for our transgressions.