Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room
Notes
Transcript
Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room
Luke 2:1–7 (ESV)
1 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.
Introduction
Two Kings
We are offered a choice.
There are two different visions of power, two different models of life, and two regimes, under one of which we must live.
You notice the contrast that Luke draws between two kings in our passage.
In verse 1, there’s the kingship of Caesar Augustus.
In verse 7, there is the kingship of Jesus who is the Christ.
Caesar Augustus, when he spoke a royal decree, the whole world conformed to his purpose.
“A decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.” He is the Emperor Octavian, called Caesar Augustus by the Roman senate.
He is responsible for ushering in an era of extraordinary peace in the Roman Empire at the end of years of civil war and strife.
Caesar Augustus is the very embodiment of political power and might. The whole world bows before him and honors him.
And then, at the other end of the passage
In Luke 2 7, we read about a baby. He isn’t even named yet. That has to wait until the twenty-first verse of this chapter.
He doesn’t even receive a name. He’s simply Mary’s firstborn.
And so now at last, at the moment of Jesus’ arrival upon the scene of human history,
we look with some urgency
and some expectation for any sign of His kingly dignity and royal majesty; some outward emblem of His true purpose and destiny.
And what do we find?
Instead of an outward emblem of the kingly dignity and royalty of Jesus, we find a peasant family with a nameless baby laid in a makeshift crib recently used as a feeding trough for cattle.
It’s a stunning contrast.
And it forces us to ask ourselves what we really want.
That’s the dilemma that the Christmas story demands that we all face.
actually, the dilemma that the Christian Gospel demands that we all face.
What kind of king do you want?
What kind of kingdom will you live in?
To what do you really aspire? What kind of life will be yours?
There’s the world’s model, the world’s ideal embodied by no one better than Caesar Augustus.
It’s the American dream, isn’t it?
He has power, wealth, riches, fame.
He’s at the very pinnacle of human success and notoriety.
Everything we might aspire to in terms of the world’s benefits; outward glory.
The Irony
What is so ironic is that God used Caesar to get him there!
Caesar became the unwitting servant of the divine plan.
David Gooding writes:
“For Augustus the taking of censuses was one of the ways he employed to get control over the various parts of his empire.
The irony of the thing—in the process, as he thought, of tightening his grip on his huge empire, he so organized things that Jesus, Son of Mary, Son of David, Son of God, destined to sit on the throne of Israel and of the world, was born in the city of David, his royal ancestor.” 4
What at first appeared to be a great show of Caesar’s power actually proved the supremacy of God’s sovereignty.
Even Caesar’s decree was part of the divine plan.
God rules all things for his own glory.
This is true not only for the great events of salvation history, but also for the ordinary events of daily life.
God is working out his will, and he will see that he gets the glory in the end, even in spite of the things that we do. [1]
Then, there’s the kingdom of God that comes into the world without displays of glory, without any expressions of power in a baby born in starkly humble surroundings as one of us.
As Luke tells the true story of the nativity, he shows the contrast between the worldly power of Caesar and the apparent weakness of the baby Jesus.
There is another contrast we ought to notice—the one between the welcome Jesus deserved and the one he was actually given.
Although he was the son of David and the true king of Israel, Jesus hardly received a royal welcome.[2]
The Indignity
To understand what an indignity this was, we need to remember who Jesus was.
(and is!). Luke describes him as Mary’s firstborn son (Luke 2:7), but he was more than that!
· By the power of the Holy Spirit, the child in the virgin’s womb was the very Son of God.
· He was “the firstborn of all creation” (Col. 1:15), with a unique status as God the one and only Son.
· He was the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.
· He was the Creator of the universe, the Maker of heaven and earth.
· He was the King of kings and Lord of lords, the Supreme Ruler of all that lives.
· He was the Second Person of the Trinity, the only begotten Son, the radiance of the Father’s glory.
· By his divine nature, he shared in the full perfection of God’s triune being.
This baby—born in Bethlehem—was the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful, and all-glorious Son of God.
What kind of welcome did he deserve?
Jesus deserved to have every person from every nation come and worship him.
· He deserved to have every creature in the entire universe—from the fiercest lion to the tiniest insect—come to his cradle and give him praise.
· He deserved to have the creation itself offer him worship, with the rocks crying glory and the galaxies dancing for joy.
· He is God the Son, and anything less than absolute acknowledgment of his royal person is an insult to his divine dignity.
What kind of welcome did he receive?
What accommodation was he given?
· Luke tells us, “And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. 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” (Luke 2:6–7).
Here is another irony of the incarnation: When the Son of God came to earth—the Maker of the universe in all its vast immensity—he couldn’t even get a room![3]
This is where the Son of God was born. It was uncomfortable enough to sleep there, but imagine trying to give birth in such a place, and for the first time.
This is part of what it meant for Mary to follow through on her promise: “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).
· It meant traveling nearly a hundred miles, either on foot or by donkey, during the later stages of pregnancy.
· It meant the anxiety of having labor pains in a strange city.
· It meant suffering her child’s messy entrance into the world.
· It meant wiping him clean, tearing clothes to bundle him, and then praying that he would live.
Kent Hughes vividly imagines the “sweat and pain and blood and cries as Mary reached up to the heavens for help. The earth was cold and hard. The smell of birth mixed with the stench of manure and acrid straw made a contemptible bouquet. Trembling carpenter’s hands, clumsy with fear, grasped God’s Son slippery with blood—the baby’s limbs waving helplessly as if falling through space—his face grimacing as he gasped in the cold and his cry pierced the night.”10
When people sing of the Savior’s birth, they call it a “silent night.” But as Andrew Peterson has written in his song “Labor of Love,”[4]
Why was Jesus born like this?
What does the crude and unwelcome poverty of his birth tell us about the way of salvation?
1. The birth of Christ shows us the depravity of our sin.
When God the Son was born in Bethlehem, he was unrecognized and unwelcome
. Some Israelites were watching and waiting for the Messiah.
But most were so preoccupied with their own concerns that they were unaware of what God was doing in the world.
When the rightful King was born, they did not even know that he was the King!
His birth went virtually unacknowledged.
As God said through Isaiah the prophet,
“The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand” (Isa. 1:3).
The welcome that Jesus failed to receive is the first hint of something that the Gospel of John said about his ministry as a whole: “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him” (John 1:11).
Jesus was rejected all through his ministry, right up to the very end.
He was driven out of his hometown.
His family thought he was so crazy that they practically disowned him. Many people flocked to him when they heard that he could perform miracles,
but when he started talking about suffering, most of them drifted away.
The religious leaders scoffed at him, rejecting his claims and growing to hate him, until finally they tried to do away with him altogether.
It wasn’t just Bethlehem—there was never enough room for Jesus.
As one commentator put it, “When Christ first came among us we pushed him into an outhouse; and we have done our best to keep him there ever since.”11
This is an outrage!
The way Jesus gets shoved aside ought to make us indignant.
But honestly, what kind of welcome would you have given him?
What kind of welcome are you giving him right now?
Have you made room for Jesus in your heart, coming to him by faith?
Are you keeping a place open for him in your morning routine?
Is there room for him in your daily activities at work or at school?
Are you making space for him in your home?
Jesus does not deserve to be shoved aside. He wants to fill your life with his grace.
Sadly, many people today make the same mistake that people made when Caesar issued his famous decree: they do not make room for Jesus. As Norval Geldenhuys has observed,
“What the inhabitants of Bethlehem did in their ignorance is done by many today in willful indifference—they refuse to make room for the Son of God. They give no place to Him in their feelings, their affections, their thoughts, their views of life, their wishes, their decisions, their actions, or their daily conduct.”12
The story of the nativity shows us our sin. It shows how unwelcome Jesus is to us until God, by his grace, reveals him to us as our Savior and our God.
And of course this is why
2. The humanity of our Savior.
Jesus came to save us from our sins. But in order to do this he first had to become one of us.
and this is the second thing that his birth reveals:
the humanity of our Savior.
Does anything have more of the feel and smell of our humanity than childbirth?
Not to dwell on the details, but anyone who has ever witnessed the birth of a child knows what an earthy experience it is.
The birth of Jesus was earthier than most, and by giving us the details of his delivery, Luke shows that he entered the world just like any other person.
When Mary bundled her baby close, she was caring for the body of a real human being, even though he was also the divine Son of God.
Jesus didn’t just seem to be a human being; he was a human being!
He had red blood running through his veins and human DNA in all his cells.
Martin Luther said that Jesus “did not flutter about like a spirit, but He dwelt among men. He had eyes, ears, mouth, nose, chest, stomach, hands, and feet, just as you and I do. He took the breast. His mother nursed Him as any other child is nursed.”13
Do you believe this?
Do you believe that the Second Person of the Trinity was once a babe in his mother’s arms? This is what we mean by the incarnation.
The God of the universe entered our situation, taking on all the limitations of our physical existence.
He did not save us from a distance but came as close to us as he possibly could, sympathizing with us in our sufferings.
God did this because it was necessary for our salvation.
It was only by becoming a man that the Son of God could offer his body as the sacrifice for our sins, or be raised bodily from the grave.
Jesus had to become one of us to save us.
Of course, we are saved by his death, not his birth; but without his birth, he could never die or live again. There could be no crucifixion and no resurrection without the incarnation.
“Therefore,” wrote Martin Luther, “whenever you are concerned to think and act about your salvation, … you must run directly to the manger and the mother’s womb, embrace this Infant and Virgin’s Child in your arms, and look at Him—born, being nursed, growing up, going about in human society, teaching, dying, rising again, ascending above all the heavens, and having authority over all things.”14
Salvation comes through faith in God incarnate—the Son of God who lived, and died, and lives again in true humanity.[5]
3. The birth of Christ shows us his humility in our salvation.
God is infinitely superior to us. He is not simply a bigger and better version of a human being. He is something altogether different.
He is God, and we are not. His attributes are infinitely superior to ours.
He is the Creator; we are only his creatures. For God to take on our nature, therefore, was an act of infinite humility.
Theologians say that for him to be born at all was a humiliation.
The circumstances of Christ’s birth confirm this.
If God the Son had received the universal welcome that he truly deserved, we might be tempted to think that it was some kind of honor for him to come to earth and become a man.
It was not an honor for Christ to come to earth—it was abject humility; it was infinite condescension.
Although in becoming a man the Son did not cease to be God, he did lay aside the privileges and prerogatives of his deity.
He abandoned the glories of heaven to accept the limitations of earth.
The humble circumstances of his birth starkly demonstrate this. When we see the Son of God lying in a manger, we know that this can only be a humiliation.
In the words of J. C. Ryle, “We see here the grace and condescension of Christ. Had He come to save mankind with royal majesty, surrounded by His Father’s angels, it would have been an act of undeserved mercy. Had He chosen to dwell in a palace, with power and great authority, we should have had reason enough to wonder.
But to become poor as the very poorest of mankind, and lowly as the very lowliest—this is a love that passeth knowledge. It is unspeakable and unsearchable.” Then Ryle goes on to say,
“Never let us forget that through this humiliation Jesus has purchased for us a title to glory.” 15
There was a reason that Christ humbled himself. He knew that in the end he could save us only by suffering and dying for our sins, and he wanted to show this from the very beginning.
The humility of his birth was the whole pattern of his life. Jesus humbled himself to the very death, and there are rumors of this already in his birth.
The sufferings that commenced with his incarnation culminated with his crucifixion.
The same body that was wrapped in swaddling cloths was also wrapped in a burial shroud.
The manger points us to the cross and to the grave. And this is how we are saved: by the humility of our Savior. We are saved by believing for sure that Jesus humbled himself in becoming a man and dying on the cross for our sins.
This is also how we are called to Live
According to the pattern of his humble birth and saving death. The humility of Christ ought to humble us.
We are inclined to insist on our own way—to think that we are more important than we really are.
We get angry when people refuse to give us the credit we think we deserve or show us the honor we think we ought to be given.
We want to be exalted, not humiliated. But there is divinity in humility.
The same Jesus who humbled himself for our salvation also wants us to humble ourselves for the sake of others.
He calls us to be like him in putting others first and taking the lowest place for ourselves.
We must never forget that although he is the Son of God, the Savior we serve was wrapped in swaddling cloths and laid in a manger, because there was no room for him at the inn.[6]
4 David Gooding, According to Luke: A New Exposition of the Third Gospel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 52.
[1]Ryken, P. G. (2009). Luke (R. D. Phillips, P. G. Ryken, & D. M. Doriani, Eds.; Vol. 1, pp. 67–68). P&R Publishing.
[2]Ryken, P. G. (2009). Luke (R. D. Phillips, P. G. Ryken, & D. M. Doriani, Eds.; Vol. 1, p. 69). P&R Publishing.
[3]Ryken, P. G. (2009). Luke (R. D. Phillips, P. G. Ryken, & D. M. Doriani, Eds.; Vol. 1, p. 69). P&R Publishing.
10 Hughes, Luke, 1:83.
[4]Ryken, P. G. (2009). Luke (R. D. Phillips, P. G. Ryken, & D. M. Doriani, Eds.; Vol. 1, pp. 70–71). P&R Publishing.
11 J. R. H. Moorman, The Path to Glory: Studies in the Gospel According to St. Luke (London: SPCK, 1960), 19.
12 Geldenhuys, Luke, 102.
13 Martin Luther, “Sermons on the Gospel of John,” Luther’s Works, trans. Martin Berman (St. Louis: Concordia, 1957), 22:113.
14 Martin Luther, “Lectures on Galatians” (1535), Luther’s Works, trans. Jaroslav Pelikan (St. Louis: Concordia, 1963), 26:30.
[5]Ryken, P. G. (2009). Luke (R. D. Phillips, P. G. Ryken, & D. M. Doriani, Eds.; Vol. 1, pp. 71–73). P&R Publishing.
15 J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels, Luke (1858; reprint Cambridge: James Clarke, 1976), 1:52.
[6]Ryken, P. G. (2009). Luke (R. D. Phillips, P. G. Ryken, & D. M. Doriani, Eds.; Vol. 1, pp. 74–75). P&R Publishing.