Not even noticed by the world and a homeless couple with animals is causing the whole world to stop.
The Roman Empire had only been an empire for less than 50 years before Messiah was born.
It was a new empire. The first emperor who was the emperor at the time of the birth was Augustus, his original name Octavian nephew of Julius Caesar.
Augustus ruled over the Roman world again from Syria to North Africa to the borders of England. In each land.
There were Roman governors, Procurator Zor puppet governments, client governments and then there was the province of Judea with a Roman puppet king called Herod.
What happened was there was a conflict in Israel among nations.
And so Harriet went to the Roman, the Roman Senate and he got, he said I’ll support, he got their support came back, was installed as King Herod was a master builder and large, the temple of Jerusalem built city, built great works all over Israel.
But he was also a tyrant, also paranoid with blood on his hands, even the blood of his own family believing that those who were closest to him were disloyal.
If he did. He had them killed.
Augustus was quoted as saying, I would rather be one of Herod’s pigs than one of his sons.
Herod reigned in Jerusalem and in his, in his other palaces throughout the land.
But into this Roman world, something happens. You have a city called that. We called it a city.
It was a town called Triet known we know it as Nazareth Back Road.
Backwater back small place out of the middle of nowhere.
It’s in them except it’s in the, it’s overlooking the Jezreel Valley. It’s like on a little mountain there.
A young man named Joseph who’s a craftsman carpet may have been a carpenter, but it says craftsman, Godly man and a young woman named Miriam Godly woman.
Something happens to Mary Miriam Lu Kwan says Something happened.
She was visited, it says an angel of the Lord came to her and said hell favored one and she was troubled with this and says, basically, you’ve been chosen to be the mother of the Messiah.
She says, how can that be?
I don’t, I’ve never known a man says the Holy Spirit, the spirit of God will come upon you and and will you will conceive and what will be in?
You will be the holy offspring of God, the son of God and he shall sit on David’s throne.
He’s, she’s gonna be the mother of Messiah at the same time.
She, she imagine what it is. And did she tell anybody about it.
We don’t know if she told anybody was too, too crazy to tell anybody who would tell somebody that and then she sees it’s happening.
She’s pregnant and she watches it come true.
And of course, everybody around her would have thought that she had committed adultery or fornication and she is, she was ba trolled to be married.
And back then, betrothed was not the same as now.
It was basically you’re married except it had not been Consummated.
It was Consummated on the day of the wedding, but they were considered husband and wife in the patrol.
So she had already had a ceremony where she and this man, Joseph were betrothed, old, basically married.
But it’s so but not Consummated. So now it looks as if she’s committed adultery.
And now you have Joseph Joseph, Godly man. He finds out she’s pregnant.
And so being Godly, he’s saying I can’t marry her because she’s committed adultery, but he’s a man of mercy.
And so he tries to, I’ll do this quietly, I’ll put her away. So she won’t have disgrace on her.
But as he’s about planning to do that, he goes to bed and he has a dream and an angel appears to him in a dream and the angel says, Joseph do not be afraid to take Miriam as your wife for what is conceived in her is of God.
And so Joseph knows it’s of God. He gets up and he becomes so they, they seal the marriage.
Both of them have a secret and can he, can he tell others about it?
We don’t know that he could tell others what he had. And it’s so crazy.
Both have been touched by an Angel one in life and the other in a dream.
It’d be hard for them to tell anybody.
And at that time, then something happens, something comes down from the emperor in Rome. Luke two.
It says then then in those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus Augustus, the first effort that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth.
That was the first census taken while Corinne Ius was governor of Syria and everyone was on his way to register for the census each in his own city.
So now you have a census. Why? Because some things never change. They wanted money, they wanted more money.
So in order to get more money, they have to register everybody. So now we can tax you.
That’s what it’s about. But they say to make sure we get everybody, everybody go to where their ancestral land is.
So Joseph is of the line of David.
So he goes, they go to the city of David and that is the city called Bethlehem.
Bethlehem, Bethlehem, a few miles south of Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the center of Jerusalem, the center of Jewish life.
It’s the holy places where and it’s also a cosmopolitan city. People are, are coming all over there.
That’s where everything is. But he’s goes to Bethlehem now, the, the governors of or the kings now.
But the Roman, the Roman army, they were stationed in Caesarea by the sea.
But they also had headquarters by, in Jerusalem because they always want to watch Jerusalem because that’s where they could have trouble to this day.
That’s where there can be trouble in the world.
So they have their headquarters watching the Jerusalem city of priests and Hedren worshipers. Roman soldiers. Royal house hood.
Herod describes the Pharisees and those also devoted to God like a prophet and a prophetess named Shimon or Simeon.
And Hannah Anna who waited until they’re gonna be one of the first people to see the baby.
Messiah Rome is the center of the western world.
Jerusalem is on the fringe of that empire, but it’s the center of the Jewish world.
But the account doesn’t take place in any of those main places.
But in the little town called the House of Bread House bait bread, Lahem, bait, Lahem.
Bethlehem, a town with a history, Naomi and Ruth that was their town.
David was born there, that was his childhood home. So it’s got a history.
But aside from that, it’s a small little place, sleepy town, rolling hills, pasture land to this day.
Shepherds to this day and sheep. So Joseph and Mary, they make their way down.
Nobody would have noticed them young, poor couple from a nowhere place, Nazareth to a little nothing place except it has a little history.
Bethlehem, beyond Jerusalem, they arrive in the town and when they get to that little town, there’s no room for them in the lodging place.
So they end up having to go outside to a feeding station, most likely a shepherding station where animals where animals are feeding, most likely sheep.
Now, there’s an old tradition that Messiah will be born in a place called mcdole Adair.
Interesting because the name actually appears in the same book of the prophets who for the prophet who foretold Bethlehem, Mica in the same prophecy a little earlier on, he says, you Bethlehem.
But then he says, but you Migdal Adar, Migdal Adar is right near Bethlehem.
It’s a place it’s called in Hebrew. It means the tower of the flock where shepherds would be.
Last time I was in Israel, we went searching for the place because that may be the very well the place where Messiah was actually born.
And either we found a place that may be the place and you actually could see the tower of the flock where the towers of the flock.
Now they go out there and they’re half outside, half inside in some kind of place.
And while they were there, verse six, the days were completed for her to give birth and she gave birth to her firstborn son, wrapped them in cloth, laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the end.
So here they are, the two of them alone.
Mary goes into labor of birth when the child is, the child is born outside, wrapped in cloth, immediately a homeless couple and a homeless baby in the middle of nowhere.
So you’ve got the world back then. The world culture power, glamour Rome.
Then in the corner of the Empire, you got Jerusalem also with its own power and wealth.
And Jerusalem is the backwoods of the Roman Empire. Then you got Bethlehem, which is the backwoods of Jerusalem.
And then you don’t even have. You got a, you got a major outside the real place of Bethlehem.
That’s the backwoods of the backwoods of the backwoods of the backwoods.
It’s a homeless couple alone in a feeding station for animals.
Most obscure event, the emperor had no idea what’s going on. Herod had no idea.
At that time it was going on. The people of Beckham had no idea what’s going on.
Only Mary, only one man and one woman later, some shepherds had an idea and a baby.
That’s it out there outside the outside of the outside of the outside there on the fringe of the fringe of the fringe of the fringe.
Smallest event. No historian, no Roman historian were recorded at the time.
No Jewish historian was recorded at the time until the gospels are written but no one.
And here’s the thing when you think about it here we are 2000 years later at the other end of the world, At the other end of history.
And we are celebrating an event that happened in the middle of nowhere when, when nobody noticed it and now the whole world is celebrating the event in some way all over the world.
The event that nobody saw that nobody cared about that was out in the middle of nowhere, not even noticed by the world and a homeless couple with animals is causing the whole world to stop in 2018.
That’s amazing. The government is closed down because of this homeless couple. Banks are closed down. Supermarche.
Great corporations are closed down because of the homeless couple in the middle of nowhere that nobody cared about now, they had no room.
Now the entire world makes room. Think about it all over the world economy.
Stock markets are closed down in the continents because of that homeless couple and the birth of a little Jewish baby.
You know, the world doesn’t usually like Jewish people of Israel yet they bow their knee to the birth of a little Jewish baby.
Amazing, amazing God is so ironic.
There are parades, there are television shows, there are television specials, there are holiday specials all about this middle of nowhere peasant birth.
You know, there are these celebrities all Hollywood and they’ll actually sing some of these songs to this couple to what happened.
Then 20% of all sales that are made in the consumer market are made in commemoration of that little homeless birth.
You have Santa Claus and Frosty and Rudolph, the red nose reindeer all of it, even though it’s so far off, but still none of that would have existed without that little baby in Bethlehem.
And that little event that nobody cared about. Think about it.
What is the most universally commemorated event in human history?
It’s not anything to do with any great key of the world or, or Emperor Augustus. Nobody, Julius Caesar. Nothing.
We don’t commemorate anything, Alexander, the great, nobody commemorates anything or almost nobody Napoleon, nothing.
Leonardo da Vinci, whatever it is.
It’s this event, Christopher Columbus discovered the new world and there are some statues of him around the world and some streets and in a day.
But there’s no comparison. What other event in the entire recorded history of human, of human existence is celebrated on all sorts of lawns across America lawns.
Not just that lawns have the celebration of the event. Is there any other event?
All sorts of towns have street lights because of the event.
What other event appears appears on all sorts of greeting cards. What other historic event?
What other stark event is reenacted over and over again in plays and pageants and throughout every generation, What other event is sung about more than any other event in human history.
There are songs about about America, about 1776 that’s the birth of America.
But they don’t compare to how many songs there are about this little homeless couple this one event and what other event has so changed the world that literally it cut the history of the world in half.
Every event before this peasant homeless birth is called B C.
Every event after the peasant birth is called A D every event on this planet is dated by how it relates to that event.
In that event that happened, that nobody cared about.
Now every single event has to be dated by that. Every nation in some way has to do it.
Not just in America, Europe, in Asia, in India, in the Hindu world, in the Communist world, in the Muslim world, they still date every event.
Every Muslim event. Every Buddhist event, everything is dated to this homeless couple in outside of Bethlehem or in Bethlehem.
Communist newspapers date themselves.
Put how whatever event they’re gonna say any Communist event has to be dated to the birth of this Jewish rabbi.
What is that? A coronation of a king, inauguration of a president?
Everything is marked by how it relates to that. What’s that saying?
The world is saying even though that this event is more important than any other event, it’s greater that every event in our life has been.
You say you were born in this year. It was all how you related to Beth Lamb.
It doesn’t matter if you’re Jewish Orthodox Jew. You are still related to Bethlehem. What a phenomenon this is.
And Joseph and Mary, could you imagine if they had any idea of this when they sat alone in the dark on that cold night in that animal feeding station for trying to protect the baby that all around the world people would sing songs of that night.
All the other wearing a lot of songs except the angels but all around, they’re gonna be songs about that night that they would have plays, they would be plays of people acting them out for ages that kings and queens and emperors would honor and commemorate their time of being homeless.
Every, that every imagine they can figure that every human event is gonna be dated to that.
This is a wow phenomenon. Don’t, don’t miss it. Don’t take it for granted.
Because if you came from another planet, some of you have, if you came from another planet, you’d be blown away to say what is going on here.
We’re just used to it. So we don’t realize how amazing this is. It’s a, it’s a God thing.
So what does it tell us now? Let’s take it home.
What does it have to do with you? What does it reveal to your life?
Number one, it tells you that God’s ways are not man’s ways and man’s ways are not God’s ways.
My ways are not your ways. Says the Lord for as high as the heavens above the earth.
So my ways are above yours. The way of God is not the way of the world.
The way of the world is not the way of God back then.
It seemed that the place to be the in thing, to be the in place to be was to be in Rome.
The place wasn’t in Rome, the in place was in the manger.
It seemed Rome was the center and the manger was the backwoods, but it was actually the manger that was the center and Rome was the backwoods back then.
It seemed the in place was the palace Augustus and all his inherited in his palace.
But 2000 years later, nobody really cares about Augustus palace or Herod’s palace.
Nobody knows what they were doing that night because it doesn’t really matter compared to what happened in that manger.
Virtually, the whole world knows what happened to that manger. People who are atheists and who are into it.
And radical Muslims know what happened in that manger.
We’ll see what is important to God and truly important usually is not important to the world.
And what is important to the world is rarely important to God in the end to its really of anything.
What is big in the world is little to God and what is little in God is little in the world is big in God.
Don’t be drawn to the things of the world.
Don’t be impressed by it don’t be intimidated by the majority or by the numbers or by polls or by power or glitter or because to God, the majority is nothing, the majority back then didn’t know what was going on.
It was the minority and that’s what’s gonna change. The world. God always loves the minority.
He’ll take the minority and he’ll change the world only be impressed by the things of God and the word of God and the voice of God because the grass fades and the flower withers away.
But the word of our God indoors forever, be impressed by that. That’s forever in the end.
It may, may look small for a moment when you’re dealing with all the things of the culture and all the media.
But this is so much bigger than all that.
You know, you can look at a, at a newspaper one day old and it’s old and yet this is newer than yesterday’s newspaper.
It’s newer than this morning’s newspaper.
Truly, you can’t read anything from 2000 years ago and wow, it just touches your life for today.
Nothing because it never ages. So there God is looking that way and you know, they were not in the in, you know, when you’re in high school, there was an in crowd, usually an out crowd, but the in crowd back then would have been Rome and would have been, would have been Caesar would have been heralded, but God is not into the in crowd, there was no room at the end.
So they were out. But in God, the out is in and the in is out.
So when you’re with God, you don’t, don’t worry about fitting in with the world. That’s better.
It’s an honor to be out with, be with God and out with the world than to be in with the world and out with God.
It is an honor. It says let us go outside the gates with Him.
What else does it reveal?
The greatest things begin in God begins small besides income. Some of them were expecting.
He’s gonna come right then on the clouds. No, he comes as a little baby comes little.
The nation of Israel began as a little baby. The redemption from Egypt Exodus began with a little baby, Moses.
The call of Samuel began with a little voice in the night to a little child.
The throne of Israel began with a little child.
The least likely the smallest child David and with a prophet Samuel pouring oil on his head.
When he was nothing. The call of the prophets begin with little voice of God.
Salvation began with an encounter of an angel with a young Jewish woman in a nothing place that nobody knew about it would change the world.
Everything that happened with Peter became began with a little moment when this guy is rabbi passed by and he dropped his net would change his life.
And change the world. Paul began with hearing, hearing, hearing a voice that nobody could hear at that moment and it would change the world.
So in your life, the greatest things in your life with God will begin small.
Your salvation begins in your heart, begins in your heart.
When I got saved, I didn’t feel I, I barely felt anything but then it changed.
My entire life begins small, begins in the heart.
The greatest things of God begin with one small change, one small step of faith in a new direction and that can change your life.
One small step of repentance can change your life.
One small act of really receiving the grace of God in your life can change your heart.
Do not despise the day of small beginning says the Bible says the Lord, that’s how they begin and it says be faithful and little and you will be faithful and much be blessed in the small things of God because the small things of God as we can see from Bethlehem are greater than the big things of the world.
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