The King Who Came

Good morning, everyone. Can you hear me? Is this thing working? Are we good? I got head nods. Well, again, good morning, everybody. Happy New Year, CTK. I know we're slowly warming into 2023. If we have not met, like Jeff said, my name is Paul Deschamps, and I'm really delighted to spend just a little bit of time this morning with us looking into the Gospel of Luke, spending some time in one of the most amazing passages, one of the most amazing stories that we have.

If you're new with us this morning, I also would like to extend an extra welcome. What a gift to have you here worshipping with us. And as part of that, I'd like to invite all of us into what is a custom here in joining and collectively reading together God's word aloud. So if you would join me in doing that, our passage is a pretty familiar one this morning. It comes from Luke's gospel, Luke chapter two verses one through 21.

Scripture Reading

In those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole empire should be registered. This first registration took place while Quirinius was governing Syria. So everyone went to be registered, each to his own town. Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family line of David to be registered along with Mary, who was engaged to him and was pregnant.

While they were there, the time came for her to give birth. Then she gave birth to her firstborn son, and she wrapped him tightly in cloth and laid him in a manger because there was no guest room available for them.

In the same region, shepherds were staying out in the fields and keeping watch at night over their flock. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Don't be afraid, for look, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today, in the city of David, a savior was born for you who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be the sign for you. You will find a baby wrapped tightly in cloth and lying in a manger."

Suddenly, there was a multitude of the heavenly hosts with the angel praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest heaven and peace on earth to people he favors."

When the angels had left them and returned to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let's go straight to Bethlehem and see what has happened, which the Lord has made known to us." They hurried off and found both Mary and Joseph and the baby who was lying in the manger. And after seeing them, they reported the message they were told about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them.

But Mary was treasuring up all these things in her heart and meditating on them. The shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all the things they had seen and heard, which were just as they had been told.

When the eight days were completed for his circumcision, he was named Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived.

— Luke 2:1-21

This is the word of God read by the people of God.

Opening Prayer and Remarks

Father, what an amazing story. We thank you, God, that you are such a wonderful and amazing and loving God, that not only have you revealed to us yourself in your word, but you sent us your son, Jesus, to be born among us. We pray that you would open our eyes to see the beauty of who you are from this passage. We pray that you would send your spirit into our midst this morning. Pray that these words would be pleasing to you. In Jesus' name, amen.

Friends, I can't believe that it is 2023. That seems like such a big, far away number still, but it's here. And I think it's so cool that the very first thing that we're doing corporately is gathering together to worship Jesus. I mean, that's an awesome thing.

And I would like to acknowledge first that yes, it's New Year's and we did just read the Christmas passage. But I think that we should be the kind of people that are thrilled and filled with the hope and joy that we have during the Christmas season three hundred sixty-five days of the year. We should be Christmas every day kind of people because the gospel is that good of news.

And now second, I would also like to point out that the twelve days of Christmas is more than just an obnoxious Christmas carol in which an overzealous gift giver has access to way too many birds. But the Christian calendar marks twelve days in which we celebrate the birth of Jesus from Christmas day as the first one through January 6, which is the epiphany. So by my count, this is the eighth day of Christmas. But there's no weird gifts, so that's fine.

But in our culture, we don't really wait to start celebrating Christmas until Christmas Day. It seems like it creeps earlier and earlier every year, right?

Like if you go to Costco in September, they start having nativity sets out and fake Christmas trees are already up, which is really weird next to the Halloween decorations. That's a whole other thing. But I think the result is that by Christmas, when it actually gets here, we're a little sick of Christmas. As soon as December 26 comes, we start to notice that our Christmas tree is starting to look a little saggy and droopy and a lot more like the Charlie Brown tree than it did yesterday. The tinsel that we hang up isn't so nice. The stockings are no longer hung by the chimney with care. And Christmas is starting to look tired and worn out and we're ready for it to be finished. We're ready to stop listening to Christmas music and we're ready to go back to our Spotify playlist of the songs we listened to for the last eleven months.

And I think if we're honest, this passage can feel a little bit like that sometimes. This is the Christmas passage. This is the verse that you put on the Christmas cards. It's an inspiration for a lot of the music, the carols that we sing. This is like Linus and Charlie Brown and "what does Christmas even mean?" This is one of the most famous passages in all the Bible, but I think it's become a little too familiar. It's become too much of a ritual. It's like our trees and our tacky sweaters and the mistletoe that we hang up and eating way too many cookies. That's just a personal confession.

But for Christians reading the story, it should be so much more than a ritual. Because this story is the whole reason that we are here today. This is a story that tells us what God is like. We love to read and reread this story every year because it gives us hope. It's the greatest story that the world has ever known. In this story we see two different kings and two different kingdoms. One kingdom is ruled by power and fear, and one kingdom is ruled by grace and hope.

This is the story of Jesus. He's the king who, like us this morning, was perfectly comfortable and happy and content to stay at home. And yet he set aside his glory to come into our broken world, to come and rescue his beloved and yet broken people and usher us into his glorious kingdom.

Looking Forward and Looking Back

Now in season of Advent leading up to Christmas day, we as a church typically remember the coming of Jesus. This Advent, if you have been hanging out with us here, you'll know that we've been looking forward to his second coming instead of typically looking back to his first coming. We've been looking at the book of Revelation and the promise that's offered to us that Jesus is coming back. We've been looking for this King who's gonna come in power and victory on his white horse. This King who's gonna unite a beautiful mosaic of diverse people who all reflect the glory of him. A king who will bring justice to the oppressed, healing to the sick, help to the poor. The king who is the bridegroom who will carry his battered bride to the great wedding feast of the lamb.

And it feels so right in the season of Advent to look forward to his second coming with deep longing. But all of that longing rests on the hope of this passage, that Jesus Christ, the Lord and King has come, and we can trust him that he's gonna come again, and he's gonna finish what he began at Christmas. I mean, what a glorious promise.

Yet when we read the story and we listen to the Christmas carols being sung of the glorious birth of Jesus Christ, I'm sorry, this is about as far from glorious as we can possibly imagine. It's undeniable. Jesus had a really lowly birth. And Luke, he so carefully and skillfully invites us into the world of Jesus at the time of his birth and immediately, right in verse one, there's conflict. I know some of us might be shocked that there's conflict at Christmas. I'm sure no one's experienced conflict over this last week.

Caesar Augustus and the Census

But he writes:

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

This is tax time. We don't often focus much on this aspect of the Christmas story. Mostly it's on Mary and Joseph and the battle for faith in their relationship. Or maybe it's on the angelic messengers or the Magi. We talk about the shepherds. Today I wanna talk first about the bad guy. Caesar Augustus, he is a crucial character in our story. Not only is he central for getting the action of this story started, but Luke includes him to make sure that this story is grounded in history. He's telling us this is not a once upon a time, long ago in a faraway land, a great daring prince came. No, he's saying, look at the facts. This really happened in a real time, in a real place, with real people. Jesus was born this way.

So Caesar Augustus or Octavian as he was also known, he was the first true emperor of Rome.

He was the adopted son of Julius Caesar. And after Julius Caesar had been assassinated, there was this bright comet called Caesar's Comet. We know it as Caesar's Comet. And it was very easily seen in the night sky by many in Rome. And the propaganda machine of Octavian's new government capitalized on this moment. And they said this comet, this star isn't just a comet, this is Julius Caesar himself ascending to the throne room of the gods. And if Julius Caesar has been made a god, then this makes Octavian the son of God.

And he was conferred the title Caesar Augustus, which is Caesar the holy one, which is a name that's reserved only for the gods. And so the textbooks would tell us that he's one of the greatest leaders of Rome. That through his military conquest he'd bring about the Pax Romano or the Peace of Rome. And he would build the world's first police force, the world's first fire department, he'd build roads, buildings, aqueducts. If you go to Italy you can see the fingerprints of his work on the Roman Empire and the amazing stuff that he engineered. It was the golden age of Rome. And by today's standards, I think that we would still consider him to be a really great king. He's one of history's best rulers.

And in his time, he was known by such names as Son of the Most High, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Prince of Peace. Many believed that he was the savior of the world. When he died, people consoled themselves to say, he's a God, he'll be back. But the peace that he brought, the peace that the people lived under, it was a false peace. See, authoritarian rulers, they keep peace through oppression and fear. Total obedience and loyalty to Caesar was the price of living with peace within the empire.

And the original audience, the people that Luke was writing this to, they would have heard this verse and they would have understood immediately what was going on. Luke is setting the stage for a great drama, a showdown that's gonna happen at Christmas. And instead of focusing any longer on Caesar, this leader of the world's superpower, Luke's like a master director of a movie. He cuts the scene. In this time, cuts the scene and it focuses in on Joseph and Mary and this poor carpenter and his pregnant teenage fiancée who have just traveled 80 some miles from their hometown of Nazareth to go and pay taxes to this Roman king.

And they would find the last place that any mother would wanna have a baby—in a stable filled with animals, possibly other travelers in the open. There were no epidurals, there were no clean hospital gowns, there were no curated playlists, there was no clean straw, and there was no gleaming soft light, there were no horses that were voiced by Mariah Carey. Our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ, was born with the smell of sheep dung hanging thick in the air. With his first breath, the stench would fill our savior's lungs.

But this wasn't happenstance, this was providence. That God the Father had ordered these events to bring his son into the world in Bethlehem through the line of David as the prophet Micah had foretold to keep his promises. That God would move every person in the world to do it. That he would use the most powerful ruler in history as his puppet.

But this isn't how a king is supposed to come. This isn't how a conqueror takes on a tyrant. This is the world's worst birthday party in the history of birthday parties. But that's so like God, because God takes what is weak and he uses it for his glory.

The Way of Lowering

This is really important for us to remember as we enter into the new year: that God's path is the way of lowering. Humility comes before glory can come. That the kingdom of God operates in such ways. I mean, here are some of these other promises that we know:

The first will be last and the last will be first. — Matthew 20:16

God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. — James 4:6

See, living in the kingdom of God requires humility, and this bristles us, this feels offensive to us. And why? Because this isn't the way that we would do it. This isn't how we would do this because we crave glory. I mean, how many of us when we hear about Caesar Augustus and his greatness admire him? I mean even just a little and might wonder, what would it take for me to have just an ounce of that glory? What will I be remembered for?

But in God's kingdom, it takes humility to remind yourself that the creator of the whole cosmos remembers you. Enough to wrap himself in flesh and be born into this messed up world that's marked by sin and death and pain and suffering. The lowly birth of Jesus and him wrapped in cloths and lying in an animal's food bucket—it has got to be enough for our glory craving hearts to be put at rest. The one who deserved all the glory of the universe, he took none. And it's here in the depth of this struggle that glory does come.

In verse eight Luke tells us that in the fields nearby there are shepherds working the third shift, doing what shepherds do, hanging out with sheep. And being a shepherd, if you know anything about this time, it was not a glorious job. In fact, the people who were shepherds were often considered the outcasts of society. A lot of times they did a job because they couldn't do anything else. They weren't trustworthy. Sometimes it was the youngest person in the family, the weakest, the smallest. It's probably on these hills that David, the youngest, weakest, smallest person in his family was walking around shepherding sheep when he was told that he'd be the king of Israel.

Many of them, due to the nature of their work, it made them ceremonially unclean and unfit to be in the temple. They were despised as people. But as to these lowly people, the despised of society, the forgotten and the rejected, that angels appear. And they deliver one of the most powerful and important messages that the world has ever been given.

Don't be afraid. Look, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the city of David, a savior was born who is the Messiah, the Lord, and this will be a sign for you. You will find a baby wrapped tightly in cloth and lying in a manger.

The first recipients of the gospel are the marginalized and the disinherited and the rejected. Those who never had a seat at the table are on speaking terms with an angel from the Lord. And they get to witness the great celebration of the entire host of heavenly angels rejoicing at the good news that Jesus has been born. And he is the savior who is Christ the Lord. And they're told, do not fear.

One author that I've been reading this Advent season says that we could replace the term Merry Christmas with "do not fear." Do not fear is the most commonly repeated phrase in the whole Bible, both Old and New Testaments. There are three hundred sixty-five different references encouraging you to abandon your fears. It's January 1—if you need a goal for this year, spend the next three hundred sixty-five days looking at each one of these. Dig them up. I gave you the first one, that one's free. The rest are on you. Go find them all. You could look up a new one every day to be reminded that this world that thrives in fear, you can lay yours at the throne of grace.

We're a fearful people. When Adam sinned all the way back in Genesis three, he's hiding from God. The first thing that he had to say for himself was, "I hid because I was afraid." And every day since, we have had real things, real struggles, real fears in our daily lives. But the gospel pronouncement from the angels to the shepherds is this: do not fear. I bring good news of great joy.

How different is this from Caesar? His pronouncements strike fear. There's a census—uproot your lives, go to your hometowns, I don't care if you're pregnant, just get there, pay your taxes on time or else. But our king Jesus, he doesn't rule by fear. He rules by grace.

The Three Titles of Jesus

A savior is born who is Christ, the Lord. This phrase—this is the only time in the whole gospels that these three words, all three titles of Jesus, are put together as one. Savior, Christ, and Lord. This isn't like his first, middle, and last name. These are the things he does, and joy comes through his birth.

The reality is this: we are a people deeply in need of a savior. Not just from oppression or injustice, but from the grip of sin on our cold and hardened hearts. We're not capable of fixing this ourselves. There's nothing we can do on our own, but Jesus has come to fix what is broken.

He's the Christ, which means the Messiah, the anointed one. He is the only one who's been set apart for this task. He alone is the one who can keep God's promises and serve as a mediator, our go-between between God and man. He's the Lord. He can do these things because he's God. He himself is God, the creator and sustainer of the universe, the ruler of all, the real king of kings, the real lord of lords, the real prince of peace, the king of glory is here.

And the angel tells the shepherds and he tells us: come find him. You're gonna have to go and look in the places that are disgusting and broken. The places that stink, the places where a baby, let alone a king, should never go. And he makes his dwelling there with you, with me, between a rock and a hard place.

I don't know about you, but I love a good underdog story. Like one of my favorite movies, Miracle, and team USA beats the Russians. Or how about when the Jamaican bobsled team perseveres through all the opposition in Cool Runnings? I love it. Or how about when Mirabel becomes like the one person in her family that can unite them again in Encanto? We love to see weak things become strong. We love to see the powerless defeat the powerful.

And this is the greatest underdog story ever because God himself made himself the greatest underdog the world has ever known for us. Jesus's success scores on the day that he's born is super low. We don't think this kid will make it. But Paul writes in First Corinthians that God has chosen what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen what is weak in the world to shame the strong.

God has chosen what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen what is weak in the world to shame the strong. — 1 Corinthians

Like this story is crazy, that God would use the emperor of the world and make him a footnote. And the reason he's remembered every year is because of Jesus. That God would so lower himself that he would submit to the very world that he made, that he'd be born a real person in a disgusting stable to a poor family from an oppressed nation, and that his birth would be the pattern of his life, shining light in the darkness, bringing grace to the downtrodden, bringing healing to the sick, humbling to the powerful until his death on a Roman cross.

But remember the pattern of his kingdom? Humility comes before glory. He'd be raised from the dead and glorified and take his throne to defend and welcome those into his kingdom of peace. So the greatest hope that we have is in remembering that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is at work in the places that feel like death to us, and will turn those moments into glory.

That Jesus doesn't waste a minute of his suffering, and he doesn't waste a minute of ours either. That by faith in him, his advent is our advent. That he came to us so that we could come to him and we could fear no more and be joined forever to him. We're his prized possession. Like we are all Jesus wants for Christmas.

What Kind of King Do You Need?

My closing question for you this morning is this. As we enter into the new year, we start thinking what is this gonna be? What is this year like gonna look like for me? What kind of king do you need this year? Are you looking for a new Caesar? Are you looking for more power or control, influence? Are you still being driven by fear? Would you walk right by the dirty manger and miss real glory on your way to something better? That one's hard for me.

Or do you see a true king? Your savior, your messiah, your Lord. He's waiting for us in the stinking manger of the broken places in our lives to bring you joy and hope and peace. CTK, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Our king has come.

Prayer

Let me pray for us. Father, would you make these things true? Jesus, would you show us how you're at work in the very broken places? Jesus, we long for your return. Jesus, give us faith to trust you as you work through our lives to show the world your glory, as you work through our weakness to show the light to a dark world. I pray all this in your name. Amen.