In those days a decree
went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. 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 lineage of David, to be registered
with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. (Luke 2:1–5)
Have
you ever thought what an amazing thing it is that God ordained beforehand that
the Messiah be born in Bethlehem (as the prophecy in Micah 5:2 shows); and that
he so ordained things that when the time came, the Messiah’s mother and legal
father were living not in Bethlehem but in Nazareth; and that in order to
fulfill his word and bring two unheard-of, insignificant, little people to
Bethlehem that first Christmas, God put it in the heart of Caesar Augustus that
all the Roman world should be enrolled each in his own town? A decree for the
entire world in order to move two people seventy miles.
Have
you ever felt, like me, little and insignificant in a world of seven billion
people, where all the news is about big political and economic and social
movements and outstanding people with global significance and lots of power and
prestige?
If
you have, don’t let that make you disheartened or unhappy. For it is implicit
in Scripture that all the mammoth political forces and all the giant industrial
complexes, without their even knowing it, are being guided by God, not for
their own sake, but for the sake of God’s little people — the little Mary and
the little Joseph who have to be got from Nazareth to Bethlehem. God wields an
empire to fulfill his word and bless his children.
Do
not think, because you experience adversity in your little world of experience,
that the hand of the Lord is shortened. It is not our prosperity or our fame
but our holiness that he seeks with all his heart. And to that end, he rules
the whole world. As Proverbs 21:1 says, “The king’s heart is a stream of water in
the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.” And he is always turning
it for his saving and sanctifying and eternal purposes among his people.
He
is a big God for little people, and we have great cause to rejoice that,
unbeknownst to them, all the kings and presidents and premiers and chancellors
and chiefs of the world follow the sovereign decrees of our Father in heaven,
that we, the children, might be conformed to the image of his Son, Jesus Christ
— and then enter his eternal glory.
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