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Caesar & Jesus

Luke’s Nativity

Dec 13, 2020


by: Jack Lash Series: Luke’s Nativity | Category: Advent | Scripture: Luke 2:1–7

I. Introduction
A. Series
B. Today: the birth of Jesus
C. Luke 2:1–7 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. [alt: in the guest room] (There’s another word for inn not used here. There is little reason to think that his word means any more than “place to stay” here. I.e. there was no room for them to stay in, meaning they probably just slept on the floor and used the feeding trough in the house for the baby. In Mk.14:14; Luke 22:11 it is used for the upper room.)
II. Luke 2:1 In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.
A. “In those days”
1. As opposed to, “Once upon a time...”
2. Jesus is anchored in world history, a real person with a real birth in a real place at a real time.
B. Caesar
1. The theme of flipping the script
a. Luke 1:51 He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; 52 he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; 53 he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.
b. Luke 1:71 that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us;... 74 that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, 75 in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.
2. Who were “the proud in the thoughts of their hearts”? Who were “the mighty on their thrones”? Who were “the rich”? Who were Israel’s “enemies who hated them” and from whom they need to be “delivered”?
a. A class of people, to be sure, and not just one person.
b. But there’s not more obvious figurehead, not one more blatant representative of these proud, mighty, rich enemies of Israel from whom they needed to be delivered, than Caesar.
3. Caesar
a. Kaiser, czar: king of kings, king of the whole world
b. And that’s where today’s story begins... 1 “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.”
III. Luke 2:1-7 introduces us to two of history’s most powerful and influential men: Caesar Augustus and Jesus Christ.
A. Do you know who Caesar Augustus was?
1. He was actually the first Roman emperor. He died while Jesus was a teenager and was succeeded by his son Tiberius – Luke 3:1.
2. It’s hard to exaggerate what an enormous figure he was.
a. Caesar Augustus was just the kind of person sinful mankind love to exalt to high places. “The government can fix all our problems!” And it’s amazing how many problems he did fix.
b. He is considered one of the most effective leaders in human history.
c. His empire stretched from England in the northwest to North Africa in the south, from Russia in the northeast to Asia in the east.
d. His reign brought 200 years of peace and prosperity to the Roman empire.
e. Through him they lived and prospered
f. The beginning of a new world
g. The beginning of the good news
h. Savior of mankind
3. Our month of August was named after him. He chose it himself because that was the month of several of his greatest triumphs.
4. First Roman emperor to demand worship, attribute divinity to himself
5. Decree = dogma (Luke 2:1)
6. Imagine him there, doing his kingly thing, consulting with his advisors, discussing the need and value of taking a census, with absolutely no thought or awareness of what was happening in one corner of his empire, that by his decree he was moving a woman from one town to another to fulfill Jewish prophecy, so that a baby would be born in the right place, a baby whose birth would one day be used to define the year of his imperial reign, and death and his great accomplishments.
7. Little did he know that he was serving the purposes of a higher King, by moving Mary and her unborn child to Bethlehem so that Micah 5:2-4 would be fulfilled: “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... 4 And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God. And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth.”
B. Jesus Christ
1. 4 Joseph 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 [who grew up in Bethlehem], 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.
2. Jesus was a Jew, an obscure people in the eastern Mediterranean.
3. From an Roman perspective, the only real distinction the Jewish people had was the claim to be the people of the one true God who created the world.
a. This Jesus was supposedly the fulfillment of an old promise of a great king whom their God would send who would save them from their enemies and from their sins.
4. But now that He’s born, there is no glamor of royalty.
a. He is born of poor and insignificant parents.
b. Like slaves, they have to travel a long way near the end of her pregnancy because of the emperor’s edict. And then He is born in an obscure place and placed in a feeding trough because there wasn’t any place else.
C. Caesar Augustus and Jesus Christ
1. The two never met, but they lived in the same world for about 20 years.
2. Caesar Augustus was the ultimate earthly ruler. Jesus Christ was the stone the earthly builders rejected. But He became the cornerstone of a whole new world.
3. Thus, there is something of a developing rivalry between Caesar and Jesus.
4. Ultimately Jesus was executed for a crime against Caesar, while the people cried, “We have no king but Caesar!” – John 19:15.
5. It was Caesar’s soldiers who pounded nails through His hands and feet. And at that moment it looked like Caesar had won. But to say that Jesus turned out to be greater is a big understatement.
6. “He was born in an obscure village, The child of a peasant woman.
a. He grew up in another obscure village, Where he worked in a carpenter shop, Until he was thirty.
b. He never wrote a book, He never held an office, He never went to college, He never visited a big city, He never traveled more than two hundred miles, From the place where he was born.
c. He did none of the things Usually associated with greatness. He had no credentials but himself.
d. He was only thirty three His friends ran away. One of them denied him. He was turned over to his enemies, And went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves.
e. While dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing, The only property he had on earth.
f. When he was dead, He was laid in a borrowed grave Through the pity of a friend.
g. Nineteen centuries have come and gone, And today Jesus is the central figure of the human race And the leader of mankind's progress.
h. All the armies that have ever marched, All the navies that have ever sailed, All the parliaments that have ever sat, All the kings that ever reigned put together Have not affected the life of mankind on earth As powerfully as that one solitary life.”
i. One Solitary Life – Dr James Allan © 1926
7. And yet at this point in history think about how different the two were:
a. The first place v. the last place
b. One lived in the great city of Rome – the greatest city in the world.
(1) The other was in Bethlehem and then Nazareth: two tiny, insignificant villages.
c. One lived in a luxurious palace and sat on a glorious throne, the other was laid in a lowly manger.
d. Taking (taxing) from his people v. giving
e. Motivating by fear v. love
f. Giving orders v. invitations
IV. Why does God put up with tyrants and dictators? He could just strike them dead, or not allow them to gain places of leadership in the first place. Why did God tolerate Caesar Augustus?
A. God uses them for the sake of His people. Let me illustrate by talking about the way God used Caesar Augustus and others like him to prepare the world for Christ’s coming:
1. Roman roads: for hundreds of years before the coming of Christ, the Romans had been building strong, stone highways which traveled out from Rome to every part of the Roman empire.
a. The interstate system in the USA which began in the 1950's
b. This enabled the gospel to travel to every corner of the Roman world with relative ease.
c. Think about all those government decisions, all those planners, all those engineers, all those workers. None of them thought that they were serving the gospel of Christ! But they were.
d. Those are the roads which not only carried the apostles around the Roman world, but which carried their epistles to their desired destinations and then circulated them to other churches.
2. Under the leadership of Caesar Augustus, the Roman empire enjoyed political unity, and even though there was plenty of brutality and oppression, there was also peace and law & order, so much that there’s a name for it: Pax Romana.
a. This meant that though Christians suffered under Roman persecution at times, they were also able to travel safely anywhere in the empire.
b. It was all one country basically, and you could travel freely around, much like you can travel around among the states of the USA without restriction or interference.
3. Jews spread around the entire empire
a. When Assyria conquered the northern kingdom of Israel, it resettled most of them throughout the kingdom of Assyria. It was cruel; it was heartless. But, it resulted in communities of Israelites all over that part of the world.
b. Then the Jews were exiled to Babylon, and later they were allowed to leave. Only 1% of the Jews returned to Palestine. And the Romans ejected Jews from Rome several times and moved them.
c. So suddenly there were Jews in so many places around the middle east, southern Europe & north Africa that in Acts 15:21 James says that Moses is proclaimed in every city of the Roman empire.
d. This meant that – as a result of the actions of Gentile kings – wherever the gospel of Christ went, there were Jews who already knew the OT, already knew the Scriptures, already knew about the promises of the coming Christ. They made up many of the early Christians, not just in Judea, but even in the Gentile nations.
e. Not only this, but many Gentiles had been influenced by their Jewish neighbors and had come to believe in the God of Israel, and become somewhat involved in synagogue life.
(1) Many of these were the first Gentile Christians outside of Judea.
4. Greek language
a. Alexander the Great conquered that whole part of the world 350 years earlier and taught them the Greek language. So, Greek became the international language.
b. And so, the apostles knew Greek. And because of this, they were able to proclaim the gospel all over the Roman world! And they were able to write letters that could be read by folks all over the empire. But it wasn’t just the language.
5. Alexander also transformed all the lands he conquered, so that there was one unified civilization, one unified culture. This process was so historically significant, that there’s a name for it: Hellenization.
a. I want to read you a verse: Romans 1:16 “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”
(1) This was the Roman empire, and yet Paul divides its people up into two groups: Jews and Greeks. He does the same thing in Romans 1:14 and Col.3:11, except that he also refers to those outside the Roman empire – as Barbarians.
(2) Why does he refer to people from many different lands as Greeks? Weren’t the Greeks the people who were from Greece?
(3) The whole empire was hellenized. That means it was culturally Greek, just like many places in the world are becoming Americanized right now.
b. This enabled the apostles and other Christians to relate to and reach out to and befriend and communicate effectively with people from every land as they spread the gospel of Christ.
c. God did all this through pagan leaders in order to prepare the world for Christ’s coming!
B. And we see this also in Caesar's census, which brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem (Lk.2:1-7).
1. He didn't intend to, but he was bowing to the king. God even rules over bureaucracy!
2. Joseph submitted because he knew that “whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed” (Rom.13:2), and that “the king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will” (Proverbs 21:1).
3. Now we see why God included Caesar Augustus in the story. Even Caesar is in on the business of Jesus. He doesn't know it, of course, but whatever his motivations are, he is serving God, and his choices, real though they are, have been determined by God.
4. It doesn’t look like God is directing history, but He is.
5. Just as the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” (Rom.9:17–23; cf.22-23)
6. Remember in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream about the great empires which would rule the world, Rome being the fourth and final one, when after the great statue was described with its four parts, a small “stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth...In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed... It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever, just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hand, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold...The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure.” Daniel 2:44–45
V. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? – Romans 8:31–32
A. We can see in this story what the big thing in the world is and what it’s not.
1. It’s not the great personalities. It’s not about power and politics.
2. It’s not about roads and transportation. It’s not about language and culture.
3. It’s not about what you eat or drink, or the clothes you wear.
4. God certainly uses all of these, and more.
5. But the great business of God in this world is the work He’s doing in redeeming the world through His only begotten Son, born in Bethlehem.
6. God bends all things to the service of the proclamation of His gospel and the spread of His kingdom.
B. God sends His Son to save His people. God prepared the world to serve His Son’s coming. God got the great Caesar Augustus to relocate Christ’s birth to Bethlehem. Can God not get you to the place He wants you to be?
1. Now, obviously the story of Jonah teaches that we have the ability to run in the opposite direction. But even then, God got Jonah where He wanted him to be.
2. God has you where you are. And if He wants you somewhere else, He is perfectly able to show you or to get you there some other way.
3. Can we not trust God to bend everything to the service of the welfare of the members of His kingdom?
4. So, serve Him where you are, and don’t spend your life wondering if you’re in the right place.
5. We don’t need to be anxious about our lives! We don’t need to fret about money, or health, or job. Has God not promised to take care of His own? The world frets about these things. But our heavenly Father knows our needs, and cares about us dearly. And He tells us, “Look, I’ll take care of you; you just seek first My kingdom.” – Matthew 6:25–34