God Arrives in a Small Place

Transcript

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[0:00] Well, it's time for the sermon now. And our reading is from Luke chapter 2, verses 1 through 4. And just a little bit of introduction. I'm going to tell you that Christmas Eve is here. Later, we're going to light the final candle on this Advent wreath. We've been waiting a long time, but the wait is over. It's really going to happen. And we're going to read the whole Christmas story later, later when the Advent wreath is finally lit and the Christ candle in the center is lit. But for now, I just want to focus on the first four verses of our Christmas story, Luke chapter 2, 1 through 4.

[0:39] And I have to say that Luke is this amazingly organized and thoughtful writer. I wish I could write like Luke. I think he had some help. But he's thoughtful. He lays everything out in an organized way. But in a masterful way. And he tells us as much in his own writing. He says, I'm going to set out an orderly account so that people can come to faith in Jesus Christ. But there's more than that. He frames everything with this really powerful literary style. There are some parallels from beginning to end. It's the perfect composition. If you're trying to tell a story, you have to have the sort of this mirroring of events from the beginning to the end. You have to pay off. All the plot devices that you introduce in the beginning. You have to have some ending for them. And Luke does that. We're going to see how he does that. The title of this sermon is location, location, location. And just so you know, it's not a real estate seminar and we will not be asking you to invest in a timeshare. That's actually tomorrow. No, I'm kidding. We're not going to do that. We don't do that here. Instead, we will see Luke's writing power on display in how Luke writes. And how he talks about the three locations that are mentioned in these readings.

[1:57] Actually four, but three kind of larger locations. So with that, let's go to our reading and ask you to pay attention to the locations that Luke is bringing us to. So let's read Luke chapter two, one through four. In those days, a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration. And it was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered.

[2:31] Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea to the city of David called Bethlehem. Because he was descended from the house and family of David. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, on this Christmas Eve.

[2:52] In this Christmas season. We pray that you would bless the reading of your word. Amen. Well, first off, let's get to the word that is so hard to read. A little later, Kaya is going to read it when she reads the Christmas story in our candle lighting. And we had to practice it a bit. And that word is Quirinius.

[3:16] Quirinius, the governor of Syria. But more than a strange name. It's the sort of the strangeness that he is even mentioned at all. And you may be wondering to yourself, who is he? What is his story? We can get into that. But it's not important for now. But what's important is that he's mentioned. And that he is somebody who lives in a place that you could sort of trace and say, okay, that's a real person in a real place.

[3:45] What is important is that he and the others anchor this story. In a particular place and in a particular time. Because Luke is at work now. He is documenting in an orderly way the story of the birth of Jesus and the life of Jesus, the death of Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus. Also that people would come to faith. And so he's anchoring the story in reality. This is important. God loves reality. He's anchoring the story in the reality of a real person who lived at a real time in a real place. So all the names and all the places in this story actually have a reality, their own reality, the real reality. And they have a time, a time and a place, a location, a location, a location. So here are the names that we have in order. Okay. And you can read from them from your text. But first off, we have Augustus.

[4:44] Then Quirinius. Then Joseph. This is important. And then David. Is mentioned. So there's actually four names mentioned. So these are people that we can document. And first, certainly the first two are people that you could absolutely document that they exist. You could absolutely document that they exist. You could go into the records. There's no doubt in anyone's mind that Caesar Augustus existed and was a real historical figure. There's nobody who would say that he wasn't. Quirinius, the same way. Right. These are, there's documents. There's records of things like that.

[5:23] Also, King David. We believe, we believe, not just believe, but we know King David lived. There's other things outside the Bible that point to the existence of King David. And so, again, here are the people. But I'm going to add now the places that they're from. And you can read this again. Augustus is from or represents the entire Roman Empire. Pretty big. Quirinius, a much smaller part of it, the province of Syria. And Joseph, just from the town of Nazareth in Galilee. And finally, David from the town of Bethlehem in Judea, which is near Jerusalem.

[6:02] And all this is to frame that what he reports next, the actual birth of Jesus, which we've waited all Advent for, happened for a real set of people, his parents, in a real place, Bethlehem. And so, Luke is starting this story in a really important way. In a really thoughtful way. He's explaining that Joseph, and thus Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus, are in a line or in a progression of people who are real people who occupied a real place in a real time. And thus, their existence can be trusted, can be believed. And thus, the story of what Jesus does is believable. This is the logic of it. And actually, that's how people were authenticated. If you want to look for a way to authenticate a person way back then, they didn't have driver's licenses or other documents. They were so and so from such and such a place. So they was, it was Jesus from Nazareth, or it was Joseph from Nazareth, or it was David from Bethlehem, or Quirinius from Syria. That was enough to tell that that was a unique person. The world was smaller then. There weren't as many people. There weren't as many duplications of names and places.

[7:25] So that was enough for you to be considered a real person. You know, even not too long ago, I served a church in Iowa at the beginning of the millennium. And you could, you could still then, you could send a letter to someone in your same zip code just by putting their name and the mail route and the zip code, because it had to go to the right post office. And the mailman or the mail woman knew exactly who that was. Oh, that's the Deeters at the Deeters farm. Now there's the Dutch family in the church. That's the Deeters at the Deeters farm just down the road. Well, we'll just drop it in their mailbox. All you had to, you didn't have to put their address on it. So it was enough to say the Deeters on rural route to Larchwood, Iowa. It would get to their house. I'm not sure if that happens anymore. They maybe have tightened up, but that was enough in a small way. It was a small town in a small place in the countryside. There was only one Deeters. Well, actually there was a whole family of them, but so you kind of had to give the first name, but still that was enough. And so it was enough back then to say Joseph of Nazareth. Now that's half of it. I think you see where this is going is that these are real people.

[8:39] And if these are real people, then Joseph and Mary are real people. And if they're real people, then Jesus is real. And if Jesus is real, what he's doing is real. And everything that he does is real and trustworthy. And we can have faith in it.

[8:51] The other half of it is there's this progression. And I want you to notice how Luke telescopes in basically. He starts with this really wide field. It's the whole empire. It's thousands of miles across, right? And then he zooms in a bit on a region which is just hundreds of miles across. That's Syria where Quirinius is governor. And then he zooms in even more to the distance from Nazareth. And then he zooms in to Bethlehem, which is just tens of miles apart. Do you see how everything is kind of going down by a factor of ten? It's just tens of miles apart. In fact, it's exactly nine tens or 90 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem. And then you zoom down to Bethlehem and it's not more than one mile across, if that. And so we have Luke zooming in to one spot on the map and saying, this is the spot where important things are going to happen. But nonetheless, it's not in a very important place, even though it is the place where David had lived, his ancestor. He's zooming in from all the known world to just one family. And so this happens geographically, but it also happens demographically.

[10:08] From all the people of the empire, the millions, to the thousands, to just the two or the one, to the family of three. And they're not very important people. And so we have Luke talking about the ! Really, and this is important, God, Christmas is about God coming in the flesh, not as an emperor or a governor or a king of a small kingdom, but just as a baby. Just as a tiny, tiny child, a small, helpless little human, but with all divinity within him. That's how God comes into the world. That's how God redeems the world. Not with this great power to overthrow principalities and powers. That comes later in a very subversive way, in a very grassroots kind of way from the bottom up. But as it begins, it doesn't begin with a flash of light. It doesn't begin with a flash of lightning or a fire or an earthquake. You couldn't hear God's voice in any of those things. There's just that still, small voice, that quiet night, just broken open by the cries of a newborn baby.

[11:48] And this same little one grows up to be just a man. Nobody would even notice him that night, except unless the angels and the stars had told them to go find him there, right? He grows up to be just a man, though in that man all the fullness of God was dwelling bodily. And in this human and God person, all these amazing things happen, Luke tells us. We've telescoped down to one man, and we find him both meek and small, and yet containing the vastness of the universe within him.

[12:28] And in him, lives are healed. And in him, lives are healed. And in him, lives are put back together. The dead are raised. Sickness is cured. Hope is reborn. Love is preached. Forgiveness is on offer. And the greatest gift comes in this tiniest little package. That's Christmas.

[12:49] That's the Christmas that Luke is telling us about. It's for all the people in this vast empire, but it comes from one small person, and it grows out from there. And that's the other side of this all. If you read later in Luke, and even in further in the sequel that we call Acts, that the telescope begins to basically zoom back out again. And God says to the disciples, you will be witnesses to me, of me, from this place on and out to the ends of the earth. That's from Jerusalem outward. And so God zooms out and Luke zooms out. And then we hear the stories of the travels of the apostle Paul all throughout the Roman Empire. And so what starts with the Roman Empire comes down to this spot, and then it goes back out and ends with the Roman Empire. Do you see how he paid it off? It's a good framing. It's a good plot delivery. Luke is good at this, but the spirit is even better.

[13:53] That's the amazing framing that Luke does. You should read the whole thing. Luke and Acts together. Read it in a day. If you can. He zooms in on this little child and says, this is the real, this is the trustworthy. This is little Jesus on postal route to. He's real. You can find him. You can look him up. There he is. He moves back to Nazareth. He grows up. He becomes a man. He does all these other things. He's here to change the world. Starting where he is in that one location, but moving out, always moving out location after location after location. Until the whole world can hear the good news. And there's no corner of creation that has not at least had a chance to hear the story.

[14:44] And there's one final location. This is the end. That location is right here in your heart. And that's also Luke's aim. He talks about that. He tells us. So that's why he's so careful with the details. So masterful. So faithful with the construction of the text. That when we read it, we make room in our own hearts.

[15:07] For the little baby, yes. For the man, yes. For God and his redemptive power, yes and yes. Make room in your hearts today. And I'm going to ask you later on in the service, a little child, just nine years old, is going to read you the rest of the story. Right now, save some room, make a place, prepare a location in your heart to hear the rest of the story. The angels, the shepherds, the animals, and all the rest. I just want to say God bless you. I love you. God loves you. Merry Christmas. We'll see you in a few.