Amy C Walters

The Birth of Jesus – Luke 2:1-7

Every good story has a villain. In this story, we meet Caesar Augustus and his henchman, Quirinius, who demand a census that requires Mary and Joseph to travel 80 miles on rough roads while very pregnant. Even though it seems like Mary and Joseph are pawns to wicked rulers and circumstances, we see that ultimately God is in control.

In this story, we get introduced to a couple of new characters, people that we haven’t encountered in Luke yet. 

First, we meet Caesar Augustus, the ruler of the Roman Empire. Caesar was the ruler of the occupying nation. Israel wanted to be their own nation, to have their own laws, to have their own governance. And yet this pagan, ungodly ruler was in charge. So he was not someone that the Jewish people liked. He represented oppression to them.

In fact, many people at this time expected that the Messiah would come to free them from the Roman Empire, to throw off the Roman rulership, the Roman leaders, and to give Israel a nation of their own once again. So we’re meeting the villain of the story.

We also read about Quirinius, the Governor of Syria. You can think of him as one of Caesar’s henchmen. So we meet the villain and his henchmen here at the very beginning of the story.

These names root this story in history. They remind us that this is a real story involving real people that really happened. This is not a legend or a fairy tale once upon a time. This is connected to verifiable historical figures and dates and events.

So we meet Caesar and Quirinius, the villain and his henchmen. And what are they doing at the start of the story? Just what you would expect from a villain and a henchman–some kind of evil plot. They call for a census.

Typically, a census was used for the purpose of taxation. We want to find out how we can tax all of these people that are under our command, under our control. This is definitely villain behavior because nobody likes paying taxes.

On top of that, to take the census, everyone has to return to their town of family origin. Joseph and Mary live in Nazareth in Galilee. But Joseph is from the house and the line of David, and his town of family origin is Bethlehem. 

That is 80 miles away. Eighty miles in a time period where you don’t have cars, you don’t have airplane rides, you’ve got to walk or maybe ride something to get there. This is not an easy journey for them.

They also have to take this 80 mile trip when Mary is going to have a child any day now. This is not a great situation for them. This is a real hardship that they have to follow this pagan ruler’s decrees and travel 80 miles to get to Bethlehem to register and pay taxes.

It seems like Joseph and Mary have very little agency of their own, very little control over their part in this story. An evil pagan king makes a decree, and they’ve got to follow it. The baby comes and they’ve got to deliver it. They’re like pawns being moved around by a wicked emperor and circumstances.

And yet, there is something bigger at play here. They are not just at the whim of a Roman emperor. This is actually God moving in and through this situation.

Let’s go back a couple of stories to where we first meet Mary. It tells us that she lives in the town of Nazareth in Galilee. And the angel visits her and tells her that she is going to conceive and give birth to a son who will be the Messiah.

Jewish listeners who heard this story would start to think, “Wait a minute, there’s a problem here! We know that the Messiah is supposed to come from Bethlehem.” But Mary and Joseph don’t live in Bethlehem. So there’s a tension that needs to be resolved.

And in this story, we see the resolution. We see how Mary and Joseph get from Nazareth and Galilee to Bethlehem, the city of David, the city that the Messiah would come from.

It’s not just a pagan leader at his whim ordering people around. It is God moving in the hearts even of an ungodly emperor to issue a decree to get Mary and Joseph from where they were to where they needed to be. Because God had promised through his prophets that Bethlehem would be the place. And so he made a way for Mary and Joseph to get there and this prophecy to be fulfilled.

There is another important fulfillment of prophecy happening in this story as well. We’re told that Joseph belonged to the line and the house of David. Joseph was a descendant of David.

And this is important because of God’s promise to David that someone from his line, his descendants, would reign forever. This was understood to be a prophecy about the Messiah. The Messiah, the chosen one, the Savior, would come from a descendant of David.

So all these pieces are coming together. Things that before were problems, like Mary and Joseph being in the wrong place. And yet God, in his sovereignty, is moving in the hearts of people to bring Mary and Joseph right to where they needed to be.

They were not at the whim of an ungodly ruler. They were not pawns of circumstance. They were in the hands of a sovereign God.

And that is our key truth for today: God is sovereign. It’s one way of saying that God is in control.

Even in these circumstances that look like they are not working out well, they look like they are a hardship, a difficulty, a problem. In reality, it is God moving through those circumstances, God is sovereignly in control to put people where they needed to be.

And this truth can bring us so much comfort in the things that we struggle with. When we feel like a pawn of circumstances or government or other things happening in our lives, we need to remember that God is sovereign. God is able to move through difficult people and circumstances to accomplish his plans and purposes. He has a plan, he has a purpose, and he’s able to bring that about even if there are obstacles in the way.