Born Outside the Land

This recording is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison archive, part of the “Luke’s Christmas Story” series, delivered December 24, 1997.

Sermon transcript

Father, it is not our joy alone, even the secret, but it is the joy of your people around the world. Dear Lord, we ask that the joy that is expressed may well in itself be a witness to your greatness and your faithfulness. Father, be pleased to use us, even the joy that we express, that we then, according to your Spirit in some small way, might be a means for you to speak powerfully to others. May it be, O God, that our joy directs others to the greatness of the redemption which has been accomplished in Christ. May our joy be well grounded in your word and direct others to that word. We pray these things now, O God, for the sake of Jesus our Savior. Amen.

Now I have to admit that I was tempted, as I usually am, during the Christmas Eve service or in terms of my preparations for the Christmas Eve service. a nice little service on Christmas Eve, folks coming out to church, not wanting to delay too long, not wanting to think too hard, coming in for a bit of homiletical fluff before they go home and get down to business about the real matters of Christmas. As I said, I was tempted.

Shall we have a bit of homiletical nonsense? Or should we have a good old-fashioned, mind-destructing sermon? Well, you know how that argument came out of me. If you came for a bit of homiletical fluff, please sit back. You know, maybe you can catch a little sleep. You might be here a while.

The details with which Luke’s Christmas story opens here in chapter 2, reminiscent of an earlier time in Israel’s history. I have in mind the time of the exile. The exile you will remember was that period belonging essentially to the sixth century B.C., when Judah was overrun by the Chaldeans, by the Babylonians. A large number of Jews subsequently carried off from their homeland into captivity, into the proverbial Babylonian captivity.

Here was one of those extraordinary periods in history when figures no less impressive than Caesar Augustus and Quirinius captured the world’s attention. They walked on the earth like gods. And it is while the Jews were still in captivity. But the Medo-Persians, you will remember, under Cyrus the Great, destroyed Babylon. Cyrus later issued the command that repatriated the Jews to their homeland.

Thus began the so-called Restoration. When the Jews came back into Judea, and into its territories. But this restoration for the Jews was anything but perfect. For instance, it was not a permanent restoration. It wasn’t an everlasting or an eternal restoration. In other words, the Jews were being restored to a territory that could again be lost, from which they might again be exiled.

But furthermore, and quite important for the purposes we have before us this evening, many of the Jews, upon their return to their homeland in the 6th century B.C., continued to be displaced persons. Even within their home territory, they continued to be displaced persons. In this regard, you may recall how painstakingly the law, and especially the book of Joshua, lays out the boundaries for the various tribes of Israel. You must understand that these territorial claims were as sacrosanct to the Jew as any of his religious obligations and duties. But upon the return from Babylon, the return from the captivity, many Jews for various reasons found resettlement on the family farm, so to speak. impractical, if not impossible. This then left many Jewish families far from their ancestral roots, even within the parable of the promised land.

Families far from their ancestral roots families like those of Joseph and Mary, who presently lived in Nazareth of Galilee, when their ancestral ties were far to the south in the territory of Judah, and particularly the environs of the town of Bethlehem, the village of David. It would seem then that in a certain and in a very real sense, the exile, despite the restoration that came in the 6th century BC, for the Jews, has continued. It has continued with many families living now, even now, at great distances from their tribal inheritance.

But what, you might ask, might be the divine purpose for this present predicament, even as the first century dawns? Why has God placed his people in such a situation as this, one in which being restored from exile, they are not restored and still remain in exile. Is not the reason for this the fact that the Lord wants his people to know that being restored to the land of Israel does not equal arriving home. Being restored to the land of Israel does not equal arriving home. It does not signal the end of the journey.

To paraphrase the Apostle Paul, himself a Jew from the tribe of Benjamin, we could put it like this. To be at home in the land of Israel is to be absent from the Lord. of 2 Corinthians 5 verse 6. You know how the next verse goes? For we walk not by sight, but by faith. That is to say, the land of Israel never was the gold. for the people of God. Instead, God himself was the goal. Keep himself in his glorious eternal kingdom in heaven, from which there is no exile. That is the goal.

Jews then living as displaced persons, like Joseph and Mary, as aliens and exiles, even within the land of Israel, become in themselves an eloquent sermon. Notice now how the theme intensifies and develops. here in the story that Luke gives us. For neither is the Lord’s message to Israel in the circumstances along these lines. I will overcome the incongruities and your displacement, and I will restore each one of you to your rightful and original territorial assignment. Judah for Judeans, the territory of Benjamin to Benjaminites, the land of Asher to Asher’s children, the land of Naphtali to the descendants of Naphtali. The Lord does not say that nor intend to say any such thing.

But instead of some sort of affirmation of tribal territorial rights, the Lord himself declares his intention in this alien and exile couple, Joseph and Mary in Luke 2. But even more especially and particularly, in the child Mary carries. For you see, even when the Lord oversees and directs Mary and Joseph back to the territory of Judah, back to the regions of Bethlehem, to the territory of their ancestral rights.

He does not allow them to stay there. Having arrived in Bethlehem just in time for Mary’s child to be born, these descendants of Judah are not allowed any permanent address In the regions of Bethlehem, Christ, you will recall, was born in a stable. Then shortly after the birth, they returned to Nazareth in Galilee.

You see, remain exiles, because the Lord of heaven and earth, the Lord who is at work to save his people, is endeavoring to instruct them that their true home is elsewhere. But this being the case, the Lord, of course, does not leave Israel in the dark as to where that true home might be.

We see the true home coming to life in however a preliminary way in the story of Jesus’ a story which at the same time is inclusive of Israel’s past and suggestive of the coming life of the church. What you will want to understand from all of this is this. The story of Jesus Christ’s birth carries in it the story of Israel, whose life now the Son of God willingly and consciously takes to himself thereby setting before the ancient people of God that ancient people’s true home and destiny. But this birth also carries within it the purpose to which Christ himself will press in his maturity, in the maturity of his ministry, namely his death and his resurrection, through which that true home ordained for the people of God that will be achieved. And finally, the story of Christ’s birth carries within it the story of the Church and its future, the story of all those savingly bound to the Savior, who through him are going home indeed. First of all, then, Christ’s birth carries with it the story of Israel. God, in becoming man through the incarnation, I hope you know that word, literally enters into the experience of his people, such as his love.

If we are to see in Mary and Joseph the exile history and even its continuation, we must admit that Mary’s child has been conceived in and is born into the same circumstance. Joseph and Mary’s history has become his history, their history being a history in which we perceive the exile. It becomes a history in which he partakes. In Christ God himself lives through the exodus. Such is the vicarious nature of his identity. He takes it to himself, to the end that in himself he might deliver his people from exile and bring them to their true home.

How God will accomplish this brings us to our second point. Christ’s birth carries within it testimony to the purpose to which our Savior presses in his mature ministry. In fact, we can see in the birth the pattern of the whole of Christ’s life. That pattern, the whole of it, before Christ lives it. It is there in infant form.

For just as the Son of God comes down from heaven to earth and will return there, so he comes in his mother’s womb from the north country of Galilee to be born in Bethlehem and visit Jerusalem, then to depart again for Galilee. Similarly, just as he, Christ, as a child, travels south to Judah and Jerusalem, and while yet in Mary’s womb, there in his mother, to suffer rejection, there was no room for him in the inn. only to be born to angelic acclamation, and then to depart northward again. So as a man in his full maturity, he will journey south from Galilee to Judah and Jerusalem, and while yet in his flesh there suffer rejection and death, only to be born again in resurrection to angelic acclamation, then to depart into the regions of glory.”

It is obvious, is it not? The pattern is divinely inspired, divinely appointed. The parallel is perfect. God moves us then in the story about the birth of his Son to the story about the death of his Son. I said it before, I will say it again. There is deliberate movement in the gospel as we move from the womb to the tomb.

You may not have noticed it, but that is why Luke, in chapter 23, verse 53, tells us that the tomb into which Christ’s dead body was laid was one in which no man had ever lain. We move from the virgin womb to the virgin tomb. The angelic messengers at the tomb to the women match the angel messengers in the field near Bethlehem, speaking to the shepherds. The sign of the empty tomb, with its linen wrappings upon Jesus’ resurrection, matched the sign of the manger and the swaddling clothes at Jesus’ birth. And David, Jesus’ departure from Judah to the north into Galilee, anticipates his departure into heaven, the true home for all God’s exiles who live as strangers and aliens in this world.

This brings us to our third and final point. The story of Jesus’ birth carries within it the story of the Church taking shape. We see that story of the Church in the angels and in the shepherds. The angels themselves are the pattern for the coming ministry of the Church.

They bear witness to Jesus Christ. A witness that leads to a superlative worship of God and his benediction upon his people. The shepherds follow suit. Beholding what God has done, we are told, they made known what had been told them about the And then we are informed of their worship of God. The pattern is the same. But now notice the pattern of the gospel conclusion.

For there we find angels telling women, and women telling apostles. And there is in Christ himself. Later, telling those apostles that they would be his witnesses. Even throughout the world. Concerning the message of the kingdom. And the truth about forgiveness of sin.

And you might note how the Gospel of Luke concludes with a scene of the apostles then at worship, even worshiping Christ, and celebrating God’s great glory, expressing the peace that has come to them. What peace? Doesn’t God want it? What peace? The apostles know better, as do we. True peace, not as the world does. but as God himself is capable of doing.

With the combination then of the close of the Gospel of Luke with its beginning, and the regularity of the pattern of witness and worship that you see there, we cannot but conclude that here is set before us the life of the Church in witness and in worship. For she is to bear witness to and worship, not just the virginally conceived and virginally born Son of God, but the bodily crucified, risen and ascended Lord. Furthermore, by this one Lord and Savior, we his church now have our praise perfected, even unto highest heaven, with the knowledge that although we are still aliens and strangers in this world, as Peter tells us at the opening of his first letter, although we are the true twelve tribes scattered abroad, as James tells us at the beginning of his epistle, although we are the exiles, we are those with whom God is pleased by virtue of his grace and not on the basis of our righteousness. We are the recipients of an eternal peace, a gift from him that comes to us from our true home in heaven, that place into which Christ has gone and into which we most certainly I am reminded of John Calvin’s great line in this regard.

If heaven is our home, what is earth but a place of exile? The Jews, in returning from the exile, had not come home yet. But all those believing in the virgin-born Son of God, the one who was crucified for sinners and raised again on the third day of his body, being ascended into heaven, all those savingly trusting in him, all those exiles here are on their way home. and have as a down payment upon their arrival there the peace of God already. You don’t have to be afraid if you are in exile. under the banner of Christ.

At this Christmas season, may we all be certain that we are among the exiles. What love, O God, that you would come to us, that you would know our lives intimately as you have, that you would take the history of your people to yourself. that you would take to yourself their burden and even their sin, that you would bear that sin upon us, that you would bury it in the tomb, that you would rise again and by that resurrection grant life eternal to your people who are exiles still in this world. Father, may we know ourselves to be exiles. May we confess with all our heart that our home is in glory. And may we live, O God, in keeping with the peace of the gospel, in an obedience to your will, even until you are pleased to take us to war. And Father, until that day arrives, we pray that your church worldwide would witness faithfully to Christ and worship the one true God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Yes, we ask, Father, that there might be a faithfulness in us in our journey, even as there has been that faithfulness.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.