Luke's Gospel

Luke chapter 2. In those days, Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. This was the first census that took place while quireenius was governor of Syria and everyone went to their own town to to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in galilee to Judea to Bethlehem the town of David because he belonged to the house on the line of David. He went there to register with Mary who has pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.

While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born. And she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in clothes and placed him in a manger because there was no guest room available for them. And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the lord appeared to them and the glory of the lord shone around them and they were terrified But the angel said to them, do not be afraid.

I bring you good news that cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David, a savior has been born to you. He's the Messiah, the lord. This will be assigned to you. You will find a baby wrapped in cloths, and lying in a manger.

Suddenly, a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel praising god and saying glory to god in the highest heaven and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests. When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, The shepherds said to 1 another, let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened which the Lord has told us about. So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child. And all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherd said to them.

But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising god for all the things they had heard and seen which were just as they had been told on the eighth day When it was time to circumcise the child, he was named Jesus. The name the angel had given him before he was conceived. Well, good evening. Let me let me have my welcome.

My name's Chris. To thee on 1 of the members here at Cornerstone. As we start, let me pray. Father help us now as we come to your word, help us as we come to this passage, help us to see the lord Jesus Christ and love him all the more, amen. Very unconventional for me.

We will be having points up on the screen, as we go along. So if you're taking notes, hopefully that will that will help you to to to follow along. Dionysius was a monk and the year was 5 25 AD. Although at this particular moment in time, Dionysseus didn't know that because he hadn't invented it yet. Dionysseus was the man who invented a method for for dating and telling time as we currently know it.

So BC before Christ and AD Anodomini, which means in the year of our lord. So if we're going to say it correctly, then this year is the year of our lord 2018. Now before Dyn easiest came up with this idea of, of telling time, people used other other methods. They had their own other methods. The Romans used something called and I'm going to butcher the pronoun pronunciation of this Abbe Erbe condita.

Where's Sophie? Is that how you say in Latin? She doesn't know or AUC for short. Now, this was dated from the founding of Rome So as we would know it, the year 753 BC or as they would have said, the year dot, the year 0 because that was the most important date. That day was the important 1.

That would make this year 2771 or there or thereabouts except no 1 uses that calendar anymore. Doesn't exist. The Hebrews would state that their calendar starts with creation, which they would say is roughly 3761 BC as we would know it. And that would make, if you go by their calendar, this year would be 5779. They have no BC.

They have no AD because they don't believe that Christ has come at all. They're still waiting. And nobody else uses their calendar apart from them. It's not commonly used. After Dionysseus, came up with this way of dating time.

Other people came up with other ways of dating time still. So, for example, you go to the Arabic or Islamic calendar and that 1 starts in the year 6 22 AD and that's the founding of the first Islamic community and that's the most important date. That's the day on which it's all based and it states that the current year is 1440. But the rest of the world doesn't recognize that date. And so when they want to do business or or or anything on an international level they are forced to conform to a date based on Jesus, not on what Mohammed said, which I find quite ironic.

However, in the secular modern era, as as I think as recently as 19 99, someone might correct me on that later, but to make it more palatable, we don't say BC or AD really anymore unless you're a historian or a scholar. You would say instead of AD, CE, which means current era. And instead of BC before Christ, it would be BCE before current era. But the dates are still based on Jesus. They've just taken his name out of it to make it more palatable to everybody else.

Now why am I telling you all of this stuff? I wanted to show you for 1 reason and the reason is this. Upon no other person, is our whole understanding of history and time based. None of those other methods for understanding the dates are based upon the life of 1 individual, more accurately the birth. Of 1 individual person.

So the whole of history, the counting of the years, they all converge and hinge like a seesaw on that day, the day of Jesus' birth. The day when God became a man, a manuel god with us. That's the day we mark our time by and understand all of history by before Jesus came and after Jesus came. But I'm telling you how to suck eggs there. You guys already know that, I guess.

Right? I just wanted to make that point. It's the most important day. So with that in mind, Let's look at Luke's account of the day itself. So the first point is a day in history.

It's a day that is fixed into the history books. Now what makes reading Luke so great is that you get this sense in which it's There's this fairy tale storytelling element to the book in those days. But Luke also cements everything as historical fact. These things absolutely happen. So you've got Luke, the storyteller, and Luke the historian.

Coming together. And that's how he starts chapter 2. So in those days, Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. This was the first census that took place while Quyrinius was governor of Syria. And everyone went to their own town to register.

Now these couple of verses are often used by scholars and bible critics to prove the inaccuracy of scripture or to try and prove the inaccuracy of scripture. They say, Luke got the dates wrong. It can't be right. He's completely messed up those dates and the arguments go a little something like this. There's 3 main ones really.

The first 1 that they say is that Augustus never commissioned a census of the entire Roman world The second 1 is Corinius was made governor of Syria in 6 AD and the census was in 6 AD. But this can't be the same 1 because Luke says that Jesus was born. He can't be 6 years old. So Luke's completely wrong. He's way out.

He's 6 years out. Third 1 is that the Romans didn't require people to travel to their hometowns to register for a census. On the face of it, those seem like pretty alarming arguments for us alarming because if those arguments stand, if they are true and Luke is wrong, then how can we trust anything else that Luke says following? So it's important that we address that. It's important that we look at that.

So let's deal with them 1 at a time. The first 1, Augustus never issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. In a sense, yes, there is some truth in that. Augustus was the emperor who introduced the system of collecting imperial taxes into the Roman systems. And so whilst there's not 1 decree that says I want a senseless 1 census of the entire Roman world.

What he did do was take a census of every single province of the Roman world because that's how the empire split up. Right? You've got Spain in about 3 or 4 different provinces. You've got Gaul, you've got Asia minor, you've got Syria, Egypt, different provinces making up the empire and they all had a census taken. So in that sense, yes, Augustus did say take a census of the empire.

It was done province by province. So yeah, I think fine. Forget that argument. Second Corinneos was made governor of Syria in 6 AD. Now stay with me here because we've got some dates coming up.

So you've got to stay with me. This would have made Jesus 6 years old, and therefore people say this doesn't fit with what Luke is saying about the birth of Jesus. Luke's wrong. And to answer it, we need to go back a little bit further first. So Jesus was born in the time of king herod King herod the great, we hear that from chapter 1.

We know that. However, king herod died in 4 BC. You see the problem we've got straight away. We know herod died in 4 BC. How can Jesus be born during the reign of king herod when herod died 4 years before Jesus was even born, there's a bit of a problem.

Unless our friend, Dionysseus, the monk, got it wrong in the first place. Nowadays, it's almost universally agreed that Dionysius did in fact get it wrong by somewhere between 2 to 6 years, most probably 6 years. And that's for a whole range of reasons that we do not have time to go into and I'll bore you to death if I if I was to go into it. I'm sure. But Dionysha got it wrong.

That's the point. So the real date of Jesus' birth is far more likely to be 6 BC there or thereabouts. Which is during the reign of King Herrod 2 years before Herrod died. In fact, now just as an aside, this was a random thought that I had because if that's true, which I think it probably is, then this isn't 2018. This is 2012.

And I would quite like to do 2012 again because we had the Olympics. I became a Christian in 2012. I started coming to Cornerstone in 2012. All sorts of stuff happened in 2012. So I'm quite happy to go back there.

If, you know, if that's the case. Anyway, that's that's not the cake, that's not the point It's all very well, but it doesn't solve our Corinius issue, does it? We've still got a Corinius issue. If anything, it's worse because the gap was 6 years to begin with. Now it's 12 years.

We've gone even further away. Oh my goodness. What a problem. How are we going to solve it? Luke must have made a massive mistake surely, except there is nothing wrong with Luke's dates.

In fact, Luke goes to pains to be specific. Did you notice? He points out even details like in brackets just to just to highlight guys. This was the first census while Cornelius was governor, not the second 1 or the third or the fourth. It was the first 1.

Wanna make that clear. It's the first census. Now we know that census was done in 6 AD. We've still got a problem. But if Luke's going to such pains to make a point about specific events, then I find it hard to believe that he got it wrong It doesn't follow that he got it wrong.

We know Luke's he's a doctor, right? He's a he's a details guy. We know that he's a good historian. We've already heard other accounts that he's a good solid historian and it stands up. Now I've read all kinds of things that can account for this discrepancy with the dates.

Some say There were 2 Corinius's. There is some archaeological evidence for that. Some say that Corinius in fact served 2 terms. He served 1 before the other. And there's some archaeological evidence for that.

Some say, and I don't hold with this 1, that there's another sense that we don't know anything about very unlikely. The 1 I prefer the best though and I think makes the most sense of this is, a commentator that puts it like this. The UK census of 20 13, how long do you reckon that census took to took to complete? Anyone. About 18 months.

So 18 months it took to do a census of the UK with all the mod cons people weren't having to travel by donkey from 1 place to another. You know, we've got the computer systems to do all of that. It took 18 months still. On top of that, let's go back to a census, another census that the Romans did of Gaul at around the same time. So Gore modern day France That census that took place just before this 1 took 40 years to complete.

40 years. That's longer than I've been alive. They were doing a census for my entire life. It took them a long time. So it's entirely believable and even highly probable that a census that was completed when Corinius became governor in 6 AD could in fact have been started 12 years earlier in 6 BC, and the same 1 that caused Mary and Joseph to have travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

That was Joseph's hometown. Right. Glad we got through that 1 because that's the tricky 1. Third argument. The Romans didn't require people to travel to their hometowns to be registered for the census.

Really quick and easy 1, this 1. People said they didn't do that, then they dug up evidence saying of a Roman governor saying you must travel to your hometown for the census. It is amazing, isn't it? That the scholars time and time again say the Bible wrong we can't find any evidence and then some archaeologist unhelpfully goes and digs it up somewhere. And they go I have to find another argument now.

Whatever way you look at it, there is no reason to doubt Luke's dates here or his historical accuracy. He's been specific so that we can be sure. His account stands up against every argument that's thrown at it. Perhaps god may be in his kindness inspired Luke to get the date so specific because he knew that everyone else was gonna stuff them up so badly so that we could tie it back and anchor it to that point, that day in history. That's point number 1.

It's a day in history, an anchor point that we can look back to So yeah, that happened. That's when it happened. 2018 all the years ago, but not only was it a day in history it was also for thousands upon thousands of years a day in the future. It was a day that was being looked forward to So all throughout the old testament, god had been telling his people of the Messiah to come. He'd been preparing his people.

Since Adam and Eve rebelled in the garden, god had been preparing his people for a day when he himself would come to rescue them from their rebellion against him that he would send a Messiah a rescuer, a savior, and all of Israel had been looking forward to that day. They've been looking forward to that day. They knew that that day was coming. They had something like 300 prophecies more than 300 prophecies regarding this Messiah who was gonna come. And the thing about the Messiah and prophecies is that the true Messiah is gonna have to fulfill them all because if he leaves even 1 out, then he hasn't fulfilled a prophecy about himself and he's no messiah and he's not the 1.

So what better way to start knocking them off than on your birthday? On the very date of your birth, you're going to start knocking a few prophecies off straight away. And that's what Luke shows us. The day is here the day that everyone's been waiting for and prophecies and legends start springing to life in front of people's eyes. So let's rejoin the story verse 4.

So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in galilee to Jude. To Bethlehem, the town of David because he belonged to the house and the line of David. He went there to register with Mary who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. So you have Mary and you have Joseph and they have recently been told that they are going to have a baby and that baby is going to be the Messiah. And then the Romans order a census.

And they have to travel back to their hometown to David's hometown, Betsy. Now as Daryl, helpfully pointed out to me earlier this week is that once you've been told that the baby you're carrying is the promised messiah, you're probably going to get into messianic prophecy in quite a big way. And start thinking okay. I know a lot of stuff was said about the messiah. So what's coming next?

It'd be good to know. And I I love to picture that you've got Joseph and Mary, heavily pregnant Mary making this long dusty journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, absolutely full of wonder. Full of wonder because of the prophecy that says the Messiah is to be born in Bethlehem and would be from the line of King David, and here is god using the pagan Romans by making them order a census that causes Mary and Joseph to travel back to Bethlehem. They must have just been like, this is amazing. This is incredible.

They have to they have this and and of course, Joseph is in David's line. They're like, wow. What's going on? Big wheels are turning here. They've got this rare privilege of watching prophecy happen and being a part of it right in front of their very eyes.

Now we know that David was born in in Bethlehem because it tells us in 1 Samuel 17 12. You can see it up on the screen there. Now David, the son of an Thight name Jesse who was who was from Bethlehem. David was from Betsy. And we know that the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem because of Micah chapter 5 verse 2, a prophecy that was given, but you bethlehem Ephrathah.

Though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me, 1 who will be ruler over Israel whose origins are from of old from ancient times. And then what happens as Luke, so matter of factly tells us, and she gave birth to her firstborn. No quibbles. She gave birth to her first born. The miracle baby hailed by Gabriel as the Messiah of the line of David through his father Joseph has been born in David's town of Bethlehem, according to the old testament prophecies, and Joseph and Mary are going wow.

Amazing that we can be part of this. The next thing that we need to look at here is the shepherds Look at the shepherds. Now it's not so much a prophecy this as much as it is all the way through the old testament. The the illustrations, the imagery, the the wording of shepherds brings to mind so much stuff. So let's get into it back to the story.

So meanwhile, meanwhile, while the bus going on, the bus just happened in Bethlehem. Meanwhile, outside of town, while shepherds are watching their flock at night, all seated on the ground, you know how the song goes, an angel of the law came down and glory shone around and they were terrified. Terrified. Now, what's the significance of these shepherds? Why have they just been chucked in?

Is they just random? Is it a random thing that these shepherds are just now suddenly breaking into the story. Well, if we go back to Micah 5 again and go a little bit forward, sorry, I don't actually have that. But if you skip forward to verse 4, you'll see that this Messiah will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the lord. Lord in capitals as in yahweh as in father.

He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of his father. In the Psalms, We hear the lord is my shepherd time and time again. God himself is referred to as shepherd by who? David, who was David? Well, he's a shepherd king.

He was a humble shepherd boy who became king of Israel. There's Shepard's all over the place in the new testament. The humble shepherd was held up as a picture of the king of Israel of god himself and of the coming Messiah. However, in the time of Jesus' birth, shepherds were often looked down upon They were despised, marginalized, the sum of the poorest and the lowest of society. So do you start to see the significance of these shepherds being there?

When it goes further. So the angels choose to come to these despised and lowly ones, the shepherds the shepherds who were from Bethlehem, the birthplace of the great shepherd king David in fields that David may even have shepherded himself. It's all starting to just tie in and slot into place, isn't it? And they come with news about the coming Shepard Messiah The 1 from King David's line, the 1 they've been waiting for, the 1 who will care for and guide his people through all dangers and into safe pastures. That's why the shippers were there.

There's no 1 more fitting for them to be proclaiming this news to first. And look at what the angels proclaim. It's the next next thing we see from the old testament that angels proclaim In verse 11, today in the town of David, a savior has been born to you. He is the Messiah, the lord. 3 names that the angels give here for the lord Jesus.

First, savior. He will be a savior He will save his people. He's the promised Shepard Messiah and he's also a savior. Just as a shepherd will go out of his way to save his flock. So this Messiah will go out of his way to save his people.

Now that word savior that they use there in its original language, it's it's deliverer and where we see deliver a most in the old testament is in the in the book of judges and you've got this cycle in the book of judges where the people rebel against God. And so god punishes the people. And then the people cry out to god and god sends them a deliverer, a judge, a savior, and the people rejoice, and they're all happy, and then they rebel against God. And god punishes them and they cry out to god and he sends them a savior, a deliverer. And the cycle just goes on and on and on and on and they don't learn and they get worse and worse and it spirals out of control.

Well, the thing that god was teaching his people by that cycle was that I am gonna send you 1 day a deliverer who breaks the cycle. I am going to send you a Messiah who is going to smash that cycle to pieces with a cross so that there will be an ultimate savior. He's gonna beat that cycle for good, forever. So he's a savior, he's a deliverer. The next thing the angels call him is a Messiah We've said it a lot of times all night to tonight already, but what does it actually mean?

Well, Messiah literally means the anointed 1. He is the anointed 1. Now here is where it gets really cool and I'm I'm excited to share this stuff with you because I feel like you know, as I've been learning this over the last month or so, this has blown my blown my mind. There's some really amazing stuff here The origin of anointing was from guess who? Shepard's.

They were the first that was the picture that that it was a thing that they used to do to their sheep. Sounds a bit weird. Right? What they used to do, so you had the lice and insects that would burrow into the sheep's wall and they would get up into the sheep's head and then they would go for the sheep's ears burrow into the sheep's ears, burrow into the sheep's brain and kill the sheep. And so to stop that from happening, what the shepherds used to do was pour oil all over the sheep's heads to protect them so that when the insects were trying to make their way up through the ear canal, they couldn't.

They were just dripping off with the oil. They couldn't get a grip. They couldn't work their way up there and it protected the sheep. And so from this this process anointing became this symbolic, it became symbolic of blessing of protection of empowerment. And so in the old testament, When you were anointed, when you were an anointed person, well, there were only 3 tasks that people were given that they were anointed for.

That was the task of priests of kings and prophets. They were the ones who got anointed and when they were given those roles, oil was poured on their heads. And this is saying that angels are saying, he is the Messiah, he is the anointed 1. He is the priest who the priests interceded, but he's the priest that's going to make the ultimate intercession for you. The priests sacrificed on the people's behalf to make them at 1 with god to bring atonement I'm gonna send you a priest who's gonna make the ultimate sacrifice of his own blood.

The kings were the ones who would lead Israel in all glory and power against their enemies. They would protect them. I'm gonna send you the ultimate king. King David is a shadow of pale reflection and the prophets The ones who speak the word of god. That's how Messiah can be summed up, the priest, the kings, and the prophets, and who spoke the word of god.

More clearly and with more authority than the lord Jesus Christ did. Now remember, that's that's all under the heading of a day in the future. A day everyone had been waiting for. And at the start, we looked at a day in history, a day that look fixes into the history books as a factual event. This day happened everything's converging on this day.

Everyone had been waiting for this day, got to have been preparing people for this day. He had been sending them for thousands of years priests and deliverers, judges had been sending them kings and prophets and they were all just a shadow, all just a pale imitation of the real priest the real deliverer, the real king, the real prophet that was to come. And now Luke says, this day has come. Today is the day. With all of that in mind, with all the accolades and grand titles bestowed, on this child who had been born.

I doubt anyone would expect then the manner of his birth to be as low as it was It's 1 final prophecy I want to show you before we rub in some application. The manger, look at the manger. Luke mentions the manger 3 times. Anyone who mentions something 3 times wants you to look at it He looks at it in verse 7, 12, and 16. So let's look at it.

Verse 6 while they were there, The time came for the baby to be born and she gave birth to her first born a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger. Because there was no guest room available for them. So Mary and Joseph, they've just arrived in Bethlehem. Mary is heavily pregnant by this point.

I would imagine incredibly uncomfortable. The journey's been long, hot, dusty, they arrive, everywhere's full. There's nowhere to stay nightmare. Absolute nightmare scenario. And so because there's no actual room for them, they take up residence in what was most probably could be described as little better than the donkey shed.

Now get the nativity scene out of your heads, please. Because this isn't that nice cozy, warm, little scene with the animals and the shepherds and the 3 wise men all crowded round. This is a cold, drafty, dark, mucky, murky, donkey shed, but it stunk. And then to add to the mist and smell, Mary goes and gives birth in there. It's a traumatic experience on top of a traumatic experience.

Any of the mothers who have just recently given birth, anyone here? Anyone thinking of a second a second 1? We can find a donkey ship for you. See see how it goes. There's no cot.

There's no clean place There's no nurses, there's no midwives, the floor's filthy, and the best that they can come up with is to put him in a manger. That manger sounds quite nice, doesn't it? You know, yeah, manger. It's the donkey's feeding trough. Is the donkey's food bowl.

That's what they placed him in. Considering Israel have been waiting for this birth for their entire history. They're not doing a very good job at welcoming their lord and savior into the world, are they? If anything, if anything, considering that they've been warned about this, they knew that he was gonna be born in Beth I would have thought some enterprising chap would have gone, do you know what? I'm gonna settle the Betsy birth center and every single baby born in Bethlehem is gonna be born in that center and we'll give him a proper welcome into this world because they can't, I mean, come on, Bethyhem is not a huge place.

There can't have been that many. It must have been a fairly easy thing to manage, but no 1 cared. No 1 cared enough to even think about doing that. Certainly, you would not turn away a heavily pregnant mother and allow her to give birth in the donkey shed and place her in a donkey's food bowl because that baby might just be the lord. And it just so happens it was.

They weren't ready and they had been warned some 800 years earlier Isaiah, 1 of the prophets in chapter chapter 1 says this, hear me you heavens. Listen earth for the lord has spoken. I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me. The ox knows its master, the donkey its own as manger, but Israel does not know. My people do not understand.

God says I raised my children. I prepared them, but they rebelled against me. They were not ready. They did not listen. And so the lord Jesus is born just as he died, rejected, despised, unwanted, covered in shame.

The ox knows the ox knows who he is. The donkey knows who he is. The donkey's honored. It's brought in my house. This is amazing.

Do you know? Or have you just been outwitted by an ox and a donkey? Israel was apparently. It may sound funny, mightn't it? But the outcome's really not.

As eye goes on below, woe to the sinful nation, a people whose guilt is great. A brood of evildoers, children given to corruption. They have forsaken the lord. They have spurned the holy 1 of Israel, and turn their backs on him. That's their sin.

That's their evil. They've turned their backs on this little child placed in a manger who came and bled and died so that they could be right with their father in heaven. And in doing so, They've become thicker and less honored than the donkey from children of god to less than a barnyard animal. They've debased themselves not so funny and it brings us on to the final point. Today.

This day that happened here in history, that everyone had been waiting for working up to is now happening and how does this day affect today? Because today is the day that matters right, there may not be a tomorrow. So we need to know how the coming of the lord Jesus, the promised Messiah, the 1 everyone had been waiting for the 1 who can take our sins away, what does that mean now? Tonight here. And what I want us to leave with as application is how should we be responding to this?

What should our response be to this birth to this little child? Well, the easiest thing to do is just look at the reactions of the day. You can take some lessons from that. Firstly, you've got the angels. The angels praised him.

So immediately in the fields after 1 angel confirms the birth of the lord Jesus to the shepherds suddenly, boom, the whole sky erupts and angels are praising god everywhere glory to god in the highest heaven on on earth peace. To those on whom his favor rests. The whole sky is on fire with angels praising his name. The day is here. It's party time.

Praise should be on our lips. On the tip of our tongue, just ready to burst into life. He's here. The thing that god has promised to do for all the ages, he's done He's finally done. You know all those promises that he was making all the way through?

He's done it. The messiah's come. Today is the day, and that means peace on earth to all on whom his favor rests. Now, I know many of us in this room already know his favor. For many of us in this room, peace with god is something we can stand up and say, yeah, I know that.

I know what it's like to have peace with my maker. What an amazing thing. To know that you are at peace with your creator, that he's accepted you. The thing that God has promised to do, he's done. He was born as a man.

He lived among us. He reached out to us, shared himself with us and died for us to pay the price for our rebellion and so there's peace. We can have peace in the name of Jesus. Peace in spite of our rebellion. He paid the price.

He ended it. When the war's over, the party begins. When you know peace, you break out into praise Look at ve day, the end of the second world war. Massive parties. Peace brings praise and when you know that you praise.

Do you know that piece? Is that something you can stand up and say, yeah, I know. I've got peace with my maker. I've got peace with the living god. Well, for those of us who who do and for those of us who don't 2 more points of application.

I'll be really quick so I'm conscious. The shepherds, have a look at the shepherds again. We'll go back to the shepherds again. When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherd said to 1 another. Let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that's happened.

Which the lord has told us about. So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph and the baby who was lying in the manger. When they'd seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherd said to them. So after this encounter with the angels, the shepherds wasted absolutely no time in going to see what this what the angels had told him about. I mean, you you couldn't just carry on shepherding after that, can you?

You can't. You've got to go and check this thing out. And once they've seen it, they wasted even less time in rushing around town telling absolutely anyone they could get their hands on all about it and people are amazed. What you what? Angels in a field?

Baby in a donkey feeding bowl. What are you talking about, man? I've got to go and see this for myself. Yeah, dude. It's over there.

Go and have a look and people are amazed because what they're saying It's true. It's happened. They can go and see the baby. He's there. Do you see what happened?

They heard they saw, they told people were amazed, and I imagine some came to believe right there on the spot. On top of the shepherds, Jesus' presence as a tiny little baby lying in a manger is already saving souls for heaven. So we shouldn't waste any time today in telling people about this message. There is a hearing and a seeing of Jesus that causes belief Just like the shepherds, it's our task to go out and tell people. Don't delay in it.

Go out and tell people. The final 1 is Mary. Take a look at what Mary did. It's the final point of application, our our reaction to this. Verse 19, but Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.

So Mary upon hearing, all of these things treasures them away in her heart. She has the word of the angel Gabriel from the throne room of god that she's carrying the Messiah. And she has seen the prophecies begin to come true on the on the journey to Bethlehem. And now she has shepherds bursting in through the door telling her that an entire army of angels has been praising her newborn son out in fields. She has heard and she has seen that the old stories are true, they're all true, and it's happening right now.

And for her, this is enough to believe. For her, this is this is news to be treasured up in her heart. The place that god is most concerned about the heart. How is your heart? The message we get is how does this news affect your heart?

Do you treasure this news? Does this message warm your soul as you understand and see god's grand salvation plan coming into focus on that day? That day in Bethlehem, that day in history, that day everyone had been waiting for. The angels praised The shepherds believed and spread the word, and Mary treasured the message in her heart where it would have the most effect on her life. Now today, here tonight, is that your response, or will god say about you in the end my people do not understand.

The ox knows the donkey knows. They know who's in the manger. Not you. He pronounces woe to them, but tonight he extends his hand and says, will you not come and take another look? Will you not take another look in that manger?

See who's in it. Read the stories read the prophecies, look back in history, look at what happened on the day. Let me pray. Father we thank you that you came and you made yourself known and that you recorded all these things down in so much accurate detail for us. Thank you for Luke's account.

Thank you that he must have spoken to the people who were there on the day. How could he have known what was in Mary's heart unless he'd spoken to her? Thank you for the accuracy of these things. Thank you that we can look back and go, yeah, that happened. I believe that happened.

Even though we weren't there, we can say, I believe that Jesus Christ was born and came into this world. And then we can read everything else about his life. Everything he said about his relationship with you. Everything that he said about the sacrifice that he made for us so that we can know you. Thank you so much for that father.

Help us to see this clearly for what it is right here right now tonight.