We're back in chapter two in Luke's gospel, and we're thinking of this decree that Caesar Augustus made that the whole world should be taxed. Something snapped in Caesar's mind. I don't know what it was, whether it was the political pressure in the Senate, or maybe it was a nagging wife keeping taunting Caesar. And he had to prove just how many millions of people he reigned over as the emperor of Rome. And so a rule call was announced, a Roman rule call. And this sent everyone in the known world at that time scurrying to their place of nativity. They had to return to the place of their birth to be registered. Now, could you imagine that today in this global travel? They said that yesterday was to be the busiest travel day in certainly North America. If Caesar's roll call was today, well, the whole world would be traveling. And we would be displaced for a time, all to prove just how many people were dwelling under Caesar's control. But this decree of Caesar was really a decree of God, who throughout all history was preparing the world for the birth of the Lord Jesus. There is something far bigger at work than Caesar's little plan to enumerate and make this roll call of his subjects. Behind Caesar there was God, And God was now ready to send His Son into the world. And today, without any further introduction, I want us to look at the fact of God preparing the world for the birth of His Son. Now to do this, we need to go back to the first gospel promise in the Bible, Genesis 3.15, where it says, the seed of the woman will bruise the head of the serpent." Now, that seed of the woman is Christ. It is an ambiguous promise for Bible readers at that time. Not everyone could have understood from Genesis 3.15 how this would play out. But in the mind of God, it was certainly known. And to Adam and Eve, immediately after they fell into sin, God's plan was announced. Now, we certainly believe that even before Adam and Eve sinned, that God had already predetermined that He would permit the fall. He would allow Adam and Eve to transgress, plunge the world into sin, but that God would have a purpose of redemption. You say, but where do you find that in the Bible? Well, let's go to Ephesians chapter 1. Let's read just a couple of verses from these early chapter of Ephesians, chapter 1, and we will see here the mind and purpose of God. Ephesians 1, verse 4, According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will. And then jump down to verse 12, that we should be to the praise of His glory, who first trusted in Christ. And you will see here that the eternal God, sovereign over all his creation, sovereign over all the world of humanity, He chose us, and He chose His Son to be our Savior before the foundation of the world, and He did this for His own purposes, that He would bring about glory to His name. So you have the creation of a perfect world, you have the fall of man, and you have God's saving purpose. that He would display His love and grace toward fallen, sinful, lost men and women, bringing us into glory through the plan of His own Son. Now, you're in Luke's gospel. Let's just go back into chapter 1 a little bit and look at verse 71. Look at verse 71. And you'll see that God from the Old Testament, beginning, of course, in the Garden of Eden, but right through the Old Testament history, God was working out this plan, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all that hate us to perform the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath which he swore to our father Abraham. Now, to get to Abraham, you have to jump about 1800 years from creation. And you have to go to Genesis 12, and you learn there about the call of God to Abraham. and he called him out of Ur of the Chaldees. Ur at that time was a very civilized city. It was a place of libraries and government and a lot of education, but it was idolatrous. Fallen into the darkness of idolatry. And so God, to begin a line for the Messiah. This is God working now. And he takes Abraham. Why Abraham? Sovereign election. God's sovereign choice. And he calls Abraham, he says, get out of Ur of the Chaldees. And he called him into a land where he did not know where he was going. He was a slight pause in Iran for a time, and then he got into the promised land. And you know the life of Abraham, that it was not until he was a hundred years old that God gave a son. And I'm sure Abraham must have known, what is God doing? He has promised that he will give a seed. A seed as many as the stars in the heaven and the sand of the seashore. So innumerable. But I don't even have a child. And you know the burden and the waiting for Abram and Sarah until he was a hundred years old and she was ninety years old, when there was born, really, a miracle child in their old age. And Isaac was born. And Isaac was the father of Jacob, who was the father of Joseph. And on down the line, this was God preparing the way for the Messiah. And God was working by a covenant. He made an oath to Abraham. He made a promise to him that he would give a seed. And we're told in John's gospel that Abram saw Christ's day and rejoiced in it. Can you grasp that? What amazing faith Abram had. And God gave him the faith to believe in the promise not of an Isaac, just his natural son, but of a Redeemer, a Savior, one who would purchase men and women out of sin and save them for glory and for heaven. Now, we were looking there in chapter 171. If you go back a little bit to 69, verse 69 in Luke 1, you'll see another name that is linked to the Messiahship, or the coming of Jesus into the world. David, and hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David. And so you can see now this Messiah tree. It began in Garden of Eden. opened branches out with Abraham, and out of that lineage of all those years that go by through history, you've got the promised land, you've got Judge Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Saul, then David. And David was God's chosen one to be the king over all Israel. Now notice what God said with David. Verse 70, As he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began. Note that, since the world began. This is God's plan now unfolding. The same plan that God had before the world, the plan he had when Adam and Eve fell, the plan he had with Abraham, he is now executing through the line of David. And what an interesting character David is. how many parallels there are between David and our Lord Jesus. He is one who is like unto the Lord Jesus in so many ways. He was the hero of Israel, of course, and his slain of Goliath. And you have this representative man, David, a boy really, and he's going out, and he is the one who gets the victory for Israel. You can see, even in that event, that David represents the Lord Jesus. It was David who conquered the whole land and Jerusalem. It was David who brought the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem and set up the worship of God in that holy city. And of course, in that again, he is a type, a picture of the Lord Jesus. David, we know, was born in Bethlehem, where the Lord Jesus was born. You can see the parallels closing in tighter and tighter, the frame and the picture now focusing on the Messiah, the Christ that is to be born. David was a shepherd king. boy shepherd turned king. That's the title of our Lord Jesus. He is the shepherd of his people, but he's also our king. David was the thrice-anointed king over Israel, and our Lord Jesus is the thrice-anointed Savior, prophet, priest, and king. Now, up until the birth of Jesus, all Israel knew, all those who read the Old Testament Scriptures and studied them, they knew that their Messiah would come to them through the line of David, Judah, and even be born in Bethlehem. And you remember how the wise men came searching, and they asked Herod, where is he? And they sent for the scribes, and the scribes said, Bethlehem of Judah, and the light was shining brighter and brighter and brighter. Then I read in the Gospels of blind men like Bartimaeus, sitting along the roadside as Jesus came, and they said, Jesus, thou son of David, Why did they give him that title? Why did they speak in that manner? Because they knew this was the truth that the Messiah would come of the line of David, and they believed that this one called Jesus who could do miracles and did heal them from their blindness, that he was indeed the Messiah. Therefore, they called him the Son of David. And so this was that faith that was growing. And you must see that too. If you're going to link into the family of faith and be a child of God, enjoying the blessings of Christ the Savior, you must recognize this wonderful plan of God and believe that Jesus is indeed sent for you. And like Bartimaeus and others, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me. Now as God prepared the world, he also prepared Mary's womb. Whoever wrote the book of Hebrews, he put it this way, sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me. And now we come to the miracle of the virgin birth. which more accurately, more specifically, is the miracle of the virgin conception. The birth of our Lord Jesus was a natural birth. He was born into the world through the birth canal of Mary as children are. But the wonder that God prepared a body is that God took responsibility for the conception of this child. in Mary's womb. And of course, the Gospels are very specific, and throughout the records of these Gospels, we find great care is taken that he is not the son of Joseph, but he is the son of God. And that brings us into the realm of mystery and miracle. Our Lord Jesus is God manifest in the flesh. He is 100% God. and he's 100% man. This evening we will look at some of the errors that have crept into this. Some people think, well, he's 50%, he's half God and half man. No, our Lord Jesus is 100% God. He's the second person of the Trinity, thinking not robbery to be equal with God. He humbled himself and took upon him the form of a servant. human nature. And what an amazing miracle it was God. And it says God made him flesh. The Word was made flesh. Now it's not a man became a God, but it is God became or took into union a human nature. And this disallows any man to claim a part. in this holy work, this supernatural preparation, both of Mary's womb, that he would not be contaminated by sin, and that he would be supernaturally conceived. Do you see God at work here? He was at work in the Garden of Eden. He was at work with Abraham making a covenant. He was at work in the kingship of David. He was at work in the womb of Mary. And now as we look at Luke chapter 2, we see that he's preparing the world now with a Roman decree. you must go to your home of nativity, and there be registered." And that sent Joseph and Mary to the town of Bethlehem right on time, for she was soon to be delivered of child. And we know the wonderful story of how there, whenever the whole town of Bethlehem was flooded with people, all the accommodations were taken. There wasn't a home or a bed remaining. And there in the stable, Jesus was born in poverty. Now, I know that Caesar was totally oblivious to all of that plan and purpose. He had really no part in sending Mary and Joseph, not directly. You see, the will of Caesar was really the will of God. And in the wisdom and providence of God, he wanted it to be recorded, irrevocably recorded, securely recorded, that Jesus was born there. He was a real, it was a real birth, in a real place, in a real town, with real parents. Understanding that he's supernaturally conceived not of Joseph, but of the Lord. And the record is made in the books of Rome, but they're really in the books of heaven. And they're for us to read and to rejoice that God was at work. Never underestimate the wisdom of God. There are times when we wonder what God is doing. Why does God allow this? It seems to make no sense. But God is working not according to our little schemes. but according to His eternal purpose. And we each need to be jolted and awakened that God is in control in this world. And when we come to the birth of our Lord Jesus, as we think of this special event of the year, this is the thing that must hit us right in the face. God works all things out. And you can write over Bethlehem, you can write over the birth of Jesus, All things work together for good to them that love God. Now, two more things that I must preach here today. God prepared the world through the Garden of Eden, through Abraham, through David, through Mary's womb, through Bethlehem, and the decree of Caesar, but also we are told that God in the fullness of time sent forth his Son made of a woman, made under the law." Now, why is that important? Because the Lord Jesus came into the world to fulfill the law. And the wonder is that after all the period between Moses and the birth of Christ, the laws of the Jews were still in place. The Ten Commandments was God's moral law still in place. The Levitical laws, which Jesus kept, Not the commandments of man that were added on and added on in confusion, but those Old Testament ceremonial laws. Jesus kept them. On the eighth day, Jesus was circumcised, all that he might keep the law. When he became a man and was baptized, we are told, suffer it to be so now that I might fulfill all righteousness. And right through Jesus' life, he was conscious that he was fulfilling the law. He was the law-keeper. And God prepared a body for Jesus that in His life, He would make a very account of righteous living, godly living, law-keeping, to redeem them that were under the law. It took a law-keeper to save lawbreakers. It took one who was perfect in his living to lift men out of their dying. It took the sovereign power of the God-man who walked this world to redeem men for the world to come. The obedience of the Lord Jesus is our answer to our failures and sins and follies. Romans 5.18, by the obedience of one, many are made righteous. He was made under the law, and God again was preparing the way and preparing for our salvation by sending a law keeper, a perfect law keeper, who fulfilled all righteousness. One last fact, and we're nearly done. God prepared the world by the promise in the Garden of Eden, by Abram, by David, by Mary's womb, and that he was born under the law, but also that he was born into a world of Roman crucifixion. When the Lord Jesus came into the world, the Romans were in control of the known world. and their manner of executing to beat people to death was by a cross. You read the histories of the Roman roads that led into the city of Rome. And at times, especially during various conquests, the roads to Rome were lined with crosses. And they were set within distance of each other so that the traveler into Rome would see these crosses and see their victims suffering on that cross. And they were taught the lesson before they even arrived in Rome that Rome was unbeatable. It was a crushing machine for any that would resist. And while Rome sought cruelly to gain power and sway by the cross, God had another plan. Because the law said, he that hangeth on a cross is cursed. And when God sent his son to the cross, he made him a curse for us. And we know that Mary, she was told by Simeon that a sword would cross through her heart also. And there came a day when Mary stood at the cross And she watched her own son, the son that she bore from her womb, that she nursed, that she caressed, that she guided in childhood. And she saw the nails through his hands, and she saw the blood that poured from his body. And there was God planning the cross to save us. He became a curse. for us that we might know no curse. And so you can see from the beginning right to the end of Jesus' birth, life, and death. God was there controlling. And the wonder the gospel message is that in the cross is the doctrine of substitution. I lay my sins on Jesus and Jesus bears them away for me. And God permits substitution. He provided the substitute, the Lord Jesus himself. He purposed and he planned it. But there's one other preparation that is required. And if you study Galatians chapter 3, especially verse 14, you will see that all of this is according to faith. And everyone that benefits from the birth, life, death of Jesus, God prepares in their hearts faith. They are all believers. Mary believed. Joseph believed. The shepherds believed. The wise men who followed the star, they believed. And all who come to the Lord Jesus and benefit from his life and death Now, God has to work that faith in your heart, because unless you can call yourself a believer, that you have totally received and prayed that you will be saved by the work of the Savior, you're full of doubt, distance, rebellion, rejection. You must believe and be saved. Will you believe today? Will you believe this? I've painted with a very big brush today, starting at the very beginning of the world, right to Calvary. Do you believe this plan, sovereignly, lovingly, provided for you? A Savior, His name shall be called Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins. May His grace, His saving power, fill your heart.