seated. Let's pray together before we get started. Our Father we come to you first of all with great thanks as always. We have so much to be grateful for. We are grateful for the opportunity to meet in your name. Although we very seldom feel worthy to meet in your name, we get to, which is an incredible blessing. And we pray, Lord, that you'll bless our time this morning, that it not be a waste, that we would worship you, that we would speak of your glory, and it would be a blessing for all of your people that happen to hear it. We pray the same for all of your churches and all of your preachers throughout the world. We know, Lord, your message will reach your people, and that is a comfort that we are very grateful for. We're thankful, Lord, for your sovereignty and your power, and that it carries out a perfect plan of redemption, of substitution, A perfect plan to save every single one of your people. And Lord, that is what we want to talk about and hear about today. You. Our Savior, Jesus Christ. We pray this in your name. Amen.

Well, it's Christmas time. And I've never, I don't know if I've ever given like a Christmas message. Last year I did Something on the Prince of Peace and what that means, what that title means of Christ. But this came to me through the Lord this week. And when I talk about Christmas, I want to make sure you understand when I use the word Christmas, I'm not talking about what we think of in a worldly version of Christmas. Because I'm going to be using that word throughout the morning. When I talk about Christmas, I'm talking about the birth of Christ. Not presents and ribbons and all of the worldly situations and aspects that we've become so accustomed to, so familiar with. And that's the thing, right? Christmas has familiarity in a worldly way. And familiarity can be dangerous.

Now, we are all very familiar with people saying over the years that Christmas has been taken away from the church, or taken away, it's been commercialized. We've heard that term a lot. Or capitalized upon by people looking to make a dollar. And we're all familiar with that, and that's not necessarily what I'm talking about, although that is a thing, of course it is. We live in a cursed world. Men will take good things and make them bad. But what I'm talking about is even those of us that know the truth can still get wrapped up in a familiarity with Christmas, a nostalgia of Christmas. We sing the songs, which we very much enjoy. We read the verses. We picture the manger. And if we're not careful, we can actually reduce Christmas to nostalgia, to a feeling, to a warmth. The picture of the manger and the warm feeling that we get of this baby that's been born. Even the aspect of our lives that we're currently living now, it becomes a few days, maybe even a week, where things slow down. from the regular hustle of life. More time with family. And family while showing them what they mean to you through gifts and through exchanges.

Am I mic working? You want to switch, May? Let's go to this. How about now? Is that working? Can you hear me? No one's responding. Okay. So what I was saying is we have a tendency where we can get lost in the nostalgia of Christmas. And that's a natural human thing, especially with Christmas because it has become such a fleshly thing that is appealing in so many ways. And in ways that seem good. to spend time with family, to slow down, to love each other. It's a warm story, a holy vibe, if you will. A moment of peace in an otherwise chaotic world. But Christmas is not meant to be comforting. Christmas is the beginning. Christmas is God invading humanity. for a very specific dire need. It is not sentimental. It is sovereign. It is not soft. It is powerful. At Christmas, the eternal God steps into time. not to observe us, not to comfort us, to save us. And this morning I want us to see that the birth of Christ is the execution of God's eternal plan of redemption. A plan that does not end in the manger, it ends on the cross. and in an empty tomb.

So if you have your Bibles, you can turn once again to Luke. And we'll be staying there most of the day, Luke in the first nine or so verses. I'm just gonna read the first seven again, just so we get familiar again with the story, which I'm sure we're very familiar with.

In those days, Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the Roman world. Now this part right here is interesting. This is the beginning of the story being told of the sovereign God being born as a human. This is the beginning of the events that had to take place on earth for the gospel to be carried out. And what's the first sentence? It talks about Caesar Augustus. not angels, no prophecy, no miracle, with a politician, and a very, very bad one, a pagan politician. He thought he was a god. That's where we begin. Caesar Augustus, the most powerful man in the world, issues a census. Why? Because Rome is powerful and they wanna make sure everyone knows it. They wanna know who's in their area, who lives inside of Rome's territory, so they can tax them. It's about money, it's about power, it's about control, and Rome wants to remind the world who is in charge.

But Luke, by opening this story, by telling us specifically, this begins through a pagan leader. Tells us who is actually in control, and this is so comforting. No human maybe ever thought on earth they were sovereign more than Caesar Augustus. They called him a god, they called him Lord, and he was cool with that. This decree was his, he thought. If there was ever a man, like I said, that thought he was sovereign, it was Caesar. But he is not sovereign, he is a pawn. He is a part of the sovereign God's plan. And he can use anyone to carry out anything. The decree wasn't about taxes, it wasn't about governance, it was about God carrying out his sovereign plan. God moving history, creating it,

Because 700 years earlier, if you wanna turn to Micah, in Micah five, verse two, it talks about Bethlehem. It says, but you Bethlehem Ephrathah, Though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from the old, from ancient times. So 700 years earlier, it said the Messiah would come from Bethlehem. 700 years later, Mary lived in Nazareth. So how does God move a poor, pregnant, teenage girl 90 miles south at the exact right moment? By moving an empire. Caesar issued the decree. Joseph packed his bags. Mary made the journey and the prophecy was fulfilled. God's prophecy, God's sovereignty, God's plan.

What looks political to us, and this is applicable now as it was back then, what looks like a political move, I wanna know who's in my country so I can tax them appropriately, was anything but. What looks political is actually prophetic. What looks accidental to us is eternal in God's plan. What looks like chaos to us is always the sovereignty of God. So this aspect of Christmas reminds us that God does not react, God rules. which means a lot for you, it means a lot for us now. If your confusion now, your difficulties now are not evidence of God's absence, your suffering is not proof that he's lost control. If God can use pagan rulers to place his son at the exact right place at the exact right time, then trust that all the things happening in your life are exactly as they should be.

So I love the way that begins. Now if you actually move to verse six. It says, while they were there, the time came for the baby to be born. There was no palace. This is a king. The king of the earth, the king of the world, the king of creation, the king of the universe. There was no palace. There was no building. There was no doctor. There was no nurse. There was just obedience orchestrated by God himself. So Joseph and Mary's obedience cannot be credited to them. It is a gift of God that they would carry out what was asked of them. And that is also true of the faith that they had, but also the faith of every believer. Were it not that our faith originated with God, if it didn't originate with God, it would never exist. Faith cannot begin with us. We are incapable.

And then in verse seven it says, And she gave birth to her first son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger. And we've heard that so many times, and I'm not trying to be dramatic, but think about that. Like, just think about that. We're so used to the idea of this baby in a manger. We put him out on our front yard, you know, these scenes. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but we get so used to the idea of baby Jesus in a manger. Do you know what that is? The creator of the universe laid in a feeding trough. He didn't have to do that. It's just when you have a tiny grip of who he is, A tiny understanding that God has given you of who Christ is and what he is for you. He willingly came here and was placed in a feeding trough. The one who spoke the stars into existence, and that's the truth, now needs to be fed. The Holy Eternal One enters helplessness. He was a newborn baby.

And this is not a failure or an oversight. This was not plan B. This was not a last ditch effort to save his people. This was an intentional emptying of himself.

For you and I to empty ourselves, it doesn't take much because we don't have much in us. Christ is filled with goodness. He cannot be more filled with goodness. So for Christ to empty himself is beyond comprehension.

It says in Philippians 2, he who being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be used for his own advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing. That's what Christmas is. God did not come flexing power. which is what everyone expected from the Messiah, which is why he was not received. He came clothed in the weakness of humanity.

Why? Because he came to take our place. What's our place? Weakness. We say that all the time, he came to take our place. He actually took our place. To be fully man, he had to live every experience that we do. Because salvation does not come through power and domination, it comes through substitution.

The son of God does not arrive as a conquering king, he arrived as a dependent child. You know, I snicker sometimes, and I gotta be careful of that. I snicker that, oh, they just, you know, they expected this Messiah to be a conquering warrior, to raise Israel back to its rightful place, and that's why they couldn't see him for who he really is.

I wouldn't have either. Not without God's Spirit, not without God showing me. Would you ever assume that the Messiah, the king of the world, would come as a helpless newborn child? To understand that and to believe that is simply a miracle.

He arrived as a dependent child, and think about who he was dependent on. Another mind blow. He was dependent on the filthy sinners that he came to save. He was dependent on the filthy sinners for which he became that child.

I think about the hymn, He Surrendered All. Some of the lyrics are, coming from his throne in heaven, Jesus laid his glory by. That sentence does not cover it. His glory is beyond glory. There are no words for it. And he laid it aside. Thus the sinner is forgiven and shall soon be glorified. Even to death Christ did surrender. Even death upon the cross. All to save the worst offender, mine the gain, his all the loss.

Christmas does not show us comfort. Christmas does not show us our value. It shows us how desperate we are. That Christ would have to lay his glory by and become a helpless aspect of the creation that he created. And that's just the beginning.

And instead of demanding in that situation that we would climb up to him, we can't climb up to him. It would save absolutely no one. So he comes all the way down to us. And he doesn't come down with a helping hand. saying, you know, grab on, I'll pull you up. He came so far down, he became one of us, a part of his own creation.

In order to be the substitute for his people, he had to actually take their place. And all scripture we know points to the gospel of Christ, all of it. Christ and him crucified. The telling of the birth of Christ is no exception.

Because of Christmas stopped at the manger, we've missed a huge aspect of the gospel. Jesus was not born to live. He was born to die. Christ was given fleshly life solely for it to be taken away. And there are parallels. It says he was wrapped in cloths at his birth. He was also wrapped in cloths after they took him down from the cross. There's already pictures of where this was going. This was not the beginning with a question mark in the future. This plan was perfectly laid out. He was laid in a manger and laid later in a borrowed tomb. The wood of the manger points to the wood of the cross. From the very beginning, This child was on a mission.

It says in Matthew 1.21, she will give birth to a son. You are to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. This is prior to his birth. From the moment he was born, He was on the mission to save his people.

It says in Galatians 4, but when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law to redeem those who were under the law. That means that he came not to sympathize with us, not to comfort us, he came to bear our guilt. Christmas is not saying, I understand you. Christmas is God saying, I have to take your place or you're lost.

The newborn grows into a man. The man lives perfectly without sin. The man suffers the wrath of God that we deserve. And we preach that at Christmas. We preach Christ, Christ's birth, Christ's death, and Christ's victory. That is what we preach because that alone is the message that can do anyone good. That alone is the message that saves. Christ's work. And we preach that at Christmastime or any other day of the year. And then I also love, who does he talk to? Who does he show this glory to, if you go to verse nine, staying in Luke? It says, an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.

These were shepherds. Shepherds were dirty. Shepherds were unclean. Shepherds were unimpressive. They were the lowest of society. If you couldn't do anything else, you could be a shepherd. We see this throughout the gospel, who Christ ate dinner with. The lowest of society, and that's yet who God chooses to reveal his glory to.

Why? Because the gospel does not belong to the self-sufficient. to those who believe they have no real need, or if they believe they have a partial need. It belongs to the weak. It belongs to the meek and the mild. It belongs to sinners. God's grace does not land on those who think they deserve it. God's grace lands on those who are shown that they don't.

So here it is, simply and clearly, at Christmas, God did not come to comfort us. God did not come to simply join us. God became flesh not as a sentimental token to warm our hearts at Christmastime. He came to rescue his people. The child in the manger is the man on the cross. The child in the manger is the king on the throne right now. Born to live the life that we could not live. Born to die the death that we deserved. He was born to win the battle that we never could. He was born to defeat sin and death. He was born to prepare a place for every one of his people that they could be with him forever. He was born to reign on the throne for eternity, surrounded and worshiped by those who adore him. Because those are the people he saved.

Christ is all. Christ was all before he was born. Christ was all while he was here. And Christ is all for eternity. And this is how we should approach Christmas. not with just sentiment or warm fuzzies, with surrender. Just as we approach the gospel every time, every time we hear it, we should come to it with surrender. Because there's nothing else we can do. Resting is what we're called to do.

So even in Christmas, as we talk about the nostalgic, warm feelings of Christmas, the familiarity that we've all had since we were young, it's just another aspect of the beautiful salvation of God for his people. And how we can rest once again in the perfect birth the perfect life, death, and victory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Our Father, we thank you so much for the orchestration of your perfection and your plan, both in our day-to-day lives and in the obvious beauty and glory of your gospel. We thank you for the perfection and glory of Christ. We thank you, Christ, for everything you are, everything you are, and everything you've done for us. We pray, Lord, that you'll put that on our hearts more and more. We thank you, Jesus, and we pray this in your name, amen.