Avent 4 - Luc 2

PART 1

Morning everyone. We’re happy to have the kids with us today, but I understand that sitting around and listening to me talk for 45 minutes may be a bit of a challenge for them. So we’re going to do things a little differently today.

We’re going to take periodic breaks during this message, to give everyone a chance to stand up and breathe, and to help us focus a little better.

The question is, why are the kids with us today? They’re with us because this is our Christmas service, and Christmas is by definition a family holiday. At the first Christmas, we see, essentially, the birth of a new family—a mom, a dad, and a baby—and with them, millions upon millions of brothers and sisters.

I’ll invite you to turn with me to Luke chapter 2. In we see the story of the birth of Christ. But every time my dad would read us this story when I was a child, I always thought the beginning of this story was kind of boring.

I wanted to get to the good part, to the part where baby Jesus came—I wanted to skip to verse 6. In fact, let’s do that: everyone start reading with me at , verse 6. Joseph and Mary travel to Bethlehem...

6 And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. 7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

That always stood out to me as a child, because I felt sad for that baby. When Zadie was born a few months ago, we were in a comfortable hospital—the room was warm, her bed was soft. We had soft pajamas for her, the room was quiet—everything about it was comfortable.

That was definitely not the case for Jesus. As a child I felt bad for him because I knew a manger couldn’t have been a very comfortable bed. It would have been, basically, a wooden box, probably filled with hay. I spent a lot of my childhood around horses, and I’d sat on many bails of hay. Hay is very uncomfortable (more comfortable than just the wooden box, but still). Hay is itchy, and it scratches your skin, and it’s never even—there are always some spots that are harder than others.

And I knew the smell that must have been around there—animals stink. I remember feeling bad for that baby, that the first things he smelt and felt were hay poking him in the back and in the head, and the smell of animals all around.

And that’s the first thing we need to remember. Jesus’s birth did not take place in comfortable conditions—he was born into a relatively poor family (his dad was a carpenter, so he wouldn’t have been rich), in very poor conditions.

Why would God have wanted his Son to be born like that? Because that’s the way he would live his whole life.

Jesus’s entire life was humble. He did not think about himself, he thought about others. He served other people—healing them, teaching them, showing them what it looks like to serve. And he served his people until the end, when he reached this terrible death on the cross. Jesus was God, but he never tried to get for himself what he deserved.

That’s the first reason we celebrate his birth—because even at the beginning, his birth showed us what his life would be like.

PART 2

I said before that we celebrate Jesus’s birth because it was a humble birth, like his life would be a humble life.

But the story of Jesus’s birth is way more incredible than that. And in fact, the first part of the story—what I always thought was the “boring” part—show us why his birth was so incredible.

Let’s read starting at verse 1, and you’ll see what I mean.

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2 This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3 And all went to be registered, each to his own town. 4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, 5 to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2 This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3 And all went to be registered, each to his own town. 4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, 5 to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. 6 And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. 7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

That doesn’t sound like a very interesting beginning, but it’s actually incredible.

Anon, 2016. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

It’s going to be hard for me to make this very clear, especially for you kids, so to illustrate this we’re going to play a little game.

6 And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. 7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

In the back of the room, we’ll have two teams—one kid and one adult. We’re going to blindfold the adults, and we’re going to have the kids try to guide them through an obstacle course, just by speaking.

GAME

It’s not easy, is it? It’s not easy to guide someone where you need them to go, when they don’t know exactly where they need to go.

Here’s why we played that game. In the first verses of this chapter, what we actually see is God, guiding not just people, but events, exactly where he wanted them to be, to get everyone in exactly the right place for Jesus’s birth.

All the way back in , in the Old Testament, hundreds of years before, God had said through the prophet Micah that the Messiah, his Savior, would be born in Bethlehem. So far so good.

But God made it so that when it came time for Jesus to be born, he would be born into a family of people who were totally insignificant—a teenage girl and a carpenter. They weren’t important people, they weren’t royalty. They were ordinary folks.

On top of that, Mary and Joseph weren’t living in Bethlehem; they were living in a town called Nazareth. So when it came time for Jesus to be born, God had to do something to get them to go from Nazareth to Bethlehem—which would have been really hard at the time, because there were no cars or buses or trains, and because Mary was very pregnant.

So how did God get them there? He put it in the heart of the ruler of the land, Caesar Augustus, to take a census of the people. A census is when you go throughout the whole land, and you keep record of everyone who lives there. And for this census, everyone had to go back to the town where their ancestors were born. So God worked it out so that millions of people were mobilized, millions of people had to travel to go back to their hometowns…just to get this man Joseph, and this young girl Mary, to Bethlehem at the right time.

But it’s even bigger than that. The reason Joseph had to go back to Bethlehem was because his ancestor David lived in Bethlehem centuries before. So God didn’t just guide Augustus and Mary and Joseph and all these other people; he guided David’s family, hundreds of years earlier, to get them to settle in Bethlehem so that David would be born there, so that Joseph would have to go back there all those years later.

You see, God didn’t just guide these two people to the right place at the right time; he guided history itself, for centuries, so that at just the right time, Jesus would be born in Bethlehem, this tiny town in the middle of nowhere.

The beginning of this story, which I always found so boring, shows us that our God is infinitely powerful, and totally sovereign over human history. Jesus’s birth wasn’t an accident; Mary and Joseph didn’t get there late. God worked it out perfectly so that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem, in this humble stable, which was the beginning of his humble life.

PART 3

Which brings us to my favorite part of the story. Verse 8:

8 And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. 10 And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 12 And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,

14  “Glory to God in the highest,

and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

15 When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” 16 And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. 17 And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. 18 And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. 19 But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. 20 And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

21 And at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.

Anon, 2016. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

This was always my favorite part of the story, because as a child, I immediately saw myself as one of the shepherds. I was a shy kid who didn’t think too highly of myself, and I loved the idea that when it came time to annouce the birth of his Son, of this great King of all creation, God would make the announcement to a group of insignificant laborers whom most people wouldn’t have wanted to be around.

Shepherds spent their time outside; they smelled bad, because they were around animals all day long; they were uneducated. No one esteemed a shepherd in that time and place.

And yet it was to shepherds that God sent this most magnificent birth announcement in history, through a multitude of angels singing praises to God in the heavens. No human eye has ever witnessed the spectacle that the shepherds witnessed that night.

And the most magnificent thing of all is that these shepherds made their way to Bethlehem, and got to be the first people in history to see Jesus besides his parents.

So think about this for a moment. Think about what we saw before, and what followed.

God moved history to bring it to this exact place and time. He moved the will of rulers and kings to have Jesus born in Bethlehem, in these poor conditions. The very mechanism of the world was put into motion to get us here, to the birth of this child.

And after all this moving of history, when it finally came time for what it was all moving toward, the birth of Jesus happened in secret, known only to a group of poor shepherds and a few animals.

Now, this story has become so familiar to us that we may miss the forest for the trees. It can be hard for us to really see why this story has become so familiar, why we’re still telling it after two thousand years.

Part of it is because it’s the beginning of the story of Christ, who became a central reference point in human history. A much bigger part of it has to do with the nature of the Incarnation—with the fact that this is the moment when God-become-man finally makes his appearance on the earth.

But I think the biggest reason why this story—not just Jesus Christ and who he is, but how he came to earth—still draws us so strongly is because it tells us who we really are. No matter who we are.

Most of us tend to one of two extremes: self-glorification or self-deprication. Self-glorifying people think they’re more awesome than everyone else; self-depricating people think everyone else is more awesome than they are. Most people aren’t totally one or the other, but most everyone falls between one of these two extremes.

And the story of Jesus’s birth speaks to both of them.

If you tend toward self-glorification—if you tend to feel great about yourself—this story should humble you. I’m sure there are things you do pretty well. You may be supremely confident and competent in your field. But compared to God, even the greatest thing you’ve ever done is very small indeed. As Solomon said in ,

“The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.”

God moves history. He bends the heart of world leaders in his hands and puts them exacty where he wants them.

And this baby in the manger is, though he seems small and harmless, is the great King of the universe. Christ is sovereign over every molecule in the universe, and sustains them all by the word of his power ().

This story puts us in our place. God is meant to be our standard of greatness, not us. The magnitude of his control over this world, to bring Christ to this place and this time, should humble us in the extreme.

And on the flip-side: if you tend toward self-deprication—if you tend to feel small rather than great—this story should lift you up. To whom did God announce the birth of his Son, this monumental event toward which he had been directing human history? To a group of insignificant shepherds. Whom did he choose to raise the Messiah? A humble carpenter and a teenage girl.

God did not use the great ones here; he used the little people, the weak ones, the ones whom no one would esteem highly.

In the same way, no matter how small you feel, God moved all of human history to give you a Savior. He used all of the power at his disposal to give you Jesus, who lived your life and died your death, in order to reconcile you to God, to forgive you of your sins, so that God might adopt you as his son or daughter.

He set in motion the might of his glory to save you, so that you might glorify him all over again.

Brothers and sisters, little brothers and little sisters, when you think of the story of Jesus’s birth, remember this.

If you feel big, remember that God is so much bigger.

And if you feel small, remember that this mighty and glorious Creator of the universe became small like you, in order to share his glory with you.

This story is so much bigger than a cute snapshot of a newborn baby. This story is indeed what the angel said:

For those who feel great: this story should humble you, because the glory of Christ infinitely eclipses even your greatest talents or accomplishments.

Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.

For those who feel small: this story should lift you up, because God moved history to give you a Savior.