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Who’s In Charge Here?

Sermon by Rev. Doug Pratt — December 23, 2007
 

Introduction
It is customary on this Sunday closest to Christmas for pastors to read again the account in Luke chapter 2 of the birth of Jesus in the stable, of Mary and Joseph, the angels and shepherds. But this morning I want to read a passage of the New Testament that I have never previously preached on for Christmas. Listen carefully—and see if you can detect how these words relate directly to what happened that night in Bethlehem. The passage is from the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.

⁹God’s secret plan has now been revealed to us; it is a plan centered on Christ, designed long ago according to His good pleasure. ¹⁰And this is His plan: at the right time He will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth. ¹¹Furthermore, because of Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for He chose us from the beginning, and all things happen just as He decided long ago.
Ephesians 1:9-11 (NLT)

A Closer Look
Several years ago, at about this time of year, my wife and I attended a Christmas party for the staff of the school where she taught. It was held at the principal’s home, and this man was an avid collector of stuff: antiques, knick-knacks, you name it. As we arrived at the home we walked quickly through the large living room and into the kitchen and dining room where the food was spread. As we walked past it, I noticed in my peripheral vision a large, decorated Christmas tree. But it looked like an ordinary tree—like a thousand others I’ve seen in my lifetime. It was while serving myself some spiced cider in the kitchen that our host mentioned his collection of unique, unusual and antique Christmas ornaments that he had been assembling for years from around the world. That comment led me back into the living room—this time to look carefully at the tree, from every angle. On closer inspection, this was not an ordinary home Christmas tree at all! There were perhaps a hundred unique little works of art hanging on it, and I spent the next 20 minutes inspecting it carefully. I was reminded in that experience of a simple truth: that sometimes things we think we understand, and even take for granted, are much richer and more complex when we study them closely.

I believe that is true with the biblical story of the coming of Christ to earth at Christmas. We all think we know everything there is to know about the story. We’ve heard it every December of our lives. Some of us could practically recite the biblical account from memory. So we tend to mentally “walk on by” the Christmas message, the way I initially ignored the principal’s decorated tree. Today I invite you to go back to it with me, and look at it closely, from some different angles. In my nearly 30 years of pastoral ministry, I continue to discover new and surprising things in God’s Word—even in this well-known dimension of it.

Christmas: The World's Greatest Irony
Let’s look at the Christmas story for a few minutes from this angle: What happened when God came to earth was the most striking example of irony the world has ever witnessed. The word “irony” refers to things that turn out in fact to be the opposite of what they were expected to be. All of the prevailing wisdom and assumptions about our world and the way things work are turned upside down at Christmas. Appearances prove to be deceptive to the maximum. The applecart is overturned, the standard rules are all broken, and God pulls off the biggest surprise of all.

How is the Christmas story laced with irony? Look at it from this angle. There are two powerful men whose names have been eternally linked with the events of Christ’s birth. One was a man named Augustus Caesar, and the other was called King Herod the Great. They were at the top of the pyramid at this moment in time—the “Big Dogs.” And let’s contrast these two, from several perspectives, to the One who was born on Christmas Day.

Two Men and a Little Baby
First, let’s look at the bloodlines or parentage of these three. Augustus Caesar, the first true Dictator of the great Roman Empire, was born to a middle-class Roman family, and his father was a mid-level government bureaucrat. But his mother’s uncle was a career soldier who ruthlessly rose through the ranks and eventually led a military coup that overthrew the democratic republic of Rome. His name was Julius, and he adopted the title Caesar. Julius had no children, and decided to make young Augustus his heir. And then Julius was murdered and a lengthy civil war began. Through cold-blooded treachery Augustus managed to capture the throne. He was not of royal blood at all—just an ambitious thug. And the same was true of Herod. He wasn’t even a native Jew. He climbed the ranks of the bureaucracy in his corner of the Middle East, and when his opportunity came he likewise pulled off a bloody coup and grabbed the reins of power.

Neither of these powerful men, now making their claims to royalty and privilege, deserved it in any way by their birth and bloodline. So much for the alleged “divine right of kings.” In contrast, Jesus was a direct descendant of the greatest King of Israel, King David. He was the proper and true heir to the throne. This line of royalty, unique of all the empires and dynasties and kingdoms through history, actually was appointed by God with a true “divine right.” So here we have the first contrast: two gangsters with blood-stained hands sit on thrones in Rome and Jerusalem, while the true King is lying in a feeding trough in Bethlehem.

Now let’s look at the contrast in their surroundings. Both Caesar and King Herod surrounded themselves with the finest in luxury that money could buy. They had all the latest toys, and servants to carry out their every whim. They were rich and spoiled. They luxuriated in their hot tubs and snoozed on their thick mattresses and silk sheets. And meanwhile, the One who created the galaxies, who fashioned all the gold and silver in all the hidden mines of the earth, the One whose assets are literally incalculable because He is the true Owner of everything, is lying on rags in a makeshift cradle of hay.

Another contrast: look at the attitudes these men had towards power and privilege. Caesar was notoriously paranoid. His palace spies, a First Century KGB or Gestapo, were constantly on the prowl to sniff out any whiff of dissension or disloyalty in Rome, and any who dared to question the will of Augustus were swiftly eliminated. Herod the Great was even more paranoid than his Roman counterpart. He conspired against his brother, his nephew and his first wife, banishing or assassinating anyone who got in his way. The blood under his fingernails and on his conscience would eventually include a number of innocent infants living in Bethlehem, whom he would order slaughtered in a futile attempt to eliminate the threat of the true King being born. In stark contrast, look at the example of Jesus the King of Kings. He gave up all His royal prerogatives. As Philippians 2 says, “He made Himself nothing”—just the helpless child of two humble blue-collar parents. And, ultimately, He would sacrifice His life, willingly, to save us all: the Lamb of God being slain to pay for our sins.

And now the final contrast between those two rich and powerful rulers on their thrones and the newborn Babe in the manger. For this perspective, we return to Paul’s words in verse 9 of Ephesians 1: “God’s secret plan has now been revealed to us; it is a plan centered on Christ, designed long ago according to His good pleasure.” This contrast is in the matter of control. “Who’s in charge here?” Who is really “calling the shots”? Whose will and command will truly prevail?

Caesar was under the delusion that he was in control. It was his empire, so he thought. His command could send forth legions of mighty troops. He could impose his will on the Puppet Senate that he had erected to maintain the myth of the republic—just as Vladimir Putin and Hugo Chavez are trying to do in Russia and Venezuela today to try to retain their power. And so, one day, Caesar decided to order a census of all the citizens of his empire so that he could jack up the taxes. He thought he was the boss. And King Herod also lived under that same delusion of control. He thought that it was up to him to decide what happened in his boundaries. He assumed that if God tried to show up in the form of a newborn Messiah, he, Herod, could just eliminate Him.

But who was really in control? History has shown that these men, who seemed to be powerful, were really just pawns. God was controlling the chessboard. It was His plan—not Caesar’s or Herod’s—that came to pass. Nothing that happened was accidental. God used Augustus Caesar to get Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, to fulfill a prophecy seven centuries old. God used Herod to direct the Magi to Bethlehem, and then to send the Holy Family into Egypt for safety. Everything happened exactly in the way and at the time that God had chosen. How ironic: the seemingly-powerless little Baby in the stable is the one who is pulling the strings of the Universe, making all the great kings and emperors merely puppets in His hands.

Is Someone Else Steering the Car?
Before I close, I want us to take a moment to ponder the practical implications of this truth, that the clear message of scripture is that all things are in God’s hands. He alone is truly “in charge” of everything on this earth. Nothing is more powerful than His will, or more certain than His plan. He is in control—not just of Herod and Caesar, but of you and me, our kids and grandkids, our church, our community, our nation, this whole globe. As verse 11 of our text says, “all things happen just as He decided long ago.” This is irony at its most complete. Most of us feel, and assume, and act upon the assumption that we are in control of our lives. But the message of Christmas is that God is actually in control.

I witnessed an unexpected and vivid reminder of how deceptive the appearance of control can be when I was visiting Walt Disney World last year. One day we watched a “stunt driver” show at the “MGM Studios” theme park. After several minutes of high-speed, breathtaking stunts by professional drivers in souped-up sports cars, the emcee paused the action to allow for “audience participation.”

A young girl was brought out from the grandstands—maybe at most 12 or 14, certainly not a licensed driver. She was invited to get behind the wheel of a car and do some stunts. I couldn’t believe it! I watched as the car—with her hands clearly on the steering wheel—took off, did some spins, roared around the set, and then came squeeling back to a stop at exactly the point she had started. The crowd went nuts. I was amazed: I couldn’t do that! The little girl got out, everyone applauded, and then as she walked back to her seat, one of the workers stepped out from behind a set holding a remote-control device. And we all erupted in laughter, realizing how we had been fooled. It looked like the girl was driving the car, but someone else was really in control.

Perhaps that’s the way life really is. Perhaps when our laps around the track of life are finished, and we get out thinking we’d been steering our cars, we’ll discover that Someone Else was really operating the controls.

Have you thought about this? The feeling of control is something that we get very addicted to. We want to be able to call our own shots, to decide our own course. And yet, we all discover—very early in life—that there are lots of things we can’t control. It’s a big, complex, interrelated world in which we’ve been placed. There are things we can’t see or measure, things we can’t understand, that impact and profoundly change our direction. Can you be absolutely certain that you can control your body—so that you’ll never get sick or have an accident? No. Can you be secure that the world economy will always behave in a way that enhances your investment portfolio? Impossible. Can you be confident that every one of your family members and friends will always do what you want them to do? Not a chance. We may like to think we’re in control of everything. But we’re not. There’s only room for one King of Kings and Lord of Lords in this universe, and the position is already filled.

There are reminders that come to us all the time, if we will just open our eyes and ears to them, that God is working out His purposes in the midst of our lives. Several months ago, after an ordinary Sunday service here, I was standing by our front door when a woman I had never seen came up to me. She told me she had visited us for the first time that day—and wasn’t really sure why she had even decided that morning to come here (just a compulsion, some voice within her). And the words I spoke that day were exactly what she needed to hear—perfectly suited for her personal situation. “How did you know what was going on in my life? Did you wiretap my phone or bug my living room?” And of course we both knew that I had absolutely no way of knowing anything about her—I’d never met her before. So clearly it wasn’t my will and my choice to speak those words, even though that week I certainly thought that the message I was preparing was coming from my own mind. But Someone Else must have been working the remote. That’s the only way to explain it.

The Christian Doctrine of the Sovereignty of God
How many times in your life have things happened that were surprising to you—things that you hadn’t controlled? I suspect that God is so much more active in our daily events, in our thoughts and emotions, in our bodies and our relationships, than we are ever consciously aware of. And I believe that when we get to be with the Lord forever we will then see what is invisible to us now—namely, how His plan and purposes intersect with all our human events and personal choices. God even uses sin and disobedience and human ugliness to bring about His plans—as He did with Caesar and Herod. God even can bring good out of pain and sorrow—as He did in using the great crime of the Crucifixion to produce forgiveness and eternal life for all who trust in Christ.

The thought I want to plant in your minds this morning is the simple recognition of what the theologians like to call “The Sovereignty of God.” The story of Christmas reminds us, when we look at it in the right way, that God is really in charge. He’s bringing about His perfect will. This awareness should humble us: to realize that He’s God and we’re not. And it should also inspire us and motivate us: to want to cooperate with His purposes, to give our lives and ourselves every day to be used by Him to bring about what is good and right in this world. Praise God that the King of Kings is still on His throne. It’s my prayer that He will be on the throne of each of our hearts as well. Who’s in charge here? You are not, and I am not. He is.