Luke #5: The Birthday of the King (2:1-20)

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for being here today, whether you are here in the room or joining us online through the app, the website, Facebook, or YouTube.

If you’re a guest or a visitor this morning, we appreciate you as well! Thanks for being here today, whether you’re a believer or are just checking out the Jesus and the church, whether you’re in the room or online. We’d like to be able to send you a note of thanks for your visit this morning, so if you wouldn’t mind getting us a little information, it would mean a lot to us. If you’re online, you can jump over to our I’m New page on the website or the app and fill out the contact card at the bottom. If you’re in the room, you can just fill out the Welcome card that you’ll find in the back of the pew in front of you. At the close of service, you can either drop it in the offering boxes by the doors, or if you would, you can bring it down to me here at the front, so I can say hello if I haven’t had the chance already this morning, and so I can give you a small gift to thank you for your visit. Thanks in advance for taking the time.

I’d also like to take a moment and say thanks to all of our Kids Ministry Shepherds who do such a great job in our children’s ministry every week. Obviously, the ones serving in Kids’ Ministry right now won’t hear this: but shepherds, thank you so much for the way you invest in the little ones of Eastern Hills. We appreciate you!

Announcements

LMCO: Goal exceeded! ($33,210.03)

Along with that, we got a letter of thanks from the BCNM this week, thanking Eastern Hills for being a top 5 CP giving church in the state, and a top 10 State Mission Offering giving church. Thank you for being such a generous church family!

Wet Cement is this Wednesday. Today is the deadline for registration!

Opening

Last week in our sermons series through the entire book of Luke, we finished up the first chapter by considering the birth of John the Baptist. Throughout the book of Luke, the doctor (Luke) has been comparing and contrasting the two biblical figures of John the Baptist and Jesus, showing clearly that Jesus is preeminent—while John is important because he was to come as the forerunner to the Christ, he is not the Christ. That title belongs only to Jesus. He is the King, and the Gospel of Luke is His story. John plays an important role, but the Gospel is all about Jesus.

For us this morning, it’s Christmastime again. This past Christmas season, we considered the coming of Jesus from the perspective of the first chapter of the Gospel of John—reflecting on John’s description of Jesus as the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us. As a part of that series, knowing that we would be studying the book of Luke this year (and that chapter 2 isn’t that far in), I intentionally avoided preaching from Luke’s account of Jesus’s birth (we did hear the whole thing as part of our Christmas musical program by the choir). However, the time has come to consider the birthday of the King from Luke 2:1-20. So as you are able, please stand in honor of the reading of the Word of God, and turn in your Bibles or your Bible apps to the second chapter of Luke’s Gospel.

Luke 2:1–20 CSB

1 In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole empire should be registered. 2 This first registration took place while Quirinius was governing Syria. 3 So everyone went to be registered, each to his own town. 4 Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family line of David, 5 to be registered along with Mary, who was engaged to him and was pregnant. 6 While they were there, the time came for her to give birth. 7 Then she gave birth to her firstborn son, and she wrapped him tightly in cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them. 8 In the same region, shepherds were staying out in the fields and keeping watch at night over their flock. 9 Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Don’t be afraid, for look, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people: 11 Today in the city of David a Savior was born for you, who is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be the sign for you: You will find a baby wrapped tightly in cloth and lying in a manger.” 13 Suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying: 14 Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth to people he favors! 15 When the angels had left them and returned to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go straight to Bethlehem and see what has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” 16 They hurried off and found both Mary and Joseph, and the baby who was lying in the manger. 17 After seeing them, they reported the message they were told about this child, 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19 But Mary was treasuring up all these things in her heart and meditating on them. 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had seen and heard, which were just as they had been told.

PRAYER (Pray for families of those who lost their lives in the mid-air collision on Wednesday, and the medevac plane that crashed on Thursday)

This morning’s focal passage is easily the most widely known and recited passage about Christmas. One of the greatest issues with studying Luke 2:1-20 is that it’s a passage that we likely read or hear at least quoted in a sermon about once a year. We’ve seen it dramatized and heard it recited by Linus. We’ve got nativity scenes that remind us of what it says and what happened that night, and even offer an interpretation of how it looked, and so we (probably) all have some kind of idea of what we think the very first Christmas was like. As a result, we might approach this passage with preconceived ideas about what it says and what it means. Luke 2:1-20 might be so familiar for you, in fact, that you have already stopped listening.

But can I ask you to a do a favor for me this morning? It’s not easy, but we should try. I want you to imagine that you don’t know a thing about Christmas. Imagine that Christmas hasn’t even happened yet. I know, it’s a stretch. But stay with me for a moment. What if you lived in the time just before the Son of God came in the flesh? Before the virgin birth? Before the manger bed? Before the angels sang? What if you were one of the shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over your flock by night a week prior to the first Christmas? Or what if you were a resident of Bethlehem on the night before the Christ-child was born? The name of Jesus had no special meaning, other than perhaps the few people we might have known with that name, and the fact that it’s a derivative of Joshua, which means, “The Lord saves.” If we were part of the Jews, we would have believed in the idea of a coming Savior, a Messiah, but wouldn’t have had any idea when He would come or what He would be like… we just wanted Rome off of our backs, and the Messiah was our hope for that. We would have just been living our lives, day-by-day, waiting for this deliverance that had been promised to us hundreds of years before. Nothing special about whatever night that was. It was just a normal day to us.

It’s really hard for us to imagine this, because we have no frame of reference for it. But there was a time. There were people for whom this was a reality. Christmas hasn’t always been. And I think that sometimes, because of our familiarity with the Christmas message and in particular this passage from Luke, we forget that this isn’t made up. This isn’t a fairy tale. This is recorded history. And this moment changed reality. The Messiah, the promised King of the line of David, the One who would be the Savior of the world, had finally come.

So continue to try to forget about Christmas: What kind of arrival would you have expected, if you were a Jew living in the area of Bethlehem back then? Would you have been on the lookout for this engaged couple, seemingly with an illegitimate child on the way, as they came into town for the census? Would you have noticed if they passed you in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the dirt street as all of the census visitors came to register there because of their lineage? Probably not. You would have gone to bed on the night of Jesus’s birth without any stockings hung by the chimney with care, because St. Nicholas wouldn’t be born for another 275 years or so. You would have had no clue about what was about to happen, no anticipation, no excitement about the unexpected arrival of the King.

And not only was His arrival unexpected, but when He did came, he came in an unexpected way. Instead of all the pomp and circumstance, attendants and proclamations that we would expect of a royal birth, the King of kings and Lord of lords came in the humblest of fashions.

1: The King’s humility (2:1-7)

We get this part, because we sing about it. Christmas songs like “Infant Holy, Infant Lowly” acknowledge the humility of the arrival of the Son of God. Jesus is the most important human being to ever walk the face of the planet. And His birth was anything but fitting for His station:

Luke 2:1–7 CSB

The truth about the actual birth of the Savior, as Luke records it, is that it is remarkably… unremarkable. It was the first century BC. Caesar Augustus had been ruling over the Roman empire since 31 BC. Quirinius served as a leader in the province of Syria the first time from 6 BC to 4 BC (and again later in 6 AD), and Caesar called for a tax census in order to make sure everyone in the Empire was paying their part for the Pax Romana—The Roman Peace. Taxes were related to land ownership, and land ownership in Israel was primarily inheritance-based, so land-owning men (and land-owning women… it did happen occasionally) had to travel to the cities of their ancestors in order to know how many people had ownership claims on land in the Empire. This is all so… mundane.

And so Joseph must go to Bethlehem, because he comes from the line of David. His fiance Mary was in late term pregnancy, and accompanied him on the 90 mile journey from Nazareth where they lived, likely together as husband and wife, even though the marriage wasn’t official yet, as it had not been consummated, according to Matthew 1:24-25.

And when they arrived, there was no room for them to stay in one of the houses of his relatives who still lived there (almost certainly not an “inn”). But fortunately for them, houses of the time often had a very interesting architectural feature: a kind of livestock “stable” underneath the house, made from either a natural cave (the area around Bethlehem is full of them) or a man-made one. My good friend Yoav Rotem from Israel (who came and spoke last April) was kind enough to send me a couple of pictures from a first century BC archaeological site just north of Jerusalem—not Bethlehem, but from the same general area and the same historical time period (archaeological Bethlehem was just south of Jerusalem, and is under modern Bethlehem in the West Bank area).

(Photo 1) Here is a picture of the first floor of a house in this village. Notice this horizontal row of stone? This is the floor of the house. These big stone pillars would have been used to support the floor. The space between them might have had a gate or something to keep the animals in. (Photo 2) And the animals (only a couple of them in this case) would have been kept safe underneath the house. To quote Yoav, “You don’t park your valuable John Deere out in the field.”

So this young couple about to welcome their first child are given the only available space: the cave-like stable underneath a house. Not ideal for giving birth. And not a particularly auspicious place for such an occasion as the birth of the King of the Jews. And Luke records it just as simply as he did John’s birth: “Then she gave birth to her firstborn son.” She did what was normal for a newborn baby (and still is): she swaddled Him, and put him the only place she could that was cradle-like: (Photo 3) the manger like one at the gate—the stone feeding troughs for the animals who ordinarily occupied the space. We would never wish a newborn to be laid in something like this, but the God of the whole universe was.

Not the proudest beginning to the life of a King. Jesus came to a basically “normal” couple in (seemingly) the “normal” way. His actual arrival wasn’t all that impressive. It was not attended by the powerful or the popular, the movers or the shakers. It was a dirty, smelly, and uncomfortable affair. Where we might have expected fanfare, only silence. Where we might have expected glory, we find humility instead.

This would be a theme of Jesus’s life: humility, lowliness. The only One who had the right to truly have people worship Him. The only One who was perfectly sinless died for those who rebel against Him. The only One with the power to absolutely prevent His own death, becoming obedient to death on a cross, as Paul put it in Philippians 2.

Seeing the likely type of situation Jesus was born into forces us to ask a vital question, because “the incarnation of the Son of God in an animal’s feeding trough puts our glory-craving hearts in check” (Thabiti Anyabwile): Do we really understand what it is to be truly humble? If we’re going to be like Jesus, we must, because Jesus modeled for us what humility looks like. It’s not wimpyness or self-effacement. It’s not being a wall-flower or doormat. I like C.J. Mahaney’s definition in his book Humility: True Greatness:

Humility is honestly assessing ourselves in light of God’s holiness and our sinfulness.

—C.J. Mahaney, Humility: True Greatness

And though Jesus didn’t have any sin to deal with, Philippians 2 reflects this attitude of humility in light of the Father’s identity:

Philippians 2:5–8 CSB

5 Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus, 6 who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited. 7 Instead he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. And when he had come as a man, 8 he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death— even to death on a cross.

Jesus—God the Son—willingly laid aside the full weight of His glory as God and came into this world by first spending nine months in Mary’s womb as His physical body grew. He was revealed to the world through physical childbirth in a stable and was laid in a feeding trough for His first nap. No glory there. True greatness isn’t always visible greatness.

And we are to adopt His attitude. I think about His birth, and I see that I have so far to go. But humility is a journey that I need to take—that we need to take—both individually and collectively. The Bible has much to say about humility. It tells us that it is the humble that God “looks favorably” upon:

Isaiah 66:2 CSB

2b This is the Lord’s declaration. I will look favorably on this kind of person: one who is humble, submissive in spirit, and trembles at my word.

Jesus said that in the Kingdom of God, the first would be last, and the last would be first (Matt 20:16), and that God both leads and teaches the humble in righteousness, according to Psalm 25:

Psalm 25:9 CSB

9 He leads the humble in what is right and teaches them his way.

The Bible also tells us that God “gives grace” to the humble, while resisting the proud:

1 Peter 5:5 CSB

5b All of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.

And it tells us that it is the humble, not the haughty or proud, who will be exalted and will “inherit the earth:”

James 4:10 CSB

10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

Matthew 5:5 CSB

5 Blessed are the humble, for they will inherit the earth.

It’s when we’re walking in humility that we look most like Jesus, because Jesus showed us what humility really looks like. Where does pride have sway in our lives? Where are we desperate for recognition, honor, and glory? Are there places or situations that are “below” our time? Are there people—neighbors, according to Jesus—who aren’t important enough for our notice or assistance? Jesus loved the unlovable, touched the untouchable. Are we willing to do the same? He was born in a place no child should ever have to be born in when He came in that stable, and He lived to do something that a sinless man should never have to do when He died in our place. Can we “adopt His attitude” of humility for each other, and for those for whom Jesus died?

So we first see the King’s humility. To be fair, however, there are things about His birth that seem mundane, but which were the hand of sovereign Providence in action, such as this: The Messiah was promised to be born in Bethlehem, and it was Augustus’s “mundane” proclamation that God used to make it so, at exactly the right time so that Mary would be in Bethlehem when the time came for Jesus to be born. This was predicted in Micah 5:

Micah 5:2 CSB

2 Bethlehem Ephrathah, you are small among the clans of Judah; one will come from you to be ruler over Israel for me. His origin is from antiquity, from ancient times.

And this prophecy brings us to our next point: the King’s identity:

2: The King’s identity (2:8-15)

If Luke stopped writing with verse 7, we would never see the glory that this passage ultimately points to. We’d understand some of what had been predicted about Jesus, because we got to see that in chapter 1. But to this point in our passage (if we have no knowledge of Christmas), we see no glory—only meanness. All of that changes as Luke takes us out into the fields near Bethlehem that night:

Luke 2:8–15 CSB

8 In the same region, shepherds were staying out in the fields and keeping watch at night over their flock. 9 Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Don’t be afraid, for look, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people: 11 Today in the city of David a Savior was born for you, who is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be the sign for you: You will find a baby wrapped tightly in cloth and lying in a manger.” 13 Suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying: 14 Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth to people he favors! 15 When the angels had left them and returned to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go straight to Bethlehem and see what has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.”

In the fields around Bethlehem, the shepherds were doing their jobs. Generally, you were pretty far down the societal ladder if you were a Jewish shepherd in New Testament times. Shepherds were ceremonially unclean basically all the time because of the nature of their occupations, so they couldn’t participate in some of the normal religious and social things in that world. They were considered to be untrustworthy, and so their testimony was invalid in legal matters.

But the angel (probably Gabriel again, though he doesn’t give his name) appears out of the darkness to these men, declaring for the third time so far in this book, “Don’t be afraid!” because he had appeared in order to declare “good news of great joy that will be for all the people.” Even for them, the lowly shepherds. Great joy through good news: Through declaring the gospel. In fact, in the Greek, the word here is evangelizo… the angel literally evangelizes the shepherds. And what is this good news?

It’s that in the city of David, a Savior—the Messiah, the Lord—has been born! And verse 11 lists together, the only time in the New Testament, all three of these titles. Savior—deliverer, redeemer; Messiah (or Christ)—the Anointed One…especially used for kings; and the Lord—the standard translation of the Hebrew Yahweh, the very name of God in Hebrew. The angel identifies Jesus as all of these things, and promises proof in the form of a sign: they will find a swaddled baby in a manger in Bethlehem. He leaves no doubt about who this Child is. The good news is Jesus: Jesus is the Gospel.

He is deliverer and redeemer, because we have given ourselves to sin, and we need rescue. We need to be redeemed, set free from the death that we deserve because of our rebellion. He is the sovereign, the anointed King, with the authority to reign, and the wisdom to rule. A King that we can surrender our lives to and follow. And He is the Lord. He is the Maker of everything, the One True God come in the flesh so that we could relate to Him as He relates to us. Believe the Gospel: That Jesus lived perfectly and died on the cross so that we could be rescued from our sins if we trust in His sacrifice, and saved for all eternity if we surrender to Him in faith. This is where we find true and lasting joy—in being right with our Lord, at peace with Him, looking forward to a blessed eternal life because of what He has done!

Then a multitude of the heavenly host join the angel, praising God and saying:

Luke 2:14 CSB

14 Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth to people he favors!

The angels declare what God already has: glory, and He offers to us peace with Him through Christ—those are the “people He favors,” because it is through Jesus’s sacrifice that that peace with God is available.

And this declaration of joy and peace—the arrival and identity of the Messiah— was made first to a bunch of lowly shepherds taking care of their sheep. And as we have already seen, Jesus identifies with the lowly, which He also said in Matthew 11:

Matthew 11:29 CSB

29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

As I was reading in my quiet time this week, I came to Jeremiah 31 and Psalm 23 on Thursday. And this grabbed my attention. Side note: There is something about having a consistent time reading the Bible every day that helps us make connections in our heads and hearts. This was one of those times.

What got my attention was that while Jesus does identify with the lowly, He also specifically identifies with shepherds. Jesus would later call Himself a shepherd in John 10:11, saying that He will lay down His life for His sheep. God identifies Himself as a shepherd in Jeremiah 31:10, and David calls God his shepherd in Psalm 23:1. David, a type of Messiah, was a shepherd before ascending to the throne, and then was anointed as “shepherd” of the people of Israel in 2 Samuel 5:2. Ezekiel prophesied that the Messiah would be a shepherd in Ezekiel 37:24.

I wonder if the shepherds got to hear the good news first, because they would understand what good news it was? The men who spent their lives caring for sheep now would have a shepherd of their own, as the Scriptures had declared. And their response was that they said, “Let’s go straight to Bethlehem and see!” They wanted to see the reality, which is our last point this morning.

3: The King’s reality (2:16-20)

The shepherds weren’t skeptics (again, unlike Zechariah was way back at the beginning of chapter 1). They didn’t even question the angelic message. Look at how they responded:

Luke 2:16–20 CSB

16 They hurried off and found both Mary and Joseph, and the baby who was lying in the manger. 17 After seeing them, they reported the message they were told about this child, 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19 But Mary was treasuring up all these things in her heart and meditating on them. 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had seen and heard, which were just as they had been told.

When it says that they “hurried off,” it doesn’t necessarily mean that they ran or even walked quickly. It means that they went as soon as they decided to go, which was soon after the angels left them. And they found exactly what they had been promised they would find: Mary and Joseph, there with baby Jesus swaddled up and lying in manger. Everything the angel had said was reality. It was completely true, confirmed by the fact that the sign had come to pass. They laid eyes on Him themselves, and then reported all they had been told about Him.

We could interpret verses 17 and 18 to mean that they first told Mary and Joseph (and others in the house where Jesus was born) about what the angels had said, and I think that this is a good way of seeing it, given verse 19 about Mary’s pondering. However, it could also be more than that. It could be that after they saw Jesus, they went about telling everybody else in Bethlehem about Him. Regardless, one thing is certain: the shepherds heard the good news, they believed the good news, and then they told the good news!

And the Gospel is real. Jesus was really born of a virgin in Bethlehem. He really did live a perfectly sinless life. He really did perform miracles and die on a Roman cross to pay the penalty for our sins. He really did rise again, and ascend to the right hand of the Father in heaven, where He really is interceding on our behalf, and He really is going to turn and take those who belong to Him to Himself! The Gospel is reality.

If you’re a believer, you have a good news message to share. You don’t have to be a pastor to share the hope of the Gospel—the first humans to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ were shepherds—one of the lowest stations in their society. We can all share the truth of what we have experienced in Christ. Just tell people what you know about Jesus—tell them the good news! God will handle the application. Consider what John said at the opening of his first epistle:

1 John 1:1–3 CSB

1 What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have observed and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—2 that life was revealed, and we have seen it and we testify and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us—3 what we have seen and heard we also declare to you, so that you may also have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

These shepherds heard and came and saw and left, and as they returned to their flocks, they did so thrilled about what they had just experienced. Believing the Gospel brought them joy. Sharing the Gospel was the overflow of that joy.

Mary, though, was a little more reflective (not that she wasn’t joyful). I don’t really blame her, as this was a lot to take in for a girl probably 15, maybe 16. She gave some thought and meditation to all of this. Even through the angel had told her what was going to happen, and had given her some good indications about who her Son would be, that didn’t mean that she understood it all. And that was okay. She just sat back and watched. This one verse is great proof that Luke interviewed for a lot of his Gospel. He had information that no one else has. And we will see that more from Mary as we continue through chapter 2 next week.

Closing

It was the birthday of the King. The Lord of the whole earth had been born in truly humble means, into human life to an ordinary couple in an ordinary town, visited by ordinary people, but announced by the angels of heaven. The people asked of John the Baptist, “What then will this child become?” when his birth was accompanied by the miraculous. What this tiny King would become had already been declared—He is the Savior, the Messiah, the Lord. Because He has come, every day is Christmas. Every day is a day to celebrate with joy.

And if you have never believed the Gospel, never trusted in Jesus as Savior and Lord, there is no better moment than now to surrender.

Baptism

Church membership

Prayer

Giving

PRAYER

Closing Remarks

Bible reading (Jer 36, Ps 26)

Pastor’s Study tonight

Wet Cement this Wednesday

Dominic Montano to share about Groundwire.net.

Instructions for guests

Benediction

Birthday of a King (Hymn #191)

In the little village of Bethlehem, there lay a Child one day.

And the sky was bright with a holy light o’er the place where Jesus lay.

Alleluia! Oh, how the angels sang; Alleluia! How it rang!

And the sky was bright with a holy light, ‘twas the birthday of a King.

‘Twas a humble birthplace, but oh, how much God gave to us that day;

From the manger bed what a path has led, what a perfect, holy day;

Alleluia! Oh, how the angels sang; Alleluia! How it rang!

And the sky was bright with a holy light, ‘twas the birthday of a King.

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