The Birth of the Savior

The Birth of the Savior

Dec 17, 2023

Passage: Luke 2:1-7

Preacher: Bill Massey

Series: Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus (Advent 2023)

Category: Sunday Morning

Detail:

Intro: History, at times, displays such tantalizing irony - these states of affairs are beyond anything we might have expected. “Who could have imagined?” we say. But the greatest irony in history is seen in the circumstances surrounding our Savior’s birth. Caesar Augustus has made a decree affecting “all the world.” Augustus means “holy” a title reserved only for deity. As the Emperor he brought a remarkable measure of peace to the known world - the Pax Romana. He was hailed as the “Savior” of the world. And yet, in the upheaval of his decree, we see the hidden hand of God moving Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem where God decreed long ago the true Savior of the would be born. Luke must
have seen the irony in all this and recorded it with a sense of delight. The Roman Senate proclaimed Ceasar divine, but the babe born in Bethlehem was truly “the Son of the Most High” as proclaimed to Mary by the angel. In his birth, we see the wonder of the incarnation - how the Son of God has come in human flesh. And how shocking that such an exalted Person was not wrapped in a robe of royal purple nor laid on a throne of gold when he was born but rather wrapped in swaddling cloths and laid in a feeding trough for livestock! What a shocking humiliation! How ironic that this is the One the angels proclaimed as the world’s Savior who has brought peace between God and mankind. Receiving him moves us to imitate his humility.

  1. Incarnation
  2. Humiliation
  3. Imitation
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