Untitled Sermon (2)

Vss. 1-7-okay so what is this business here about Caesar Augustus and a census? Well first of all Luke is a historian. According to Luke, he is giving us a historical and eyewitness account of everything that happened from the birth of Christ to his resurrection and ascension. So, Luke is careful to record this specific detail. These minute details from history point us to the fact that this is an actual historical account, it is not some myth or fairytale. But I think more importantly, Luke is pointing out the fact that it is the decree of this pagan king that sends Jesus’s parents into the region of Judea, specifically the town of Bethlehem, where Jesus Christ is born. Why is this significant? Well according to the Old Testament, the Messiah was to be born where? In the town of Bethlehem ().

Now this is not the thing motivating Caesar to create a census and force people to go back to their home towns and register. Caesar Augustus was a pagan Roman, he did not believe in the God of the Old Testament, as a matter fact he thought that he was God. It was during the time of Caesar Augustus that religious worship of the Emperor began to take place. In point of fact, Caesar took the title Dominus et Deus for himself, which means Lord and God. Augustus became one of the most powerful and influential leaders ever in the Roman Empire. He was the first man to be declared Emperor of the entire Roman empire, and under his leadership Rome experience what is known as the Pax Romana, which was a great time of relative peace throughout the Roman Empire. As a matter fact this golden era for the Romans lasted some 200 years, and it all began with C. A. The population grew to around 70,000,000 during this time, which was then a third of the world’s population. So here you have this ruler who is the most powerful man in the world at that time, and yet he is giving a decree that fulfills the sovereign will of God which was decreed almost 800 years prior, by Yahweh.

Caesar does not give this decree with the intention of fulfilling the will of God, he gives this decree in order to fulfill himself, but nevertheless, God is working out his sovereign decree in the midst of Caesar’s selfishness. The text says – And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. What is the time or day here in this verse in reference to? well the birth of Christ. You see the very time and day of Christ’s birth was planned from before the foundation of the world. Joseph did not want to bring his wife to Judea, she was pregnant. But he made this arduous journey in obedience to the decree of Caesar, which resulted in the birth of Christ in the very place that God determined he would be born.

App: And believe it or not friends, God is just as sovereign today over the decisions and the decrees of men as he was then. Have you ever experienced the thing that we see here today happening in our text? Sometimes people have no intention whatsoever of doing the will of God, but nevertheless, God is at work through their decisions to accomplish his will. And friends we ought to be encouraged by this truth. Sometimes people make shipwreck of their lives, sometimes they destroy everything in their way, and it looks bad it looks really bad. But nevertheless, it is in those very things that God is at work to accomplish his will.

Sometimes people are really selfish, sometimes people are really mean and nasty. You never know God may take those very things and use them later on to convict them of their sins so that they will turn to him and repent. Some of you look at your life in the past and wonder why you spent twenty or thirty years doing this or that, or you look at where you’re at in your life now and say how did I get here, or where my going, does any of this stuff that I’m doing have any meaning does it make any sense, why do I carry around all of this baggage, why does it seem like I am not making any progress? Friends it is in those very things that God is at work to accomplish his will in our lives and in the lives of other people around us. And it may not seem like it at the moment, but just give it some time and continue to pursue the will of the Lord and in hindsight many times you will be able to see how his hand was at work in these very things to accomplish his will in the world.

Also, we can be encouraged by the fact that God appoints rulers into office and that he sovereignly rules over the decisions that they make. We may look out into the world today and see our leaders doing some things that are really bad or we may see them doing some things that are very good. But regardless of whether things seem good or bad we can rejoice and know that God is sovereign over the decrees of men and he is going to use them to accomplish his purpose. Just like today in our story, we see that Caesar is calling people to go back to their hometown so he can tax them for his own selfish interests, but as part of that decree Joseph and Mary are forced to go to Bethlehem, and Christ is born. Sometimes God uses the decrees of tyrants to further the kingdom of Christ in the world. It may seem unrighteous and it may seem unjust at the time but it is through those very things that God stirs his people up to bring about change in the world.

Vss. 8 – 14 – you will notice that when God decided to reveal the message of the coming Savior to men by way of Angels, he does not send them to Augustus Caesar, he sends them to these lowly shepherds in the fields of Bethlehem. Shepherds were on the bottom of the totem pole in their society. Because they were always working with these filthy animals, they were many times excluded from religious rituals. Moreover, they were considered to be untrustworthy and therefore they were not allowed to testify in court. So why does God send the Angel to them? Well it has always been this way throughout salvation history. God chooses the things that are considered to be foolish in the eyes of the world to shame the wise, he takes the things that are rejected and of no importance to the world and he uses them to accomplish his will. In the eyes of God these men are highly esteemed. You will remember that God himself is the shepherd of his people throughout the Bible, and moreover he continually appoints shepherds to watch over and lead his people throughout salvation history. In the priestly stage of history have men like Moses and Joshua in the kingly, David who himself was a shepherd, and even in the prophetic stage of history you have the prophet Amos, who is said to have been a shepherd.

God had appointed shepherds to watch over his people but the wicked unbelieving world despised them and rejected them and the corrupt religious leaders of the day became worthless shepherds who exploited and took advantage of God’s people. But these shepherds are different. These are men who looked for the Messiah, they waited for the Savior, they were faithful shepherds in the house of God, and therefore they are esteemed highly in the eyes of God.

But God descends even further in our text, in the birth of the one who is called Christ the Savior. The King, the Savior of the world, the one who would bring eternal peace and happiness to God’s people is not a great strong and mighty man sitting on some high place in Jerusalem, no he is a lowly Savior, a tiny little baby, lying in a manger. Now you have to get the irony in this story. There you have Augustus Caesar, the most powerful man in the world, he sovereignly makes decrees and does what he wants, he has the entire Roman army at his disposal, he is the man who is said to have ushered peace into the world. And yet God says I will give you a sign so that you can identify the Savior of the world, (exp) the true Prince of peace – is a baby wrapped in a blanket and lying in a manger.

Now to understand how foolish and upside down this would seem to these people; you first have to understand something about the way children were viewed in their society. Young people were considered to be insignificant, because they could not yet contribute to society in any meaningful way. And therefore, a baby that depended solely on its mother and father for provision, protection, and care would be even less significant. But here you have him, the Savior of the world wrapped up in this tiny little infant. Moreover, he was lying in a manger, that is, a feeding trough. This would be considered one of the filthiest uninviting places in all of Israel, but yet here he is, the Savior of the world, lying in the midst of it. And God is saying come and see

App: friends why does God come to earth this way, why does he come through the most unlikely means, why does he come in seeming weakness and powerlessness, why does he come to us in this most humiliating way? It is because God likes take the things that seem foolish and weak to the world, and use them to save the world. Why? So that the world knows he was the one who did the saving. He says I’m going to use the very things that you think are weak and of no value to save you. He uses the things in the world thinks are foolish to put to shame those that think they are wise, he uses the things in the world that are weak, to put to shame those who think they are strong.

And friends because of this we can be encouraged. We do not need to be highly esteemed in the eyes of the world in order to be highly esteemed in the eyes of God. Think about those shepherds, they were at the bottom of the barrel as far as the world was concerned, but in the eyes of God they were highly favored, and he chose to reveal the Savior to them. Not the king, not the upper echelon of society; it is common ordinary people like you and me, people that nobody pay attention to, that God chooses to save. And let me tell you, if he does save somebody that the world highly esteems, it won’t be long before the world no longer highly esteems them. Again, God has chosen the things that are despised and rejected by the world, to put the world to shame. And in so doing he humiliates our idols of power and prestige that give us a false sense of security, idols that can never save us.

Finally, this doctrine teaches us that God uses the things that the world looks down upon to drive us to him. For instance, the world looks down on brokenness and poverty and pain and loss, but friends many times it is these very things that God uses to bring people to himself. So, we can be encouraged by the fact that God can take the tragedy in a family and use it to point everybody involved to him. God can use our bad health to point us to him, he can use our incarceration, our overdose, our depression, our loneliness (you name it, anything that the world deems worthless) to do things that have eternal and everlasting significance.

Vss. 15 – 21 – so what is the response of the shepherds after they receive this great revelation from God? As soon as the Angels went away, they said let us go. And in the Greek, it is something more like quickly let us be going; there is a sense of urgency. They have received direction from God and there is no time to hesitate. It says in haste they make their way to Bethlehem. So, the shepherds are probably out in the fields, in the region of Bethlehem, and they go into Bethlehem where there is a stable with a manger. Some of the early traditions say that this manger was located in a cave. Whether it was a cave or a stable we cannot know for certain. Rerguardless, they go to this quiet, unexpected place and find the Savior lying there.

Now in this section we see that there are 3 different types of responses to this message from heaven given by Angels about Christ: wonder, meditation, and praise. First, wonder. The shepherds become the first gospel preachers, as it were, when they find Jesus just as it was said they would. They believe the word of God given from heaven by Angels and they preach it. And as a result, the text says all who heard it wondered. That is, they marveled, they were amazed at what they heard. Angels from heaven showed up and praised God for this child who was born in a manger. They were, astonished.

Second, meditation. Mary treasured of these things in her heart. Mary and Joseph had already been given prior revelation about this child. So, Mary is much more reflective about the things that she hears. With everything she already knows, on top of what she has just been told, she’s got some things to think about. What could all of this mean? Mary is quiet and contemplative she’s really thinking through the implications of everything that has happened and everything that has been said. Finally, praise. It says then the shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them. Not only do the shepherds preach about what they have seen and heard, they praise God for it. The response of the shepherds here is worship. Now when it says they returned, I take it to mean that they were glorifying and praising God when they returned back to the place they had come from. So, in whatever particular place they stay in that region of Bethlehem, they go and praise God and glorify him there. And I’m sure that this did not go unnoticed. So, we have the three responses: wonder, meditation, and praise.

App: couple takeaways from this for us. First, the shepherds do not take this awesome revelation and keep it to themselves, they go and share it with other people, and so should we. Friends, we must realize that God has given us the greatest gift that the world can ever receive in the message of the gospel. We have the thing that the whole world has been waiting for, the thing that the whole world is looking for, even if they do not know it yet, and it’s bound up in this message, therefore we must not keep it to ourselves. There is a reason that this message is referred to as good news, it is the best news that anybody will ever receive. A savior has been born, and the only way people will know about it, is if we tell them about it.

Next, we have the three responses (wonder, meditation and praise), this was the response of those who first heard the message, it inspired them to do these three things, and indeed these are three ways in which we still respond to the message today, and when we do it affects those around us. First wonder, there is a sense in which we should be continually amazed by the gospel message. When we learned that God has gone to such great lengths to save us, as we did in our passage today, we should be blown away. This is an amazing thing, the God of glory took on flesh and was born as a baby in a manger, and he was born to die so that in his living and in his dying we might live and die no more. And when this message gets hold of you, it inspires wonder and amazement. And wonder and amazement is contagious. This is to say it rubs off on other people, other people take notice of it. So, ask yourself does the gospel amaze you, have other people noticed how amazed you are by the gospel, and if not, why not.

Second, it inspires meditation. Now granted, some people are much more contemplative than others. But I think that this is a practice that we all need to learn how to do better. We need to think deeply on the implications of the gospel for our lives and for others around us. Have you ever found yourself pondering the truth of the gospel, something that you learned here on Sunday morning or in your reading, or while listening to a message? When you take that truth and ponder it, think deeply about it, it is going to have an effect on you and the way that you look at the world. And then later you can take these things that you’ve learned and apply them to your life and your ministry. It is very possible that the reason we have this information in such intimate detail is because Mary took these things and treasured them up in her heart and then later on when Luke was writing his gospel, she told him about it. And guess what, the things we read here in Luke’s Gospel, treasured up by Mary, still affect us today.

Finally, it inspires praise. The proper response to the gospel is praise. Do you worship Christ, do you go around bringing glory to God in word and deed because of the things that you have saw and heard? Well you should. The gospel necessarily inspires praise in those who receive it, and if it does not, there is a question about whether you have actually received it. Have you ever met a man who is fallen in love with a woman, that does not tell you about her when he sees you? Is her name not on his lips, can you not tell that he is in love by the way that he acts, by the things he says and does? You’ll find that a man who has finally fallen in love with a woman has an entirely different demeanor about him, he has a different disposition, you may find him singing or whistling or doing other strange things that he never does. And it is the same when a man or a woman receives Christ. His name is on your lips, you cannot help but give him praise. So, ask yourself, do you praise Christ, do you go about praising God and glorifying him for the things that you have saw and heard.