The Promised King, Part 4 - Pastor Tom Loghry
Pastor Tom digs into the Old Testament to explore the promises that foreshadowed Christ’s birth.
Transcript:
Tough things have happened in my life this week. My grandpa entered hospice at the beginning of the week and passed away on Thursday. On Friday I visited our dear brother Pastor Bill who is in hospice care. He also will soon be entering his rest. I've been so blessed by your love and prayers through all this. Things have happened things that tear my soul apart. You too, of course, have had things happen. Maybe not this week, but in your life. Death's bitter sting rears its head in our holiday celebrations, reminding us of those we wished were with us. We hope for a good future, that as one generation passes, another will arise, and we'll have more good times to share in the years to come. But the fact remains that we don't just want new faces. We want those faces from old. We want those we've loved and who have loved us. These things have happened. But today, we celebrate something else that has happened. Something that affects everything else that has happened. The birth of Jesus Christ. and this is what we find recorded in Luke chapter 2.
What I want to look at this morning are the essentials. That fact that historically speaking Jesus Christ was born. This was not a mythological birth. As though Luke was writing that once upon a time in a land far, far away there was a virgin who gave birth to a son. This is not like any of the Greek myths that would have been current at that time. Now, the author of the Gospel of Luke, Luke, is a historian. And he anchors the birth of Christ in a place in time, in the place of Bethlehem, and in proximity to a decree that was given by Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. And this was during the time that Quirinius was governor of Syria. Now there was another historian living in the first century named Josephus, who records this census as taking place in 6 AD. Now traditionally our understanding is that Christ was actually born around like 5 BC, so earlier because he was alive during the reign of King Herod the Great. So there's a little bit of a debate here, because we know that Luke is a good historian, he is much more vested in getting the date of the census right than Josephus does. And there's various theories as to whether there was an earlier census that happened. There's also the theory that perhaps what Luke is actually doing here is offering us a little bit of an aside in talking about a taxation that happened at a later time. In fact, Christ's birth happened earlier. It's all very interesting if you want to look into it. I'm not going to get into it this morning because it's enough to see that what Luke is testifying to is that this really happened in the course of history. He's presenting to us a historical event. So whether they went at the time of this taxation or whether it was a time before this taxation, the fact is this. Is that Jesus was born in Bethlehem among Joseph's people. And this is what Luke is really trying to do for us. He's trying to drive home the fact that Joseph really truly belongs in Bethlehem, that he is of the house in line of David. Now you ask, why is that significant? Why is it significant that Joseph is of the house in line of King David?
Well, the reason is this is that about 900 years or more before, thousand years before, God had given a promise to King David. We covered this recently in 1 Chronicles 17, 11 through 14. It's worth reading again. God told David this, "'When your days are over and you go to be with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, one of your own sons, and I will establish his kingdom.' He is the one who will build a house for me and I will establish his throne forever. I will be his father and he will be my son. I will never take my love away from him as I took it away from your predecessor. I will set him over my house in my kingdom forever. His throne will be established forever." Quite a promise. Something that we can be sure that David was glad to hear. something that the people of Israel would have been glad to have heard. And we see that 500 years on that this promise remains in place even while it has not yet come to pass because as it would turn out, the sons of David, they didn't measure up to this promised king. There were men who had all kinds of sins and vices, and they led the nation astray. But even so, God did not turn his back on his people. The promise remained. And so in Jeremiah 33, verses 15 through 16, it is prophesied. In those days and at that time, I will make a righteous branch sprout from David's line. He will do what is just. and right in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. This is the name by which it will be called the Lord, our righteous Savior." So again, a precious promise given to the people of Israel. Not only that this king would come, but that he would establish justice and righteousness and bring safety. That he would be their Savior. And as we see prophesied elsewhere in Micah 5, the Savior was to be born in Bethlehem. And again, all these prophecies are happening hundreds of years before Jesus was ever born. But now we ask, so what? So what that this King is to be born? So what that he is to be the Savior for Israel? Many of us here are not of Jewish descent. What sort of good news is this for us? Well, when we look further into the prophets, we learn why it is to be such good news.
You see, what ultimately is to be brought about through this king is the restoration of the entire world. And this is what Isaiah promises, speaking as God's prophet. In Isaiah 65 verses 17 through 19 and verse 25, he says, See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create. For I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy. I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people. The sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more. The wolf and the lamb will feed together and the lion will eat straw like the ox. And the dust will be the serpent's food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord. What God is telling us through Isaiah is that there is a time coming that will be much different than the time that we're living in today. A time when there will be no more weeping. A time when there will be true peace. When the wolf can lay down with a lamb and eat together. Now, we have it emphasized here by Luke that Jesus' father, Joseph, is from the town of Bethlehem, that he is of the line of David. But we also have to remember that Joseph is not Jesus' biological father. Joseph is Jesus' adoptive father. He's his father nonetheless, and it's significant as far as these prophecies go, but he is his adoptive father. Because as we learn in Luke 1, Mary miraculously conceived Jesus by the Holy Spirit. And there she was given the message by the angel, that this one to be born, this son, would be this promised Savior. Now as I said last week, I'm going to talk about We don't hear about that every day. It is truly miraculous. It's not a feat too big for the God who created all of creation. But we should appreciate that while this is not something that is typical, we have the miraculous alongside the historical. And this is what all the apostles testify to. Yes, they did not see all this transpire with their own eyes, but they knew Jesus. They knew Mary. and they were willing to die and suffer saying, this is what happened. What they're testifying to is that while Jesus was truly, fully human, He was the Son of David, He was also truly and fully God, the Son of God in human flesh. This is what the Apostle John testifies to at the very beginning of his Gospel in John 1:14. He says the Word, and when he's talking about the Word, he's talking about Jesus. The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. the Son of God, who existed from all eternity, came to be with us, so that we might be saved. And this isn't any sort of innovation on the part of the Apostle John in understanding it in this sort of way.
In Ezekiel 34, verses 15 and 22 through 23, we see that God promises His people that He would come to them. and shepherd them and save them and yet it's integrated with this promise regarding this Son of David, this promised Messiah. We read there, God says, I myself will tend my sheep. God's saying this, I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down declares the Sovereign Lord. I will save my flock and they will no longer be plundered. I will judge between one sheep and another. I will place over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he will tend them. He will tend them and be their shepherd. And so we see that, how Jesus brings everything together in his identity, where he is the son of David. And so he can be spoken of as his God's servant, David. And yet he is also God himself in the flesh, the son of God. And so if we say that Jesus is the savior, we are saying that God is our savior. Now what's incredible, again, is just the fact that God would humble Himself so much to enter into our circumstances. And we see just what those circumstances are in the manner in which Jesus was born, of how His bed was a manger. Now when we think about the stable, and I just show this again just to emphasize the historicity here. We've kind of created an image of what the stable looks like. We kind of imagine a barn and that Jesus is out in a barn. And that's what our nativity scene outside looks like, because it's a very simple way to depict that. But that was not, in fact, the situation. We have a picture. Should have a picture. The animals were actually kept in the house. I know it's strange to think about. It was built, it's almost like, you can almost imagine a garage. We have a walk, some of us have walk in garage. You have the stable. And you can see how there's mangers right there. You have a family living room where everyone was staying. And they had a guest room. And so when it says that there was no room for them in the inn traditionally, that could also be translated as guest room. Same word, catalima. And so you can imagine that Mary and Joseph were with family. It's Joseph's hometown. But they didn't have room for the baby. It was crowded in there. So they laid Jesus in the manger. Jesus was born into the first century, into the conditions of the first century world in Judea. Our attention turns from this humble scene to another.
In verses 8 through 15, we find shepherds on the night shift. And they are met by an angel of the Lord and by the heavenly host with a message of great news to them. Now, we ask, why would God, come bring this message to shepherds. Well, as we were just talking about how God promised that he would shepherd his people, we can pick out some significance there. The one who would shepherd us brings this news first to the shepherds, that he would be the shepherd of shepherds. On the other hand, it is unexpected, because we would almost expect these angels might make their visitation to the priests or something like that. But once again, we see God's love for every person here. He doesn't only care about the high and mighty, but those who are also lowly and humble. And this is the message they bring. They say, do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David, a Savior has been born to you. He is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you. you'll find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. Verse 14, they sing glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests. Now, this message that they're bringing to the shepherds is something that these shepherds would have been hoping for. The shepherds aren't asking, well, what do they mean by a messiah? As though that was a novel concept to them. They were saturated in these promises that we've just gone over. That this promised king would come and deliver Israel and bring peace and justice and righteousness. And so they're receiving this news that this Messiah, this one that for hundreds of years we've been looking for, has been born. This is good news for Israel. But it's also good news for all people. It says all the people. And that all the people, it doesn't just include Israel, it includes the entire world. Isaiah 56 is a beautiful chapter. There we find God speaking through the prophet Isaiah, telling of how he's going to bring the Gentiles to himself, the foreigners to himself. You might expect of a religion that was born in a specific nationality that would just be solely concerned about the Jewish people. But that's not what we see. God has global intents. And so in Isaiah 56, 8. says the sovereign Lord declares he who gathers the exiles of Israel I will gather still others to them besides those already gathered. Now again remember the implications here. We've already heard of how God is going to make all things new. How he's going to put aside weeping. How there's going to be peace. That's a promise that belongs to us as well, even for those who aren't Jewish. Because the Messiah of the Jewish people is our Messiah as well.
The Apostle John saw that day which was to come in his book of Revelation. It recalls that imagery that we have in Isaiah. He says in Revelation 21:4, he will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death. Hallelujah. Or mourning or crying or pain for the old order of things has passed. Something new is coming. It's beginning with Jesus. And so the shepherds, you can imagine them huddling up together, and they're like, we've got to go see this thing that has happened. This is no mere theory, it's no mere story, this is something that has happened something that is as real as all the trouble that they may have suffered in their life, something that is as real as all the sorrow and hardships that we may have experienced, this is something that has happened. And so if you knew all those promises about the promised Messiah who would make all things new, you'd run to the manger too. And that's just what they do. So we see them do that in verses 16 through 21. And when they go there, and they say it's just as the angels said, and they go off glorifying and praising God. And as God had told Mary and Joseph through the angels that they were to name Jesus Jesus, they do that. And His name, Jesus, means the Lord is our salvation. fitting name. And what does it mean that Jesus is our Savior? Well, it means everything that we've brought up here, that He's going to bring this peace, righteousness, He's going to put aside death. It also means that we're going to be delivered of our sins, we're going to be forgiven of our sins.
This is the word that was given to Joseph by the angel in a dream, in Matthew 1:21. Speaking of Mary, it says, she will give birth to a son in order to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. You see, the condition of this world is not God's fault. It's not God's fault. And when we go through tough times, it can be very easy to get angry at God. You feel like, God, why does this or that happen? But we have to remember that all these things, while they might not be derived from some very specific thing that you did, it's not as though we trip over wire and then all of a sudden someone in your life dies. That's not how it works. It's that because of human sin, which goes all the way back in our family history to Adam and Eve, we have separated ourselves from God because we wanted to be our own gods. We wanted to live life on our terms rather than God's terms. And because we've been separated from God, we've lived with the consequences of that. It's like, If you take a flower, a flower needs the light of the sun in order to live and flourish. But if you put it in the darkness, it will wither and fade. We have removed ourselves from God's presence by our sin. In order to live, in order to flourish, we need to be able to dwell with God. And this is what Jesus has come to do, that we might live with him in a new order.
Peter talks of this in his letter, 1 Peter 2:24-25. He tells us how Jesus accomplishes this. He says, He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed, for you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls. You see, what Jesus has done is he's not simply been born. He actually lived. He lived a complete human life. And that he lived life in the way that it ought to be lived. In obedience to God. He is the good man, the good human being that all of us are supposed to be. And this culminates with his death on the cross. He did not deserve it. despite knowing all the suffering that it was going to bring. It's the punctuation mark of a perfect life of obedience. But it's not the end. That's just the beginning. Because in offering his life up to God completely, you can't offer your life more completely than that, he's given God a gift that ransoms us, covers all of our sins, all of our wrongdoings. And again, makes it possible, as Peter says, that we can become dead to sin, the rottenness in our heart, and be made into new people like Jesus Christ. And so he's gathering us to himself, all of us who are wayward sheep. He's gathering us to himself like a shepherd. He did not just die, he rose again three days later. and he ascended to heaven and he's living today. We don't speak of Jesus in the past tense, except when occasionally necessary, but we speak of Jesus in the present tense because he lives. and he will return again. Now this, again, just as his birth, this all seems incredible, that a man could die, that he could rise from the dead three days later and then ascend to heaven. But again, this is rooted in historical circumstances. He was crucified by Pontius Pilate, an actual governor who lived. And all of his followers saw him. They saw him die. And then they saw him alive again. And they were willing to be tortured and killed, saying that was true, despite the fact that they had nothing to gain. Mary saw it all too. And even just seeing this, what has transpired in Jesus' birth, it gets her to ponder. She stored up all these things and pondered them in her heart, just taking it all in. Her little boy, the Savior of the world. You and I are invited to ponder on who Jesus is. Jesus invites us to ponder upon him.
Jesus in talking to his disciples says this, what about you, he asks, who do you say that I am? A lot of people are asking questions about who is this guy? He's a whole lot different than the rest of us. Seems like maybe he might be the Messiah or a great prophet. They're asking this question. So he asked his disciples, who do you say that I am? And Peter answered. Peter wasn't perfect. We see all kinds of errors in Peter's life, but here he got it right because the Father revealed it to him. He says, you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Now this is the question that all of us must answer. Who is Jesus? Who do you say that Jesus is? This is nothing that we can just shrug our shoulders about. Jesus is real. He actually lived. So either he was just a chill guy who lived, or he was, in fact, the Son of God. He was, in fact, the Messiah. He's either the Lord, or in truth, he's a liar and a lunatic, because he says all kinds of things about himself that. no sane person would say, no honest person would say. We have to settle where we stand with him, where we think about him for all the things that have happened and all the things that will happen. Something else has happened that changes everything. Jesus has been born. Our Savior has appeared. He is as real as death. He has overcome death and his resurrection. We will weep today, but we will not weep forever, because one day He will raise us from our graves. He will raise those we love from their graves. He's good, more good than we've ever been. And when we look at His goodness, we are reminded of our sinfulness, because we don't measure up to Him. But it's by His own goodness. that our sins can be washed away. You have a mountain of debt, a mountain of wrong to answer for, but Jesus takes it all away. He lives for us, He died for us, He has been raised for us, and He has ascended to the Father for us so that we can call His Father our Father. He becomes ours when we belong to Jesus. When you simply pledge yourself to Jesus and trust that he can save and restore you, overcoming all your faults. And just as there is one day when he was born, there is one day when Jesus will come for us, not metaphorically, but literally, that same body that was raised from the dead. Our King has come and he will return to us again.
Let's pray. Dear Father. Thank you for sending us our King, Jesus Christ. It's because of Him, Father, that we can call you our Father. It's because of Him that we can have peace with you. and we can seek peace with others, Father, because we have been forgiven of our sins through Jesus Christ, and so we have been free to forgive others of theirs. Father, we thank you that because Jesus, our King, has been born, we can have hope so that through this veil of tears we can see the light, the dawn of a new age which is coming. When death will be no more, sin will be completely absent, Father. and righteousness and peace will reign. Father, we look forward to that second coming. Today, Father, we celebrate the first coming of Jesus Christ. He is our precious gift. Help us like the shepherd's father to go forth glorifying and praising you, sharing the good news of his birth. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Intro/Outro Song
Title: River Meditation
Artist: Jason Shaw
Source:http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jason_Shaw/Audionautix_Acoustic/RIVER_MEDITATION___________2-58
License:(CC BY 3.0 US)