Faith Has Come

Sovereign Politics

Good evening, welcome to LifeSpring Community Church. We are very happy to have you worship with us tonight. My name is Steve Cascio, and I’m part of the pastoral team here at LifeSpring. I’ll be beginning our Christmas Eve message, and you’ll also be hearing From Jon Weyerhaeuser and Scoty Pasupuleti during the message.

Would you bow in prayer with me? Heavenly Father, on this Christmas Eve, we come before you in awe of the miracle of your Son Jesus. We are delighted to be included in your redemptive story in this world! We seek your merciful forgiveness for all the times we lose sight of the wonder of Christmas and the coming of Jesus into this world. We pray that in the power of the Holy Spirit, we may draw near to you tonight and marvel at the miracle of the birth of Christ. Again we thank and praise you for your redemptive plan that we benefit from. To you, God, be the glory forever, and it is in Jesus Christ’s holy name that we pray. Amen!

Over two-thousand years ago, God sovereignly entered the world to take on human flesh. But this didn’t happen out of nowhere. 

God had been prepping and preparing the world to meet the savior face to face since the beginning of time. 

We see in Luke 2 1 and 2 that one of God’s instruments to bring about His sovereign decree was. Politics.

Allow me to read these verses again for us:

And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2 This census first took place while Quirinius was governing Syria. 3 So all went to be registered, everyone to his own city.

Here we are introduced to Caesar Augustus. Caesar Augustus was also known as Octavius. And he was the founder of the Roman Empire. He was in the middle of a 40 year reign at the time of the birth of Jesus. He is known for ushering in the Pax Romana, meaning Roman Peace, which began a 250 year span free of war. Augustus had issued his own decree that a census was to be taken for the Roman world.

This census, was a detail which lined up the birth of Jesus Christ with prophecies about the details of the coming of the messiah, the coming of a savior king.

The Census was a first of its kind for the people of that time and area. The purpose of the census was about consolidating power and establishing who could be taxed. Those administering the census, were not concerned about people. This is evident when you observe the circumstances with which Joseph and Mary had to travel. We know Mary was pregnant and that they didn’t have much. So for them to make this trip to register for a census, was at best inconvenient, and at worst it was expensive and potentially dangerous.

Is your life being directed by an unexpected mandate?

Have you ever had circumstances dictate your life that made you feel uncomfortable or out of control?

Perhaps your mind traces back to the covid lockdowns and mandates of 5-6 years ago?

God uses events like that or the census to accomplish his sovereign purposes.

The decree of Augustus was an example of local politics. But the important thing is not that it was politics which God used in this circumstance. It was that God used an earthly… ordinary… real life… detail to help unfold a portion of His redemptive history in this world

Politics may seem random, but God had foreordained them and all of their details ensuring that His sovereign plan comes together when and how He intends it to.

In Micah 5:2 it says this:

But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days

So we see it had been prophesied that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, but Mary and Joseph were in Nazareth. The census required every person to register in their ancestral town. Because Joseph’s ancestral town was Bethlehem, this decree required the family to return to Bethlehem precisely when Mary was to give birth.

Why was this important?

Fulfilled prophecy, particularly fulfilled messianic prophecy, validates the message that Jesus delivered in His life and ministry. Specific details such as this all came together to make it undeniable Jesus was who He said He was. 

Be mindful that because of this decree to register for the census, a town like Bethlehem had a temporary population boom. This caused Joseph, Mary, and unborn Jesus to be crowded out of all the would-be suitable establishments. Jesus’ family was crowded out.

What we see here is that an earthly political decree is instrumental in bringing about the divine decree.

Additionally, what we see. Is that God is in full control of everything that occurs all the time and everywhere.