A Savior Is Born | Luke 2:1-20
Brian Hedges | December 24, 2025
There are two kinds of stories, and I enjoy both kinds. There are those stories that are pretty simple and straightforward, where you get everything in the first telling, or the first reading, or if it’s in a film or movie maybe in the first watching. And those can be quite entertaining, they can be relaxing, they can be helpful; we appreciate stories like that. But there are also stories that have a kind of depth that maybe escapes you on the first telling. These are the stories that have texture, they have layers, layers of meaning. These are the books that you read and you reread; they are the movies that you watch and you rewatch, not because you don’t know what’s happened, but because you get something new every time.
I enjoy both kinds, okay? I read a Louis L’Amour book this week. It’s a western. I did it not because there’s any depth to it, just to relax. It’s fine. But there are those stories, whether it’s in fiction or in history or in film or whatever, there are those stories that have such depth that only when we really peer into them and meditate on them do we grasp the significance.
The story of the gospel, while it may appear at first glance to be a very simple story, and especially the Christmas story that we’re going to read tonight, it’s actually the latter type. It is a story that has layers, it has texture, it has depth, and it invites reading and rereading, it invites rumination and meditation, it invites our whole heart and mind engaged to really see what God was doing.
I want us to look at this story again tonight. I’m not even sure how many times I’ve preached on the Christmas story here at Redeemer—multiple times over the last two decades—but we’re going to look at it again tonight, Luke 2:1-20. I’m just going to read it as we work through it, beginning with verses 1-5, and I want to highlight four things that we learn from the passage—not nearly everything in the passage, but four things that I hope will be encouraging and will build up your faith tonight.
So, Luke 2:1-5.
“In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. [This was a census that was being taken so the people could pay their taxes.] 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.”
Most of us have heard those words dozens of times, if not more, and they do tell us many, many different things, don’t they? They tell us that this story is a historical story. This took place in history. Luke here is situating the birth of Christ within the history of Judea and the Roman Empire and Caesar Augustus and all of that.
1. The Guidance of the Invisible Hand of God
But there’s also something else at work here, and this is what I want to highlight. I think that when you read closely and you read between the lines, you detect the guidance of an invisible hand in the events of this story. The guidance of an invisible hand.
You have several things that all coalesce together right here. You have Caesar’s decree, you have Mary’s burden, and you have God’s purpose.
Caesar’s decree is obvious in those first several verses. Caesar Augustus, who was the great-nephew of Julius Caesar and had been ruling Rome for many years now, gives this decree that all of those people who are under Roman rule are to be registered—the census taken—so that they could pay their taxes. And this becomes the reason, the occasion, for the journey of Joseph and Mary, who’s very pregnant, to Bethlehem. Mary’s obviously nine months pregnant, because she has the child in Bethlehem, but you have to remember that this was an eighty-mile journey, and there were no trains, planes, or automobiles, so they either had to walk or maybe she was fortunate enough to ride on a donkey or on a camel or something like that. But it was still a burden.
You could just imagine the inconvenience, you can imagine the weariness, you can imagine the frustration, all that they would have experienced in making this journey; and they had to do it because of something that was going on politically, because they were under Roman rule. So this had to be done.
Yet, what they probably didn’t quite understand at the time, and becomes apparent only with reading and rereading the stories of Scripture and the prophecies of Scripture, is that this was part of God’s plan, because the promised Messiah, the Son of David, was to be born in the little city of David, Bethlehem. This was to fulfill the prophecy of Micah 5:2: “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient of days.”
So, while on the surface level the reason they made this journey was because of the decree of Caesar Augustus, the reality is that there was another decree behind it all, and it was the decree of the eternal God.
That’s why I say that you see here the guidance of an invisible hand. It really teaches us something about the providence of God in our lives.
I like the way one author put it. He said that God’s fingerprints are quiet. They’re not usually visible; we only see them after the fact. But this is what the Scriptures teach us over and again, is that God is at work in human affairs. He rules over kings and kingdoms and presidents and senates and emperors and Caesars. He rules over nations, he rules over the tiniest details of our lives, and he’s always working out his good and sovereign purposes.
The providence of God. What is the providence of God? “What do you understand by the providence of God?” the Heidelberg Catechism asks.
Listen to this thoughtful, careful, and encouraging answer.
“God's providence is
his almighty and ever present power,
whereby, as with his hand, he still upholds
heaven and earth and all creatures,
and so governs them that
leaf and blade,
rain and drought,
fruitful and barren years,
food and drink,
health and sickness,
riches and poverty,
indeed, all things,
come to us not by chance
but by his fatherly hand.”
It’s hard to discern God’s providence in the drought, in the barren years, in the sickness, in the poverty, and in the things that happen in world affairs that upset your life and cause tremendous inconvenience, as happened for Joseph and Mary. It’s hard to discern. We only see it after the fact.
Years ago, I read a very fascinating book called Brain Rules. It was really about the life of the brain, the life of the mind. And in that book, the author tells the story of a woman who was under the care of the famous British neurologist Oliver Sacks. She was a woman who had had a stroke, and the stroke had affected part of her brain, and that made her unable to perceive anything on the left side of her body. It was so severe that when they put a plate of food in front of her, she would eat exactly the right half of the plate and leave the other half completely untouched. They’d have to turn the plate for her to see it. She had no perception on the left side. When she looked into a mirror to put on makeup, she would put makeup on the right side of her face, but not on the left side.
I read that, and I thought, you know, I think that’s often how we are in regards to the providence of God. It’s like we miss half of what God is doing in the world. We see the blessings, we see the prosperity. We see God working in the good things. But so often we miss how God is working in the mundane details, or even in the hardship and in the suffering, in the problems that we are facing. So we say, like Job, that we see him on the right, we don’t see him on the left. And we ask questions like, “Why? Why, God, did that happen? Where were you when my son got cancer? Where were you in that terrible situation? Why did this happen in my life? Why did that event have to happen at this point and affect me in this way?” What we don’t see is that the invisible hand of God is working. He’s working out his purposes.
We should heed the counsel of the old hymn-writer,
“Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust him for his grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.”
2. The Condescension of the Divine Son
So, in this story we see the guidance of the invisible hand of God, and then secondly, we see the condescension of the divine Son.
Maybe you noticed that strange word, “condescension” or “condescended,” in the hymn that we just sang, “Come Behold the Wondrous Mystery.” There’s a line there: “Look to Christ, who condescended, took on flesh to ransom us.”
It’s not a word that we use very often today. When we use the word “condescended,” we usually mean somebody is speaking in a condescending way, they’re looking down on someone. That’s not what the word meant in theology. It was a word, rather, that had to do with the state of Christ, in theological terms known as the humiliation of Christ or the condescension of Christ. And it is the theological category that really holds the doctrine of the incarnation.
You see it in this passage in the humble, simple circumstances of the birth of Jesus in verses 6 and 7.
“And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger [literally a feeding trough], because there was no place for them in the inn.”
There was no lodging place for them. Don’t think of a Holiday Inn; it wasn’t anything like that. It just meant they couldn’t stay in the ordinary places in this dwelling, and so they were in a lower level where the animals would often be kept.
All of those little, simple details are showing us something about the divine humility. They’re showing us something about the step that Jesus took in his humiliation, his state of humbling himself to take on human flesh, to become incarnate among us, in order to accomplish the work of redemption.
I want you to listen to how Kent Hughes describes this in his exposition. He said,
“If we imagine that Jesus was born in a freshly swept county fair stable, we miss the whole point. It was wretched, scandalous. There was sweat and pain and blood and cries as Mary reached to the heavens for help. The earth was cold and hard. The smell of birth mixed with the stench of manure and acrid straw made a contemptible bouquet. Trembling carpenter’s hands, clumsy with fear, grasped God’s Son, slippery with blood, the baby’s limbs waving helplessly as if falling through space, his face grimacing as he gasped in the cold and his cry pierced the night.”
“God became flesh” means that the Son of God became the son of Mary, means that the almighty, omnipotent God in some mysterious way became a helpless baby.
It’s just astounding! It’s why we sing about the mystery, the wondrous mystery of the incarnation. It is an amazing thing that the Son of God would do this. Don’t miss it when you read the Christmas story. This is telling you something about what happened, yes. It’s also telling you something about the character of God.
Did you know that God, who is the most resplendent, powerful, wise, good, righteous, holy, and loving being in the universe, is also the most humble? God is humble. That’s the whole meaning of Philippians 2, that familiar passage where Paul encourages us to put on humility or to have the mind of Christ, and then he talks about the humility of Christ, the Son of God, who did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.
The condescension of the divine Son, the humility of our God. God is a humble God, and it is seen supremely in the incarnation, in the birth of the Son of God, Jesus. And it means this: it means that this divine humility is for us the ultimate model and motivation for living humble lives ourselves. If our Lord Jesus Christ did not consider it too big a step to become human, to become a baby, in order to serve us and save us, how can we not imitate him in serving one another? Let that shape the way you think about others. Take it with you tonight, and this Christmas, this weekend, this whole season, make it your ambition not to be the greatest, but to be the servant of all; not expecting appreciation, not expecting a reward, but in love and in humility serving, because this is what God is like. This is what Jesus is like, and this is what he calls us to. The condescension of the divine Son, the divine humility.
3. The Proclamation of a Royal Savior
Number three, we see also the proclamation of a royal Savior. Luke 2:8-14—these are the words we’re probably most familiar with.
“And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, ‘Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
“‘Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!’”
The message of the angel is that a Savior is born, Christ the Lord. It’s kingly language. Christ, who is the Messiah and who is the Lord of Israel and the Lord of all the earth; Jesus, who is the Savior. It’s actually language, the commentaries tell us, that was used directly of Caesar Augustus. When Caesar became Caesar, he was proclaimed throughout the world as a son of God and as a savior and as the lord, and this was the refrain throughout Rome: “Caesar kyrios,” Caesar is lord. So this is a very subversive thing that’s happening in this passage as the angels proclaim that there’s another Lord, there is another King, there is another Savior, another Son of God, the true Son of God who is born in Bethlehem.
The Savior comes for a purpose. The purpose is shown in verse 14: “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased.” The purpose of our salvation is that God might be glorified and that we might be reconciled to him, be brought to peace with God.
The cost of this salvation is only hinted at here, but it becomes evident by the end of the Gospel of Luke. We get this, of course, in our Christmas hymns, our Christmas carols. It’s so important for us to remember at Christmas that Christmas is not just about the birth of the Savior, it’s about the birth of a Savior who came to do something at great cost to himself. He was born to die for us.
“Why lies he in such mean estate,
Where ox and [lamb] are feeding?
Good Christians, fear: for sinners here
The silent word is pleading.
Nails, spears shall pierce him through;
The cross he bore for me, for you.
Hail, hail the Word made flesh,
The Babe, the Son of Mary.”
The Savior who would save us at the cost of his own life—this is how we get peace with God. It is through the blood of the cross of Jesus Christ.
4. The Response to the Good News
Finally, one more thing we see in Luke 2:15-20; we see the response to this good news. I do think one of the keys to really entering into the story of Christmas is to identify ourselves with the first recipients of this message, the shepherds and Mary. In the shepherds and Mary we see two responses to make to the good news of the birth of Christ.
Look first of all at Luke 2:15-18. It says,
“When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.’ And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them.”
This is the first response. The shepherds received this message, and they did something with it. They said, “Let us go and see.” They investigated the message that they’d received. They sought it out for themselves.
I want to encourage you tonight that, if you are not a believer in Jesus Christ, if you’re not a committed Christian—maybe you’re here because your spouse is or your parents are or your children are, or maybe you came as a guest of a friend—I’m so glad that you’re here. I’m so glad that you’re here to be a part of this service. But if you’re not a committed Christian, I want you to do what the shepherds did. Go and see for yourself. Investigate the claim.
How do you do that? How would you do that? How would you let this story be more than just hearing the Christmas story, that maybe you’ve heard before, and actually be a doorway into exploring something about who Jesus Christ said he was?
Here’s a concrete thing you could do: you could read this Gospel of Luke, the whole thing, start to finish. It’s twenty-four chapters; it would take you a few hours. Maybe you do it in one sitting, maybe you do it over the course of a week or a month. But just read through the Gospel of Luke. If you’ve never done it before, read through it. Get to know Jesus. Learn about his life. Listen to his teaching. Consider his claims, and see if you do not meet the Son of God in the pages of the word of God.
Investigate; that’s the first response.
Here’s the second, verses 19-20, and now our model is Mary. It says,
“But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.”
So if the right response for the unbeliever or the person who’s not committed to Christ is to investigate, the response for the believer (the majority of us here tonight) is to ponder, it’s to think. That’s what Mary did. “She treasured up these things, pondering them in her heart.”
It’s one reason I began by saying there are stories that you only get the depth of the meaning of the story by really thinking it through and going over it again and again and again. That’s when you start to see the layers of meaning there.
I want us to not pass by this too quickly, to not just let the Christmas story be one more thing we do on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, but instead let it be an invitation to deeper consideration about what God has done, about who Christ is and what Christ has done for us.
Maybe you’ve read the Christmas story a hundred times. I can just about guarantee you haven’t really plumbed its depths. You’ve not yet exhausted its meaning. There’s more for you here. And so, treasure these things in your heart. Ponder over them and learn more about our Lord.
I just want to end by reading a portion of a poem that I’ve found moving over the years. It’s a beautiful poem by Lucy Shaw called “Mary’s Song.” So, this is written from the point of view of Mary, and it’s a very poignant reflection on the reality of the incarnation of Christ. Hear these words.
“Quiet he lies
whose vigor hurled
a universe. He sleeps
whose eyelids have not closed before.
“His breath (so slight it seems
no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps
to sprout a world.
Charmed by dove’s voices, the whisper of straw,
he dreams,
hearing no music from his other spheres.
Breath, mouth, ears, eyes
he is curtailed
who overflowed all skies,
all years.
Older than eternity, now he
is new. Now native to earth as I am, nailed
to my poor planet, caught that I might be free,
blind in my womb to know my darkness ended,
brought to this birth
for me to be new-born,
and for him to see me mended
I must see him torn.”
Christ was born that he might be torn—born in the manger, torn at the cross—so that you and I could be mended—reborn, redeemed, and renewed. Let’s pray together.
Lord Jesus, words are not sufficient to proclaim, to declare, to explain what you have done for us. Maybe the most appropriate response of our hearts is to simply sit in silent awe, in wonder, as we consider that you, the eternal God, became an infant, a helpless infant for us. So we thank you, we praise you, we worship you, and Lord, in a fresh way tonight, we give our hearts to you.
We ask you now to be glorified and honored once again as we lift our voices in songs of worship, and we pray that your Spirit would make these truths sink deep into our hearts, and that we would leave tonight this place with quiet reflection, but deep awe and wonder, as we consider the mystery of what you’ve done. We pray this in your name, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
