Immanuel Sermon Audio
Luke 2:1-21
If you have your Bible, take it out and find Luke chapter 2. We've read the passage, we won't do that again, but we will reference it this morning as we work through this Christmas story. Our series is the Gospel of Luke, and as we just began in chapter 1 and work our way through, we find ourselves at Luke 2, the Christmas story today. Every week in this series so far and going forward, we're going to talk about the theme verse of the Gospel of Luke, which is Luke 19-10, and that verse says, "The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost." And one of my goals in this series, and it's a fairly modest goal, but one of my goals is to just drill that verse into your brain every week, to mention it to you, to remind you, Luke 19-10, Luke 19-10, Luke 19-10, "The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost." So that when we're done with this series in several months, probably sometime next year, whenever you think about the Gospel of Luke, just immediately, that's going to pop into your brain. Gospel of Luke, the theme verses Luke 19-10, "The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost," and our passage this morning fits with that. This is the part where the Son of Man comes, and he is coming to seek and to save the lost, but we celebrate Christmas, we celebrate the coming of Jesus and the birth of Jesus. We've read the Christmas story, we've put up a few decorations, we've sang a Christmas song, and we have another Christmas song we're going to sing in just a minute. Let's jump in with the big idea of Luke 2-1-21. This is on your outline, if you like to follow along there. This is the big idea of the passage. God's plan to save sinners was put into motion by the birth of Jesus. God's plan to save sinners was put into motion by the birth of Jesus. Notice it does not say God's plan to save sinners began with the birth of Jesus. That would not be a true statement, it wouldn't be a biblical statement. We're saying the plan was already in place, and it was put into motion by the birth of Jesus. Last week we looked at a couple of verses in 1 Peter, and I'm going to put those verses up on the screen, and I want to read them to you. Peter says, knowing that you were ransomed, and that's the word we honed in on last week, you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. That's verse 18 and 19. Here's verse 20, the very next verse. He, Jesus, the Lamb of God, was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but was made manifest in the last time for your sake. So what Peter is saying is, if you want to know when the plan of God to save sinners began, you have to go back to the beginning. In fact, you have to go back before the beginning to the eternal plan of God to save sinners. That's where the plan began, and it was put into motion by the birth of Jesus. That's important because sometimes we get this idea of God, up in heaven, all throughout the Old Testament, just sort of twiddling his thumb saying, "I'm just waiting for the big act to come." "I'm just waiting for something to do." We need to figure something out. This sacrifice thing isn't working. All along what I'm saying to you, Jesus was the plan. From the beginning, in fact, from before the beginning, the plan was Jesus, and that plan is put into motion here in Luke 2 as Jesus is actually born. The heart of our passage, if you look in the text, is found in Luke 2, 14. It's the third of four original Christmas songs. This is the angels' Gloria. We've looked already at Mary's Magnificant. We've looked at the Benedictus sung by Zechariah last week. Next week, we'll look at the Nuke Demedus sung by Simeon, but this morning, the song at the heart of this passage is the angels singing, verse 14, "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased." It's the shortest of the four songs that Luke includes in these early chapters of his gospel. It's inspired by God's Holy Spirit just like the others, and it's the only one not sung by human beings. Mary sang one, Zechariah sang one, Simeon sings one, we'll see next week. This one is sung by angels as they appear to the shepherds, and they sing, "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased." Here's the thing about the passage that I read earlier. The band was still up on the stage, and we read through Luke 2, and that's a familiar passage to a lot of you. If you have never read through the Bible from cover to cover, odds are you've probably read parts of what we just read, the Christmas story. Charlie Brown, if you've ever seen Charlie Brown Christmas, you've heard parts of Luke 2 in our house every Christmas. We watch Charlie Brown Christmas, and at one point Linus gets up, and he just sort of verbatim quotes it word for word and sort of brings the meaning of Christmas home at the end of that movie. It's a Christmas Eve service, even if you're not regular in church attendance, maybe you've gone somewhere on a Christmas Eve service, and a pastor or a worship leader has stood up and read part of this story. So what I'm saying is it's familiar to us, and the danger when a Bible passage becomes overly familiar to us is that we tend to lose the wonder, and we tend to lose the awe, and we tend to lose the grandness of what's actually taking place, because we know the next statement that's coming, and as I was reading that it can almost just roll off your tongue, you know what's coming, and you just sort of lose the beauty and the grander and the magnificence of what's taking place. Now here's a twin irony. On the one hand, we're so familiar with the passage that sometimes we miss what Luke's saying. On the other hand, we don't know what's in the story, and we could pass out a test and I could try to trick you, and I probably could trick you with questions about the innkeeper. That's what, he's not in the story, with questions about the wise men, and how many, and when they came, and all these details that we think we know, but maybe we really don't know, and so it's sort of an ironic thing with this Christmas story. On the one hand, it's so familiar to us that we think we know it, we think we've got it all figured out, there's nothing left to see, and we just sort of miss the amazing story that God is telling us in the Christmas story, and at the same time, we're ignorant of some of the story, and we don't really know what's in it, and we're confused about some of the details, and in the end, we're like untrained dogs. Congratulations. You can go home today and you can tell somebody, pastors told me I'm just an untrained dog. What does an untrained dog do when you say, "Go get that." They look at this, not that, and you can point, and you can throw your hand, and you can yell at him, and you can talk louder, and you can scream and bust him on the butt, and if he's not trained, he's just going to look at your finger. He's saying, "Why are you sticking that finger out there?" What's the deal with that finger? He's watching that finger, and in this story that we just read, and that we sang about, and we're going to sing about, there's all sorts of pointers saying, "Look at this. Don't forget that. Think about this, and the danger is you focus on the arrows, and you focus on the pointers instead of what God is actually pointing us to in the story." And so this morning, the question we're going to ask about the text is very, very simple. What are the truths that God is pointing me to, us to, in the Christmas story? The first one is this. God is sovereign, and Jesus is the king of kings. Don't miss that in the Christmas story. God is sovereign, and Jesus is the king of all kings. You see it especially in verse 1 to 5, where you read about this decree that Caesar issued, and Caesar from his standpoint wanted to know two things. How many people out there can I charge taxes to, and how many people can I recruit to fight in my army if I need them? I'm concerned about money in the army, and so he says, "Everyone goes to your hometown to be registered." Joseph, as you know, goes back to the city of David, Bethlehem, because that was his line. He probably didn't have to travel with him, but she chose to travel with her husband, and so they go on this journey to Bethlehem. For Joseph, it was an inconvenience. For a guy that worked for a living and didn't get a paycheck unless he worked, this is a major inconvenience. For Mary, who's pregnant, it's a hardship, but she goes along and she travels with Joseph, and they make it to Bethlehem, and they're registered, and they meet the requirements of the census. If you look at it from the opposite direction, you understand that they had to be in Bethlehem. Not because Caesar told them to go, but because God had said the Messiah, the ruler, will be born in Bethlehem. We're not going to look at this passage, but you could jot down Micah 5, too. It says, "A ruler will be born. His coming is from of old, from ancient of days." God had said the ruler, capital R, the king, capital K, must be born in Bethlehem. And so Mary and Joseph had to be in Bethlehem when it was time to have a baby. And so what did God do? He wasn't worried. He wasn't wringing his hands. He wasn't trying to figure out a plan at the last moment. He just simply used the most powerful man on earth to issue a decree. And wrapped up in that decree was his own selfish interest, but God used that decree to get Mary and Joseph exactly where he wanted them to be so that his word, his prophecy could be fulfilled and the Messiah was born in Bethlehem. Look at this verse, Proverbs 21, "The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord. He turns it wherever he will." That's what happened in this story. Caesar's on the throne, and God says, "I need this to happen, so I'm going to mold you and I'm going to use you, and I'm going to put Mary and Joseph exactly where I want them, exactly when I want them to be there." Behind all of it, God is completely sovereign. Here's a layman's definition of God's sovereignty. God can do whatever he wants to do, whenever he wants to do it, and no one can do anything about it. God is sovereign. He does whatever he wants to do, whenever he wants to do it, and no one can stay his hand. This passage that God is sovereign. You also see that Jesus is the king, and he's not just a king, but he's the king to rule all kings. Micah 5-2 talked about that, a ruler would be born, but you also see it in this passage when you see this comparison that Luke is making between Caesar Augustus and Jesus of Nazareth. Caesar Augustus and Jesus of Nazareth. There's Caesar Augustus, Augustus Caesar, you say it however you want to say it. He was the adopted son of Julius Caesar, the great leader of the Republic of Rome. When Julius was assassinated, there was a civil war and there was a struggle for power, and this is the guy who outlived everyone else. He came out on top when everyone else was dead, and so power sort of defaulted to him. Julius Caesar's adopted son, and he made the big shift from Rome being a republic to Rome being an empire. He just sort of said, "We're done with this Republic stuff. We're an empire, and by the way, I'm the emperor. Overnight, that's how it's going to be." And so Augustus Caesar, the first true emperor of Rome, he did a lot of interesting things in his life. One of the things that he did is he tried to convince everyone that his father, Julius, was a god. He divinized his father, and the result of that is that if Julius is a god, then Augustus is what? The son of God. And he liked to make inscriptions and statutes and memorials all over the empire, and on these memorials you can visit them today, you can read about them in history books. They would say things like Augustus Caesar, emperor of Rome, Savior of the world, Lord of all the earth. He wanted to be the son of God. He wanted to be the Savior. He wanted to be the Lord. He took credit personally for something that historians call the Pax Romana, the peace of Rome. And Augustus said, "Look, you guys owe me a big pat on the back because there's worldwide peace. I'm the emperor. I get all the credit for that. Peace comes from me." And Luke talks about Augustus Caesar in this passage, but he's almost just a side note, because what he's really telling us about is the birth of Jesus, the Nazareth. And what Luke is saying is, "Look, while Augustus is on the throne in Rome back on the ranch in the back wood redneck hillbilly section of the empire, out east where nobody really paid attention to what was going on as long as they weren't fighting and causing trouble, a baby was born, Jesus of Nazareth. And God sends angels to the scene to announce his birth. And the angels say things like, "This is the Son of God, the Son of God." He's the Savior of the world. Forget what you think about Augustus. This is the Savior. He's the Lord. He is God come to live with us. He's a manual. He's God in human flesh. Others agree, at least the ones that I've read, that Augustus Caesar in his reign never knew much, if anything, about Jesus of Nazareth. Probably never heard that name. His successor, Tiberius, was on the throne when Jesus of Nazareth was hung on a cross and executed. Later emperors, like Nero and Domitian and some of the others, would try to stamp out the followers of Jesus Christ, would try to persecute them into oblivion, burning them as torches in their gardens at times. But within 300 years of Jesus' death, the emperor of Rome pledged allegiance to this baby born in the backwater corners of the empire and bowed his knee to Jesus. And you read this story and you look back at it from our perspective and you just shake your head and you say, "God is in complete control of everything that happens in this world." He is sovereign. He's on the throne. He's not wringing his hands in fear, trying to figure out what to do. He is sovereign. And Jesus, not Caesar, Jesus is the king of all kings. Here's the second thing you need to see. God delights in saving nobodies and using them for His glory. You may say, "Preacher, we've talked about this every week in the gospel of Luke. And we're going to talk about it all the way through the gospel of Luke because it's one of the things that Luke wants to drill into our brains. He gives us examples of it over, and over, and over, and over again. God delights in saving nobodies and using them for His glory. Augustus Caesar takes a back seat in this story and we're introduced to a bunch of shepherds. You read about the shepherds starting in verse 13 and 14. We tend to idolize shepherds from a biblical standpoint. We think David was a shepherd and Moses was a shepherd. Shepherds were great guys. You know as well as I do if you've been in church at all that shepherds were not great guys. They were not respected guys. They were not highly thought of members of the community. They were just sort of riffraff on the fringes of life. They were usually dishonest. They had a reputation of not being able to keep and hold on to what was theirs and not being able to remember what was yours and so they were dishonest. People did not trust them. They were disgusting because they lived out with the sheep and they smelled horribly bad. Hygiene was not great. So they were dishonest often. They were disgusting always and by most people they were despised. They were the lowest of the low. The God sends the angels not to Rome, to Caesar, not to Jerusalem, to the high priest, but to the fields with the shepherds. And the angel says this to the shepherds, Luke 2, 11, unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior who is Christ the Lord. That word Christ is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word Messiah and the angels are saying straight to the shepherds, this is the Christ, this is the Messiah, this is the anointed one. This is the one that God has been promising from the beginning. This is the one. He's here. And you read that in amazement and you say how many people asked Jesus to his face if he was the Messiah? How many important people during his ministry looked Jesus in the eye and said are you the Christ? And how many times did Jesus just walk away? And he refused to answer. He dodged the question at times. And here God sends angels, a choir of angels, to these shepherds and he says to them point blank the Christ is here. And you say why would he do that? Of all the people he could send the angels to, why to the shepherds? Here's why. God delights in saving nobodies and using them for his glory. Number three and this provides some balance to number two. God is chiefly concerned with bringing glory to himself. You got to understand this from the Christmas story. If you understand nothing else, God is chiefly concerned about bringing glory to himself. Does he want to save nobodies and use them? Yes, but he wants to use them. Why? Because of his glory and his ultimate concern is that he bring glory to himself. Step back from the story just for a minute. As much as you can pretend you've never read it and you open the book and you read that the shepherds are out there and the angels come and the angels have some things to say. They say don't be afraid. They say a Savior who's been born, he's in the city of David. You can go. You can find him. He's wrapped in swaddling cloths. He's laying in a manger. That's the sign that you know you've got the right kid. There's not going to be any sort of crazy light, any glow, any halo. You go, you look for the manger, you find the baby wrapped up in cloths. That's the one. And then they start to sing a song. If you just stopped the story right there and you'd never read it, what would you expect them to sing about? They show up in the middle of the night. They say, look, a baby's been born. You ought to go. You ought to check this thing out. It's the Christ. It's the Messiah. He's the Savior. This is great news. It's for all the people. You ought to go see it. And now we're going to sing a song as you leave. And you're just waiting for silent night. You're waiting for, oh, little town of Bethlehem. You're waiting for, I could sing of your love forever. God loves us so much. Jesus is born. You're waiting for all of these kinds of songs. And here's what they sing. This is what comes out of their mouth. Glory to God. Glory to God in the highest. That's what motivates God. A desire to bring glory to Himself. And these are holy, sinless angels. Maybe I'm wrong here, but I'm working under the assumption that the holy, sinless angels sing what God wants them to sing. So it's not like they messed the set list up. It's not like God's saying, wait, that's not the song. How many times do we practice? A little town of Bethlehem. Come on, guys. This is what God wanted them to sing. Jesus is born. You need to go see it. And the result is what? Glory to God in the highest. Peace on earth among those with whom He is pleased. It's not just here at the birth of Jesus. Talk with me about the end of Jesus' life, the night before He was crucified. He's with the disciples. They've had dinner. Jesus gets ready to pray for the whole group, and He prays. It's an amazing prayer. You can read it in the Gospel of John. It's an amazing prayer. He prayed for the 12. He prayed about the fact that they would be hated and persecuted. He prayed for you and for me, for believers who would be born in later years and believe because of the things that have been written here. But what was the first thing that He prayed for? Here it is. When Jesus had spoken these words, He lifted up His eyes to heaven, and He said, "Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son. Why? That the Son may glorify you." That's the first thing on His mind as He's getting ready to deny. The glory of God and His glory, He says, "Glorify the Son that the Son may glorify you since you have given Him authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom you have given to Him." And this is eternal life that they know you, the only true God in Jesus Christ whom you have sinned. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do, and now Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. It is birth, the center peace is what? Glory to God in the highest. Before He goes to the cross, the center peace is what? Glory to God. Glory to Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament, the center peace is what? Isaiah chapter 6, Isaiah sees the angels in the temple. He sees God in the temple, and He says this, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory." At the end of the Bible, Revelation, as the angels sing and John listens in, they say, "Worthy is the lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing." And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the sea and in the sea. And all that is in them saying, "To Him who sits on the throne and to the lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever." Be very, very careful as you think about your faith, as you think about your relationship with Jesus, as you come and you worship, as you worship throughout the week. Be very careful about making the mistake of thinking that you are the center of God's universe. You're not. Neither am I. You know who's the center of God's universe? God. God keeps the first commandment. He refuses to put anyone or anything in the place that only He deserves to be. Is He interested in saving nobodies and using them? Absolutely. But He wants to do it. Why? For His glory. When Jesus is born, when Jesus is about to die in the Old Testament, in the New Testament, the centerpiece of all of it is glory to God in the highest. Don't miss it in the Christmas story. Don't look at the finger pointing so that you miss this point. When the angels break out in song, the song that they sing is glory to God in the highest. Now, if you hear that and you think, well, that makes God just seem selfishly, wickedly self-centered, and I don't like the thought of it, well, hang in there and listen to number four, because the fourth truth you need to see is this. God acted to save sinners in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. You can focus on the trees all day long in this story. Don't miss the forest. Luke 19, 10, "The Son of Man came," Luke 2, "He came, but He came to seek and to save the lost." And in this Christmas story, we're reminded that Jesus came to save us in His birth, in His life, in His death, in His resurrection. He came to save us from our sins. This is an amazing truth, and it's the kind of truth that you can miss when you think about Luke 2 and the first thing that comes to mind is Charlie Browner. When you think about Luke 2 and the first thing that comes to mind is a cheeky Christmas tune or a Christmas song. But what Luke is describing is the greatest story that's ever been told. Luke is saying that God Himself has come. He promised to come, He planned to come, the plan began before the foundation of the world, the promises have been given since the Garden of Eden, and finally at just the right time He came. And Almighty God humbled Himself by taking the form of the creature that in the beginning He created in His own image. Jesus created to know Him, and to love Him, and to trust Him, and to worship Him, creatures who decided that they would rather listen to the serpent than to their Creator. And although He was under no obligation to do so, God humbled Himself, and He took the form of a man, and He walked among us. And He didn't show up in Rome until Caesar to scoot over, and He didn't go straight to Jerusalem to the temple until the high priest to take a back seat. He was born in the backwoods redneck corner of the empire, with not much fanfare at all, other than a choir of angels singing to a bunch of shepherds. In His first bed was a bucket that cows ate out of. This humility. There's not the extent of His humility because the Bible says that not only did He humble Himself in taking the form of a servant, but He also humbled Himself to the point of death, even death on a cross. And when you read Luke 2, you remember, this is not just a sentimental, feel-good, sing-a-Christmas song kind of story. This is Luke 19-10 being played out in real life. This is the Son of Man coming to seek and to save the lost. And when it happened, heaven broke free, broke loose into this world, and the angels of God descended and broke out in glorious song. And their response to all of it was glory to God, glory to God, glory to God, they responded in worship. And this morning, that's what I am calling you to do, to respond in worship to the fact that Luke 19-10 really happened, the Son of Man came, and He came to seek and save the lost. I want you to bow. And I want you to spend just a moment in reflection and prayer. Father, we come to You humbly, and we acknowledge that You are God. You are the Creator. You are the Sustainer. You're the Promise Maker. You're the Promise Keeper. Father, we are blown away at the story that we read here. It's a story that's so familiar to us, but when we stop and we think about it, we read that God came and took the form of a servant in poverty and obscurity and darkness, and He came to seek and to save us. Father, apart from You, apart from Your Son, we are lost. We are hopeless. We are powerless. Father, our hope is in Jesus, in His birth, in His life, in His death, in His resurrection, and His promise to come back for us. Our hope is completely in Your Son, Jesus Christ. As we look at this passage that describes Jesus coming, we want to celebrate Your grace and that You did humble Yourself by taking the form of a servant. You humbled Yourself to the point of death on a cross. Father, we want to add our voices and our songs to those of the angels. We want to bring glory to You. We want to ascribe to You honor and might and power and praise. Father, as we sing together this morning, our hope is that we exalt the name of Jesus Christ. Our prayer is that Your Spirit would work in us to move us to worship, to move us to faith, to move us to obedience. And Father, in all of it, may You receive the glory. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.