A Messy Manger

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. I've got kind of a survey. This first one might not work. I think you all will get it. But have you ever played the game Would You Rather? And you get two choices? Okay, so today, would you rather get a PlayStation 5 for Christmas? Or you already have one, so you don't need it. Well, maybe, or would you rather get a hoe for Christmas? Yes. I think the kids need to get out there. Yeah, a garden hoe. Let's get it straight. I do know that word can be used. I'm sorry. Maybe I should have thought more. Would you rather live now in the 21st century or back in the Middle Ages? Your choice. Have you ever thought about that? I don't think I'd do well with chamber pots. Would you rather take a family on a vacation at the Westin in Hawaii or at this thatched roof hut in the middle of Central America? Okay. Would you rather live, and Lisa's been there, my wife, but not this time of the year, in a clavic in the northwest territories of Canada where it's 70 below zero and six weeks of darkness or in Beverly Hills, California? And you might say neither, but okay. Would you rather drive a Lamborghini or ride on a donkey? And would you rather be the CEO of an up-and-coming corporation or be a farm worker in the Central Valley of California? Now, these are easy choices. I probably made all the same choices you did. But what's amazing tonight is the choices that God made because the story of Luke 2, the story of the Bible, is God makes the most surprising, shocking, upside-down, inside-out choices we can ever think. I mean, tonight, we're going to ask the question, why in the world did Jesus choose? Because unlike you and like me, God can choose where, when, and how to come to this earth, if at all, right? I didn't have a choice where I was born, to whom I was born, all that stuff. We can talk about all the hypotheticals, and we can daydream about, yeah, I'd like a Lamborghini or a Lotus or whatever, or I'd like to live here or there. But God can actually make all those choices. He is absolutely free to make them all. And it's like, why in the world did God choose to place his son, Jesus, in the first century, in the backwaters of the Roman Empire, not in the center of it, to the poorest of the poor in that area, and that he would become an itinerant preacher, making without even a house to his name, not even having a donkey, almost everything Jesus ever did and needed, he had to borrow. Why? Now, you might say, well, you know, God could just have done it a different way, but he just didn't. You could say that, but I think there's a good reason why, because nothing in Jesus' life is actually necessary. You realize he didn't have to do any of these things? God didn't have to do any of the things that we read in the Gospel of Luke. The first Christmas, by the way, was a mess, and it kind of sets a tone for the rest of Jesus' life, by the way. There are things, by the way, that you think you know, that you probably just assume about the story of Jesus. The four Gospels do not tell us. We do not really have the information. I doubt December 25th was actually his birthday. We don't know what time of the year he was born. We don't even know the year he was born. And you might go, well, he was born in zero. Actually, no. Our calendars, by a wonderful little miscalculation in the Middle Ages, is off by between four and six years. So today, it's really 2028, just to let you know. Or 2020, or 2030, or 2029. We're not even quite sure. We don't know if Jesus was born in a barn, a stable, a cave, a home, like in the bottom part of the home in the Middle East, most likely there, or just out under the night sky. All we know, he was born in a manger. We don't know how many shepherds there were. We don't know how many magi there were. We don't even know where the magi are from. They're just from the east somewhere. What I can tell you for sure, it's messy. It was very messy. We're going to read and start in Luke chapter 2. You've heard this story. You probably know it well, either from the Peanuts story or just because it's the familiar story. But I think we're going to see a few things in this. Hopefully, I'm going to share a few things in this story that you'll go like, huh, I never thought it. It's right there in the text. But we never thought about it because of the context of the first century in Judea. So let's start, Luke 2, 1 through 7. 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 from the house and the lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. You re...