Good News of Great Joy
Download MP3Invite you to open your bibles to Luke chapter 2. Luke chapter 2, we're going to celebrate Christmas this Memorial Day. I'll look at a very familiar text tonight in the birth of Jesus. I want to read the first 21 verses. In those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.
Joel Brooks:This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria, and all went to be registered each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and the lineage of David, to be registered with Mary his betrothed who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no place for them in the end. And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field keeping watch over their flocks by night.
Joel Brooks:And an angel, the lord appeared to them, and the glory of the lord shown around them. And they were filled with fear. And the angel said to them, fear not. For behold, I bring you good no news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a savior who is Christ the Lord.
Joel Brooks:And this will be a sign for you. You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and laying in a manger. And suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those whom he has pleased. When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherd said to one another, let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us. And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in a manger.
Joel Brooks:When they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child, and all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen as it had been told them. And at the end of 8 days when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. Pray with me.
Joel Brooks:Jesus, we want to come and adore you. Come, let us adore you. We have so many obstacles in the way, obstacles we have put there are sin, our busyness, our laziness, our wandering minds. We have so many obstacles. Through the power of your spirit, I ask that you would remove those.
Joel Brooks:Allow us to focus in on you. God, my words are death, but your words are life, and we need life. So I ask that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But Lord, let your words remain and may they change us. I pray this in the strong name of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Amen. We're looking at one of the most famous stories in the Bible, one of the most famous stories in all of history, the birth of Jesus. Now it was really exciting, over Christmas I got to see Caroline in a school play, the school pageant. And you know, you've always wanted to be the dad, you know, where they're the video camera who videos your child in the Christmas pageant, and that was me. I was doing that.
Joel Brooks:It was an amazing performance she gave, and she was, she was the angel, the angel that would appear. And so she was practicing her little part, and it's bad if you have a dad who's a pastor, who's gonna be the one looking over to make sure everything's theologically correct. And and and she had, you know, she was like, fear not and all this stuff, and she was dressed up all sweet. And I said, well, Caroline, you know, there's a reason I had to say fear not. It's because people were terrified.
Joel Brooks:I mean, terrified when you see an angel, and so that's got to somehow be communicated. And she goes, okay. And so she's going through it and she goes, roar, fear not. And I was like, oh my gosh. Like, though, not not quite like that.
Joel Brooks:It needed a little bit of work. I know this story has, has been displayed through beautiful paintings. Songs have been written. Beautiful carols about it. Now contemporary, we just kind of dress up wearing robes and we put on, you know, bad acting pageants, and that's how we celebrate this in churches.
Joel Brooks:That's how I celebrated it. I grew up. I became a Christian at the age of 9. I believed this story early on. I I believed it, But it is still hard for me, and I don't know if this is the case for you, it is still hard for me to read what we just read and not hear Charlie Brown's voice.
Joel Brooks:I mean, I don't know if that, is that true that you read it and you just hear Charlie Brown's voice, and the Christmas special. Now the story that we read is absurd. In almost every level, it is absurd. I mean God the father chooses some 14 year old likely country girl saying you're gonna become the mother of God and and I'm gonna bring the king of kings in and and he's gonna be born in the equivalent of a stable and there's only gonna be animals as witnesses and a few shepherds and and that's how I'm gonna change the world, and it's absolutely absurd. When you hear this story, when you heard it read, I I I want you to try to remove that Charlie Brown voice.
Joel Brooks:Try to remove it. Don't hear him, hear doctor Luke. Hear the historian, the one who has painstakingly researched these things. The one who's writing to an educated Roman official saying, believe these things. It happened.
Joel Brooks:Let me tell you about an event that changed the world. It's here that our king enters into our world, and this is a serious story. It's a serious story. Luke begins by anchoring this story into another historical event, a census by Caesar Augustus. Now this is not just a detail that, you know, Luke likes to throw out.
Joel Brooks:Don't don't believe that. They don't throw out just details. This is here for a reason. Actually, this little detail here sets up the entire story, I believe, about who Jesus is, who he is. Everything that you read after this needs to be seen in light of the phrase, in those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.
Joel Brooks:And if you don't match up what it just read there with the rest of it, you're gonna miss it. You're gonna miss the story here. Augustus, as you know, if you could think back into your history classes, Augustus, he is the adopted son of Julius Caesar, and in 30 BC, he turned the Republic of Rome into an empire, and he declared himself emperor. And he reigned into 14 AD, and for his entire reign, there was peace in Rome. He he brought and he established this peace, and it's it's known as the Pax Romana, which many of you have heard about the Peace of Rome.
Joel Brooks:He believed it was Rome's mission to bring peace to the whole world. And and if you're a friend of Rome, certainly there was peace. Augustus, he declared his father Julius to be a god, and this was just kind of a sneaky way if you wanted worship, you didn't declare your self God, you just declared your father God. Therefore you are the Son of God, thus divine also. So people were to worship the Emperor as God and the imperial cult starts up.
Joel Brooks:Augustus was not only the emperor of Rome, he took other titles as well. Dominus et Des, Lord and God. Archaeologists, they found an inscription about Julius or Augustus's birthday in which there's an announcement, and the announcement is I announce the good news at the coming of our savior's presence, Caesar Augustus. And so it's not an accident. Only is it think at all this an accident that Luke starts his story of the Jesus Jesus's birth with a reference to Augustus and all of his power.
Joel Brooks:Augustus, who is a self declared ruler of the world. His presence is to be announced as good news. He's the king of the day. He thinks of himself as the savior. And it's important to know that Jesus, when he is introduced, is entering or reigning or asking people to believe in a new kingdom and a new king.
Joel Brooks:Jesus came to earth to be its king. In Luke chapter 4, he says he must preach the good news of the kingdom of God. When Jesus sends out the 72 disciples, he tells them in Luke 11 to go out preaching that the kingdom of God is at hand. He's preaching this new kingdom. When Jesus was killed, he was not killed for being a good teacher.
Joel Brooks:He wasn't killed for for, for his miracles. He wasn't killed for being a nice guy. He was killed for his claims of being the Messiah, of being a new king. That's why when he was killed, there's the there's the marker above his head that says, Jesus, king of the Jews. Rome is not gonna tolerate another king.
Joel Brooks:They're gonna kill another king. King. Make no mistake that Luke wants us to see Jesus as a real king in a real kingdom. And this is the birth of that King, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, the real savior of the world, the one who's going to bring eternal peace to the world. And now if this is true, and I believe this is true, this has got to produce and use something more more than just, you know, that feeling you get of maybe this nostalgic feeling of being around the Christmas tree and the lights on and just kind of this warm inner glow, it's got it's got to translate to something more than that, something greater.
Joel Brooks:And so for Theophilus, this has to be startling. Theophilus, he's a Roman official, and yet Luke is telling this Roman official, you have a new king. Augustus is not your king. You have a new king, King Jesus. Now the way that Luke starts his story, it certainly seems like Augustus is the one with all the power because Augustus declares that a census is to be taken.
Joel Brooks:And now in the US, I don't know if you've had the chance to fill out a census before. You just get something in the mail. It's got all these little bubble things, you know, you would bubble, you know, I'm you know, I'm Caucasian or, you know, I'm between the ages of 30 40, and you just bubble it in and you send it in. That's our census. That's not the case in this day.
Joel Brooks:A census was, well, it it caused a lot of riots a lot of times. In acts 5, they mentioned one of the censuses, Luke does, and perhaps even this census. But it's there. There was a bloody one. People revolted when they were asked to take a census because what they're doing is they have to acknowledge that somebody has power over them.
Joel Brooks:And for the Jews, this was very difficult to swallow to say, yes, Rome you have power over us, and we will take your census. And so there were many, many Jewish people who did not want to do this, and often there would be a riot. Only someone with who is exercising complete power can issue forth a census. And Augustus here doesn't declare a normal census. No, he actually asked for everybody to travel back to their homeland.
Joel Brooks:Now we only have record of this happening one other time, and that's a census in Egypt. It was very rare to make people travel, not the usual way of doing things, because there's no reason you can't register people in their hometowns, but he is making people travel long distances to register for this. And you need to understand, Luke wants you to understand all of this is happening because God has made his own decree. He's made his own decree. Micah 5 says, but you, oh Bethlehem, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, From you shall come forth for me one who is to be a ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from old, from ancient days.
Joel Brooks:And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the lord and the majesty of the name of the lord his god. And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth, and he shall be their peace. Augustus, mighty Augustus is nothing more than a pawn in the hands of the Lord. He might think everybody else does his bidding. He might he might not even give a rip.
Joel Brooks:He would never even give a thought about little Mary and Joseph, But yet he's the pawn. Proverbs 21 says, the king's heart is like channels of water in the Lord's hands. He directs it wherever he wishes, and we see this happening here. And so for God, if he wants to declare a census or change Augustus's heart so he would make a census just to get a young little married couple from point a to point b about 90 miles away, he does it. That's how sovereign he is.
Joel Brooks:And when you think about something like that, it's overwhelming. Makes you realize you can never figure out what god is doing. You know, when you try to apply Romans 828 to your life and he's working all things together for good. You have no idea what he's doing. You have no idea when you read in the paper about, you know, presidents of other countries going crazy about wars, all these things happening.
Joel Brooks:You have no idea what God is doing and how he is weaving it all together. Who would have thought this would have happened just to move a person, 2 people from here to there. This is what God does. So he moves them in order to fulfill this obscure prophecy. Now the birth of Jesus is a lonely birth.
Joel Brooks:Says that Mary, she had to wrap her own son in swaddling clothes. That's because there's no midwife there, there's no doctor there, this is chaotic, moment and a helpless Joseph in there in a stable. I mean, I remember 2 of my girls were born in St. Vincent, and I don't know if you've ever been in St. Vincent's Hospital, but everything is absolutely normal there and fine, and then they flip a switch.
Joel Brooks:You know, just flip a little switch. I'm I'm not lying. Paintings move. They just slide from the wall. You know, lights come down.
Joel Brooks:All these gizmos start appearing out of the walls. Stirrups just rise up from the ground. It's the whole entire room is transformed in about 2 seconds when they flip a little switch. And, I mean, when it was happening the first time, I kinda felt like I was James Bond. I was like, you know, one of those spy things, they flip it and the room is just transformed.
Joel Brooks:And Lauren could tell I'm daydreaming, and she's like, focus here. Focus here. Okay? This is this is my moment. Can can I have you back?
Joel Brooks:I'm like, alright. Alright. Well well, here they are in the equivalent of a stable, and there's there's no little switch. There's nobody. It's just them.
Joel Brooks:Can you imagine how helpless you would feel? The glory to God in the highest, as they sang, is now becoming glory to God in the lowest. To the lowest, it's a rough beginning. That's what the story is about. It's about God coming to us, God entering our world, entering our brokenness.
Joel Brooks:It's the King coming to fix it all. This world's broken. You know you can feel the brokenness. If you're human, you can feel the brokenness. I don't care who you voted for this past election, nobody's gonna fix our brokenness.
Joel Brooks:Government cannot fix it. There there is a hurt in us that there's not any science that can heal. There's this evil and this rage in us that, you know, education or any program can't erase, can't get rid of us. We're broken. And you know, usually, you know, of course, we're gonna feel the brokenness of the world when some tragedy hits, when when maybe a parent gets cancer or something like that.
Joel Brooks:But but you know you can feel the brokenness when things go really well. That's when I feel the brokenness most in this world. I have an amazing marriage. Tomorrow will be 13 years with my wife. On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd put our marriage at a 10.
Joel Brooks:It's awesome. And yet when I look at it, I think that's such a beautiful marriage. There is still this tinge of sadness in it. Still, as good as it is, I know it's broken. Because no matter what, my wife will never know me, and I will never really know her.
Joel Brooks:The inner workings of her, who she really is. I'll
Jeffrey Heine:never know that.
Joel Brooks:I love being a parent. If you were to ask me, you know, 10 years ago, would I really enjoy being a parent? I'd be like, yeah, maybe, yeah, probably. I love being a dad. And, you know, on a scale of 1 to 10, it'd be a 10 also, but also with that, there's still this tinge of sadness because children reveal to me how selfish I am.
Joel Brooks:They they reveal to me my brokenness, my my short little fuse that I have. They reveal to me all of these things. And so even though I love being a dad, I have great kids, there's sadness in it. I feel brokenness in it. I feel this when I go camping, and, Jeremiah and I, we went to Peru one time.
Joel Brooks:The scene just flashed in my mind, and we're at this we're looking at this mountain. We're in the valley. 17,000 feet up there. There's a glacier waterfall coming down. There's a rainbow going across it, and I'm hiking on a beautiful day.
Joel Brooks:It doesn't get any better. And yet I found myself still longing, still wanting something more. Saying, yeah, yeah, this is this is beautiful, but it could be better. Even when the best times, I feel the world is broken and you can feel the world is broken and we need a savior. And that's why the angels declared peace at Jesus's birth.
Joel Brooks:In the time of the great Roman peace, when things were going great, they said, that's just an illusion. Now I declare to you a real peace, a peace that will break your brokenness. Well, let's look how this good news and this peace breaks forth. God sends his birth announcement to shepherds that were in a field close by, and it's here that we we find all of those words that were ascribed to Caesar Augustus, words like good news, a savior, the Lord, peace, all of those things that have been ascribed to him. Now they are ascribed to Jesus.
Joel Brooks:And when the shepherds hear this, of course, they think, they know a new king is coming, a new kingdom is coming. Jesus. And it says that a multitude of the heavenly hosts were praising God, and there that the host is the army of God. The king is coming with his army to establish his reign. There's this enormous angelic army singing glory to God in the highest.
Joel Brooks:We cannot even imagine what it sounded like. And I love Luke in his typical understated way. He says, the shepherd said, let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that happened. That might be a summary of what they said, but I guarantee you when there's multitudes of a, you know, angelic host shouting and screaming and singing glory to God in the highest, they didn't just say, you know what, let us go. They probably, you know, they are shepherds, who knows what they said before they headed off.
Joel Brooks:And it was incredible. Shepherds. Of all the people in the world, the announcement went to shepherds. There's kings, there's queens, there's priests, there's all these Roman officials, there's important people, and yet the angels went to shepherds. You know, shepherds were so poor, they didn't even pay taxes.
Joel Brooks:They were such low class and thought so little of that their testimony was not even admissible in court. Their job was so dirty, it kept them from performing the ceremonial laws required to worship at the temple. You can't get any lower than this. Yet it's to them that the angels come to announce good news of great joy. Appropriate.
Joel Brooks:In a time where there's a supposed peace and prosperity, yet there's a shepherd's, they know that's that's not true. I need something more. They felt oppression, they felt hostility. So it was good news that the king had arrived to set things right. I'll never forget sitting in a youth group with about 4 other youth.
Joel Brooks:Our youth group was teeny. Often I was in the only class, and it was at First Baptist Sandy Springs and some volunteer youth minister is going over this text, and he jumps up on the table in front 4 frightened youth, and he goes, I bring you news of great joy. I will never forget that. I mean, he was delirious, wonderfully delirious. And every time I read this now, I I I have that picture of Doug getting up there and and yelling that.
Joel Brooks:I want you to hear that. Don't forget this is great news. It's joy. God comes to the lowest of the low. He's fulfilling what Mary said when he said, god's gonna scatter men and imaginations of their of their hearts and he's gonna cast you down from your thrones.
Joel Brooks:Well, how do we celebrate Christmas? How do we let the reality of this story hit our lives? We're terrible at celebrating holidays, terrible. We celebrate Christianity going to Ireland early 5th century by turning rivers green and getting sloshed, and we think somehow we're celebrating that holiday. You think of Easter, resurrection day, and it's chocolate bunnies and and somehow getting your picture with a giant bunny, which is really freaky, and going out and hunting down eggs that the bunny laid.
Joel Brooks:We distort things. How do we celebrate Christmas? What we believe really isn't any more absurd than a guy in a red suit coming down a chimney and giving gifts. It's really not more absurd, but it's true. How can we worship a real king in a real kingdom?
Joel Brooks:How can our worship become more than that nostalgic glow that you get at Christmas? It's simple. We joyfully receive him, and we joyfully declare him. I'm sure that when the shepherds got to the manger, I'm picturing this scene, I'm sure they come up and they they've got to be a little disappointed when they come and they find Jesus because there's not, you know, the little halo around his head that's in every single painting. You know, he's not glowing.
Joel Brooks:He doesn't speak to them as a child. They get to him, and he looks ordinary. Ordinary couple. Ordinary baby. I don't know what they were expecting, but they probably were expecting something more than that.
Joel Brooks:And the only reason that they have to worship him is simply if they believe what was told them. It's the same with us. When when we read things like this about God's kingdom is breaking forth, how Jesus is king, and we're looking around and we're like, wow. Really? Everything looks so ordinary.
Joel Brooks:And the only reason that we have to live our lives completely different, to lay down our lives in absolute devotion and worship, is simply if we believe the words that were spoken to us. And if we believe that it transforms everything. So we believe and we worship, then we declare this good news of great joy. We need to find the shepherds of the day. We need to find those people who are too poor to pay taxes.
Joel Brooks:We need to go to them, declare them good news that there is a king who's putting everything right. We need to go to the mangers. You know, where you would go if you didn't have a home, didn't have a place to stay, and you needed to declare to them that we have a savior who's broken into this world. You know, it's only appropriate that the Lamb of God would be born in a stable, and that the first news of his birth would go to shepherds. He finds he goes to those lowly places.
Joel Brooks:Every Christmas, we make a birthday cake for Jesus, which I acknowledge is a little awkward, the whole thing, singing happy birthday to Jesus, and we never know how many candles to put on it. It's different every year. But Caroline, at the age of 3, asked a question. She said, daddy, where's Jesus? Good question.
Joel Brooks:3 year olds have this way of making you deal with the theology you've suppressed and kind of moved on, you know, and, she's like, where's Jesus, and why isn't he at his birthday party? How is he gonna eat the cake? How are we gonna give him his present? Great questions. Really good questions.
Joel Brooks:And the answer that I gave her is one that I am still learning. Please understand that I'm still learning. I told her that if you wanna give Jesus his present, then you need to go and find the outcast. That's where you need to go because that's where Jesus is. And I put a face on it.
Joel Brooks:I said, Caroline, that means we need to go down the street to the woman who lives at the end of our street who's a bipolar, paranoid, schizophrenic, who the whole neighborhood makes fun of, and we need to go to her and tell her about Jesus. We need to declare to her good news. We need to serve her because when we serve her, we're serving Jesus. We need to go to the homeless shelters, the mangers of our day, the place where people would have to go only as a last resort if they have no home. We need to go there and declare to them the good news of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:That's their manger. That's where we'll find him. Jesus told us that we go to those who are hungry, and we can worship him if we just give them something to eat in his name. So when we do this, and you could go on and on, maybe God can flood your mind with pictures of people you should go to, whether it's the homeless or the poor, those who are outcast to go there and declare to them the good news. When we do that, that shows that the reality of this story has actually broken through into our lives.
Joel Brooks:That we're actually worshiping a real king and a real kingdom because we are living by his rules. Acknowledging his power, valuing the people he values, serving the people he served. And when we do that we're saying, Lord you are Lord, your King. We begin to worship Jesus. And so we know this story is real.
Joel Brooks:We know this story is real in our lives when it works its way into real action. Pray with me. Lord, that's a lesson that I'm certainly learning. Certainly haven't perfected that one. Lord, whatever excuses we bring to our mind, shatter them.
Joel Brooks:Pray that you would answer the song and the prayer of Mary and the Magnificat that you would shatter the imaginations or the thoughts of our hearts. Lord, a lot of us are playing pretend, and we need that world, that imaginary world that we are living in shattered. Give us a firm picture of the kingdom of God. You are a real king and a real kingdom, and we really want to serve you. I pray that through the power of your spirit, you would embolden us to go to the shepherds, embolden us to go to the mangers, that we might find you, that we might adore you.
Joel Brooks:We pray this in the name of Jesus.
