Luke 2:1-20 God's Ways

Luke chapter 2.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

We're going to read from verse 1 through verse 20.

Remember, church, this is God's holy, inspired, and sacred word.

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.

This was the first registration when Coranius was governor of Syria, and all went out to be registered, each to his own town.

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, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child, and while they were there the time came for her to give birth.

And she gave birth to her first her firstborn son, and wrapped him in a swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there's no place for them in the inn.

And in the same region there was there were there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

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.

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

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ Jesus, who is Christ the Lord, and this will be a sign for you.

You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly hosts praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased.

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 is that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.

And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the baby laying in the manger.

And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told to them concerning this child, and all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them.

But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart.

And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, and as it had been told to them.

The narrative of Luke 2 is one of the most familiar passages in the Bible.

Every year are you gonna light these?

Alright.

We will proceed with lit candles this morning.

Dave, do you know which order you need to light them in?

No.

Just light them.

I don't know either.

But every year someone tells me, it's usually Sarah.

She's like, you need to light in this order.

Dave grew up Catholic.

Dave, were you an altar boy?

No.

Okay.

I thought this would go much quicker.

That's alright.

You know, this is thematic because they also thought the Messiah would come much quicker.

And they thought he would come back much quicker as well.

But here we still we still wait.

Okay, that one is the line.

That's alright.

If you get the white one, though, that's the main one.

It is supposed to be on Christmas, but we're not doing Christmas service.

Oh, that's good.

Okay, cool.

This is a good time for a church survey.

How many of you guys would come to church on Christmas Day, regardless of the day?

Wednesday, Tuesday, um, any day of the week.

Christmas is happening.

We're gathering with the church.

All right, next year, Lord willing.

If the Lord has not returned, and I'm still here next year, we'll have a I plan on being here, by the way.

Just to be clear.

Thank you, Dave.

It's memorable.

We make memories this way.

Luke 2 has never been interrupted like that before.

No.

Luke is the most one of the most popular, well-known, familiar passages in the Bible.

Every year, at least once, hopefully more, uh, at least once, though you read it or you hear it read, you're familiar with the story.

It's so familiar, and yet it is so marvelous.

Now, people respond to the Christmas story differently, but in a similar kind of way, almost.

And here's what I mean by that.

For some people, Luke's account, although nice tradition, a nice thought, it is not true.

It's a sweet uh symbolism, there's some sweet uh metaphorical language and ideas and all these things, but it's not an actual event.

Like Luke 2 didn't actually happen.

For many, they hear the narrative and they think, yeah, that's good.

That's a nice story.

That's a it's it's good to hear that every year.

It's a nice tradition, but it's not real.

For others, they take Luke's words as gospel, but they've just heard it so many times.

So many times, that doesn't change their life.

There's no real meaning anymore.

You believe it, or you you you you profess to believe it, some do, but it doesn't really change anything for you.

You know, when Luke opened in chapter two and he said, you know, remember, do you remember when Caesar Augustus did the first census when Corinius was ruling over Syria?

Yeah, that's when this took place.

So from the onset, Luke's not sharing symbolism.

He's not sharing a tradition, he's sharing historical facts.

And we can respond with disbelief, or we can respond with apathy, or we can respond with awe and worship God more fully.

Caesar Augustus, also known as Octavius or Octavian, was ruling the Roman Empire.

It was Caesar Augustus, this Caesar, who started the deification of the Roman Caesars, that they were kind of to be treated and thought of as gods.

His rule transformed the Roman Empire and made it a superpower for centuries to come.

He is accredited with bringing in, ushering in this time was 200 years of peace in the Roman Empire.

It was more like 200 years of staunch control.

It was not a joyful peace, it was a dark time.

And before Caesar, 950 years before him, was King David.

And King David, like Caesar, ruled his nation, brought about a season of prosperity and peace.

David was from the town of Bethlehem, born in obscurity as well.

At a young age, David was anointed king of Israel.

From him would come the Messiah.

This is in 2 Samuel chapter 2, Nathan telling David, When your days are filled, you will lie down with your fathers, and I'll raise up your offsprings after you, who shall come after you from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.

2 Samuel 2 · chapter mention

It goes on in verse 15, but my steadfast love will not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away before from before you, and your house and your kingdom shall be made sure before me.

Your throne shall be established forever.

A covenant was made with David to be king, to rule Israel, to establish a kingdom that would not end.

This is speaking about Jesus, but also all the kings after David.

The Lord would provide for them.

But here they are.

Here's Joseph of the line of David.

He's not treated as royalty.

He comes to Bethlehem to be counted because a foreign king, a foreign dictator has decreed what was going to happen.

Then this foreign dictator had so much control and ruled over so much of the world that Luke says that he had the power to pretty much count the whole world, that the whole world would be counted.

That was the extent of Caesar's rule and reign.

So where was this throne?

Where was this nation, this king, this promise made to David?

We pick it up again here in Bethlehem, again.

Not under the rule of David or a descendant of David, but rather a foreign ruler who thinks he is God.

It's here that the king of the nations would come, that the promise made would be kept, that the prophecies given would be fulfilled.

And this morning, I want to take notice of two things as we work through this passage.

One is that God uses ordinary people, that God uses ordinary people, and two, that God uses the foolish things of the world.

He uses what seem like foolish things to the world.

Again, looking at those first seven verses.

Joseph recently married to his wife Mary, who's pregnant, not his child, has to then travel what seems to be a multiple days' journey from Galilee back to Bethlehem.

His wife was obviously very pregnant, but he was not going to leave her there.

He could have, but nothing that they know of required him to take his family with him.

But he took them to not leave them there.

So poor or unconnected is Joseph that this town where his people are from, he can't even find a room.

You know, sometimes in the Christmas stories and kids' stories, it's like, you know, there's just no room anywhere.

Everything's booked up.

But surely there would have been someone who could have like given away their room for a woman who's having a baby or any of these things.

But Joseph had neither the clout that would appear, nor the money, nor the resources to secure anything for his pregnant wife, but a room or a space and a barn.

That's all he could do.

She gave birth in verse 7 to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no place for them in the inn.

There was no room for them.

Millions of people were moving around about being counted.

Millions of people traveling to their home places to be counted.

And these two people, just two people out of millions of people.

And this is where the story begins.

Mary was ordinary, nothing special.

Same with Joseph.

Yes, their lineage, both their lineages are connected to David, but there wasn't a king, there wasn't a throne, there wasn't a monarchy.

So it was not important.

Here even Joseph again could not provide much for his family.

So it's amazing that even in the birth story, the beginning of the greatest story ever told, it is this theme, we see it again and again, and throughout the life of Jesus.

And truly, hopefully, we see it in our own lives.

It is this upside-downness of the way of Jesus.

That the way of Jesus, the way of the kingdom, seems like foolishness to the world.

That the way to life is through death, that the way to peace is through selflessness.

This pattern begins here with a man taking his young wife who's pregnant, so pregnant, with a child that's not his, to his hometown to be counted, because some pagan, far-off ruler commanded them to do so.

The Lord begins to use ordinary people.

And so often in our life, we can just, we can think, if I could just know someone like this, if I could just be around a person like this, if I could just be discipled by someone like this.

Think about all these famous saints like this.

Their faith was amazing.

If I could just been there, if I could just serve in their church or be under them or be discipled by them, we begin to idolize these kinds of people.

The Lord uses ordinary people.

The church has been sustained for 2,000 years under tremendous persecution.

It's gone all over the globe.

Just through ordinary people being faithful to God.

Joseph wasn't looking to be kind of a celebrity.

He wasn't looking to have his name kind of written down in the chronicles of history, and neither was Mary.

They were just being faithful.

They were ordinary people.

And so often in our lives we're discontent with our ordinariness.

I'm not saying that we all want to be famous celebrities, but we want to be someone.

We want to be someone that's remembered, that's left their mark on other people, that's kind of done something worth remembering.

We want to leave some kind of a legacy.

We want to be thought of highly by people.

We want to have influence and impact.

We want the significance, but the Lord is content and highly, highly successful at using ordinary people who are committed to him.

And he uses what seems like foolishness to the world to accomplish his means.

Nobody would have begun the story like this if it was up to any other any human being.

Well, let's just begin in a stable in the middle of nowhere in the Middle East with a couple people who nobody knows, and they're so poor and destitute that they can't even get a room, can't even afford some accommodations, as they're having a baby.

Let's begin with those people.

And we read this story because we're so familiar with it, and we just think it's so sweet, and it's wonderful, but we don't want that.

We don't want obscurity.

We don't want to be used by God in a sense where then we're just gonna be impoverished and stricken, not knowing where our next resources are gonna come from.

We're happy that Jesus came that way.

We're content that Jesus, grateful that he came that way.

I don't want to go there myself.

The Lord uses what seems like foolishness to the world.

Beginning in verse 7, as we go through the rest of this narrative, the angels come to shepherds.

And so much has been said about all these passages, but they come to these shepherds who are in the field, shepherds who are living out with the sheep, they would have been considered very unclean to most of the Jewish community.

They would have been very low on the social ladder, extremely low.

They would have been considered unclean most of their days by Jewish law.

And here, this is where the angels come.

There's no major announcement, there's not a news bulletin that goes out to the kingdoms of the world.

No big headline to all the rulers or the PR departments.

None of those things.

That's just these shepherds who were just watching some sheep at night so that they weren't stolen or attacked.

That's it.

Like nobody, I mean this, nobody would have thought the first announcement that the Messiah has come after 400 years of silence, after nothing, no one would have said, probably some random shepherds in a field at night.

That's probably where they're gonna tell us the news.

Nobody was looking for that.

But here, the angels came to them to declare what had happened that the Messiah had come, been born for them in the city of David, as it was told.

These ordinary shepherds, they believed the angels.

They believed what they were told.

They believed that the Messiah had come.

And so they then went to Bethlehem to look.

Naturally, the shepherds were afraid.

You see one angel in the sky, and you're pretty terrified, then you see a whole host of angels in the sky.

But it didn't make them doubt.

It affirmed what they believed that God was speaking to them through these angels, and so their faith led to obedience.

Ordinary faith led to obedience.

So many times we want to obey God in those really crucial, like momentous, public moments when our faith is on trial, or when we're somewhere when people are attacking our faith, and we want to stand up for the Lord, and we want to be able to give someone a good answer why we believe in the gospel and defend our faith and stand up for the Lord.

There's moments where we want to muster up our faith, be a faithful Christian.

But there's other times when no one is around, we don't want to be faithful.

We want to give in to laziness or lust or greed or some other sin.

Those moments when no one's around, there's not this big moment, and we falter.

And we're not faithful, and we sin.

And yet the Lord is gracious to us, and this is why he sent us the Messiah, that we might be freed from our sin, that our obedience might become more and more a pattern in our life.

Not because we're knuckling ourselves to be better Christians, but because God's grace is working as we read his word and pray and ask him to change us.

The Lord declaring that the Messiah had come, born in a barn, and he goes and tells a bunch of shepherds in the field.

Is this not just the most, again, upside-down way of doing things?

It's unhuman, if you know what I'm saying.

It is not the way we think or operate.

And we we read the story year after year, or multiple times a year.

And we believe it to be true and real.

But then do we cling to God's promises?

We believe it in a sense, but then do we are we truly clinging that this was the Messiah who came, and this is why he came, to free the world from the grips of sin.

The world is looking for salvation in so many other areas, in so many other things.

And we as Christians are tempted to look for salvation in so many other things.

And here, the ordinariness of these people, of Mary and Joseph and of the angels, I mean, of the of the shepherds who heard from the angels, just ordinary.

And I don't know about you, but I get pretty bored with ordinary.

I just get bored with it.

You know, when you're young, you're you're in your teens, and you're like, your whole life's ahead of you, and it's exciting because you don't know what it's going to bring, but it's ahead of you.

And then you get into life, and I'm in my early mid-30s, and it's like, okay, all right, this is it.

It's just ordinary.

Just plug dishes and laundry and children and maintenance, maintenance on the vehicles, and paying bills, and working, and it's just ordinary.

And just long for something more, just tired.

Like, didn't Jesus come to bring life?

And wasn't that like life to the fool?

Is this really life to the Like, are we really?

Is this it?

Is this all this Christian thing is?

The Lord is gracious that the more that we depart and die to ourselves, the more we enjoy just the ordinariness of following Jesus.

The more that you can just die to your dreams, even if they're good dreams and they're they're pleasant and they're nice and you have good intentions.

Maybe the Lord will bring that to your life.

Maybe he will.

Maybe he won't.

But the more that you can just die to those things daily and say, Lord, I'm yours.

Help me to be faithful to you.

Help me to love you, to love those around me, not to make this about me.

So often we make things about us.

This is this is quite frankly the wildest thing about Christmas, right?

It has become all about ourselves.

It has.

Even in our gift giving, it's about ourselves.

What will my gift to them say about me?

Will they think that I was thinking about them?

Will they like it?

Will they this is all about us?

We make it all about us, and it's not about us in a sense, right?

In a real sense.

Not to be confusing, but in another sense, it is about us because Christ came for us.

Not that we can just gaze at ourselves and just be consumed with ourselves, but that we might be consumed with Him and enjoy Him forever and ever.

And this is again the upside-downness of the kingdom of Christ.

How often we look to the things of the world for short-term hope or joy or short-term strength.

Some of you are going from one of the, you're going through one of the most difficult times in your life.

In the waves of doubt or despair, they're just great and they're crashing against you.

And maybe for some of you, the fear of the future just feels crippling.

It's not exciting, it's crippling for you.

Others here, it's not so much that you are in a season of heartbreak, but you're in a season of confusion.

What you thought you believed, you are now questioning.

God, who who you're so confident in before, you're not so confident now.

You might left the faith, but you're not sure what the faith looks like for you.

For others, life is noisy and busy, and that you you feel this distant and weariness from God.

You're distant from Him, you feel weary, and you want to have a thriving walk with Jesus.

That's your desire.

But every time you get just 20 minutes to yourself, you feel too tired to open the Bible and to carry your burdens to Christ.

We come to the Christmas story so familiar, known so well.

And we ask the question, genuinely ask the question.

What can we learn again from this?

How can we feed our souls?

You know, hope.

Hope is the theme of this passage.

Hope is the theme of the Bible, truly.

Do you feel hopeful?

If you are a Christian, do you feel hopeful?

I know we're not we're not major on feelings, right?

Don't always trust our feelings.

But that's a genuine question.

Do you feel hopeful?

Are you a hopeful person?

Maybe you don't know your own situation.

You don't understand that you have a need for a savior.

Maybe you are not fully aware of the good news of the gospel.

That Christ has come to free you from your sin.

When the Bible says that he died on the cross for your sin, what that means is that your sin was so terrible that the only way to deal with it, the only price that could be paid for it was the life of Christ, Christ living his life perfectly, and then dying on the cross for you.

And his righteousness, his goodness then being imputed unto you, so that you can then be free from your sin.

Maybe you've never heard that before.

Or maybe you've forgotten.

Or for some, maybe you've heard all this so many times.

And you're just thinking, Rick, I just wish it, I just wish it worked for me.

I'm glad it worked for all these other people in the room.

That's awesome that they're saved.

It's awesome that they're free.

It's awesome that they love Jesus.

That's great.

I just wish it would work for me.

I just wish this Jesus who came born in a manger would work for me.

And you've heard all these things.

You've been to all the services, you've read all the quotes.

I just want to encourage you.

If that's you this morning.

One, the Lord never grows tired of anyone who's pursuing him.

Whether that's barely, or that's with all of your heart, he does not grow tired of you pursuing him.

So do not give up on him.

Do not feel like he has failed you.

Or do not believe that he has failed you, even if you feel that way.

You know, for some people, they've been given all the tools, but they just have never been taught how to use them.

And then they're in and they're stuck in their sin, or they're discouraged, they're doubting their faith, and you begin to talk to them, like what's your spiritual life like?

What's life like for you?

And you know, they it's like they read a fluffy eight-minute devotional four times a week, and they go to church most weekends, but they don't have any significant time with the Lord.

There's no one's walking with them, challenging them.

Are you in the Bible daily?

Are you pouring through the scriptures?

I'm not asking, do you love the Bible?

Are you excited to do those things?

But are you are you studying the Bible?

Are you in the Bible?

Only the Lord can save us.

This isn't do more than you'll be saved.

Only the Lord can regenerate the heart.

The Lord calls us to Him.

He then enables us, and then we make grace-filled effort.

We make grace-filled effort to follow the Lord, to be in the Bible, and to pray, to memorize scripture.

For some, you're discouraged because you're not where you want to be in your faith, but you're not reading the Bible.

For others, you feel like you read the Bible a lot, but you're not in Christian community.

You've isolated yourself from others, so they can't challenge you in your faith or encourage you or pray with you or laugh with you or weep with you.

The fact that Jesus Christ has come, the Messiah has come in such an ordinary way.

Born in a barn.

Ordinary people.

The Lord wants to use you.

He wants to be active in your life, bringing you from death to life, yes, salvation, and then helping you to mature in your faith, to grow as a Christian, to acknowledge your need for him, to walk with him, experiencing and knowing that his mercies are new every day.

That he does truly, genuinely love you, that you have been adopted into his family.

And that requires, again, this upside-downness, this foolishness to the world, that the way to life is through death, the way to joy and happiness is through selflessness.

The way to freedom in Christ is dying to yourself.

Say, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna just keep living for myself.

And I don't know how the Lord's gonna free me from all these different things.

I don't know how the Lord's gonna change all these things and unshackle all these things in my life.

But what I do know is that he said, follow me, and then you will have life, and you will have freedom, and you will have joy and purpose and meaning.

And I barely know what it means to follow Jesus, but he's given me his word, he's given me his spirit, he's given me the church, and that's where I'm gonna be.

I'm gonna be in his word, in prayer, with the church, with the saints, following Jesus.

So it's not this to-do list.

I say this a lot, how convenient it would be if the Lord just gave us a to-do list.

Just check these five boxes daily, and you're a good Christian, you're healthy, you're on your way.

But the Lord is after our heart.

He wants us to worship Him.

God's ways, again, they seem foolish to the world, but that's because we know as Christians we're made to worship and we will worship.

And so we go after the Lord that we might worship him.

So Luke chapter 2 is about worship.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

It's about worship.

That we might behold the Savior that's come for us, that we might see the ordinariness of how the Lord uses these people, and that we see the foolishness of the world, the ways of the kingdom, and that we might worship the Lord.

For there is hope for me, there's hope for you, because God didn't say, come to this certain place and do these five things.

He didn't say give this money or be this way.

He said, Come to me.

Come to me.

But we've got to be willing to come to him.

Not come to him with our own terms saying, Well, I'll come to you, but I want my comfort.

I want my house and my kids.

I need my income.

I'll come to you then.

Or I'll come to you, but I gotta hold on to a few other things, some identity things, or wounds.

Don't take my trauma from me.

I I've got to take this.

This comes with me to you.

The Lord says, no, no, no.

You come to me.

You come to me, and I'll take care of everything else.

So the Christian response to Luke 2 is to worship the Lord, to come to him, seeing how marvelous it is that he uses ordinary people and extraordinary means, his spirit and his word in his church, to bring about change in our hearts.

We might come before him and behold him in awe.

And in one sermon, I cannot bring that to you.

This all before the Lord.

But you, in the word with the Lord, the Lord can begin to renew your affections.

So that if you're like the person who's so familiar with the story and you believe it, but essentially it doesn't do anything for you, that the Lord might renew you and encourage you, that you might read to, look to, and worship again with awe.

And then if you're like the first person and you don't think that's true, it's a great story, and part of you really wishes it was true.

Oh, that the Lord might give you faith, that you might repent from rebelling against him, and that he might give you faith, that you might worship him, that you might believe and read Luke 2 in awe.

The right response to the Christmas story is worship.

It's praising God for who he is and what he has done.

And we worship him with our mouth, and we worship him with our actions, and all this comes from a genuine heart of worship.

Church, let's pray together.