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  TWO KINGS
  by David Guzik
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Summary: The sermon contrasts the lives and legacies of Caesar Augustus
and Jesus, highlighting the difference between human power and divine
authority.

Duration: 32:34 Topics: "Jesus Christ", "Salvation Choice"
Scripture References: Luke 2:1-7

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DESCRIPTION
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In this sermon, the speaker describes the scene of a powerful Roman
emperor sitting on his ornate throne, surrounded by soldiers, courtiers,
and servants. The emperor decides to tax everyone in the Roman empire
and orders a registration of all the people. The speaker then shifts the
focus to the humble birth and life of Jesus Christ, contrasting it with
the power and authority of Caesar. Jesus, born in humble circumstances
and working as a carpenter, never sought fame or power, but instead
traveled around teaching and helping people. The speaker emphasizes the
choice between following the power of Caesar or the power of Christ in
one's salvation and daily life.

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CONTENT
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As we begin this morning in Luke chapter two, I want to speak to you
about a theme related to Christmas, and I would title this message, Two
Kings, because we're going to take a look at two kings who are described
for us in Luke chapter two, verses one through seven. Let's begin by
reading verse one of Luke chapter two. And it came to pass in those days
that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be
registered.

This verse gives us our first king. He's titled in verse one of Luke
chapter two, Caesar Augustus. And the story of Jesus's birth in
Bethlehem, it begins with this mention of this Roman emperor who
exercised his reign during the time of Jesus's birth.

And this man whom Luke titles Caesar Augustus, he was truly one of the
most remarkable men of ancient history. Now, when I say that one word,
perhaps that two word phrase, ancient history, I may have lost many of
you right there by mentioning that word history. Some people don't like
history.

Maybe they were cursed to have a very boring, dull history teacher in
elementary school or high school or whatever. And there are many people
who consider history boring. I want you to know that I tend to consider
people who consider history boring, boring.

I think history is exciting. It's not necessarily pretty. When you go
through the history of mankind, you find a lot more failure than glory.

When you go through the history of the church, you find oftentimes the
story is a lot more often the story of failure rather than glory and
giving glory to Jesus Christ. But there's a lot for us to learn from
history, from biblical history. This mention in Luke chapter two, verse
one of Caesar Augustus, when Luke originally put those words to the
parchment that he wrote upon, everybody knew who Caesar Augustus was.

Luke wrote this many years after the reign of Caesar Augustus knew, but
he was such a great man that his person cast a shadow after a hundred
years after he had left this earth. People knew who Luke wrote about
when he said that name, but we don't know these many years. Hence, we
think of a great Roman emperor and a toga and some leaves on his head or
something like that.

But it's hard for us to put the real person to the name. Let me help you
with that this morning. He wasn't born with the name Caesar Augustus.

That's a title that he took later on. He was born with the name
Octavian. He was named after his father.

His grandmother was the sister of Julius Caesar, and he was a very
talented and gifted young man. He caught the eye of his great uncle,
Julius Caesar, rather young in life. And Julius Caesar thought so highly
of this young nephew of his, Octavian, that he adopted him as his own
son.

And he was made the official heir of Julius Caesar in the year 45 B.C.
Within a year of that great event, can you imagine what it would be like
to be adopted into the family of Julius Caesar and say, You're my heir.
You're the one who's going to inherit everything. Within a year of his
adoption into the family and being declared the official heir of Julius
Caesar, within a year, Julius Caesar was assassinated.

And from that point on, the Roman Empire was divided into three parts.
One part was headed by this man named Octavian. The second part was
headed by a man named Marc Antony.

And the third part was headed by a man named Lepidius. Well, there
started many years of bloody struggle between these three men, because
each wanted to dominate the other. You don't get to such a high place of
status and prestige, such as Octavian and Lepidius and Marc Antony
reached, without being a man of great ego, of great drive, of great
desire to dominate.

And so they each wanted to dominate the other. And as I said, many years
of bloody struggle followed the division of the Roman Empire under these
three men. And eventually, Octavian and Marc Antony proved superior to
Lepidius and they pushed him out of the picture.

Then the struggle was just between Marc Antony and Octavian. For 13
years, it was what you might call a cold war between the two. There
wasn't open fighting, but there was a constant struggle for supremacy
between the area ruled by Marc Antony and the area ruled by Octavian
until that situation lasted for 13 years.

But in the year 31 B.C., they went to war against each other. And might
I say they prepared for war against each other because they took a whole
year to prepare for battle. Marc Antony assembled a great army.

Now, that name Marc Antony might echo in the memory of some of you,
because you remember at least from the movies, if nothing else, Antony
and Cleopatra. Who could forget Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in
that epic movie, right? Well, it's true, they were real people who
existed and Marc Antony made Cleopatra his ally. And together with her
resources and her wealth and her ability, they took a year to assemble a
huge army.

500 warships, 100,000 foot soldiers and 12,000 men on horseback as
cavalry. Well, Octavian was no slouch himself. He assembled his army and
his army wasn't quite as big.

He had 400 warships and 80,000 infantry and 12,000 horsemen. And the two
armies positioned themselves and set themselves up in this great naval
and land battle known as the Battle of Actium, which is one of the great
military struggles of the ancient world. And they fought.

And even though Octavian had fewer men, he had smarter generals. And
because of their brilliant military strategy and the great
maneuverability of his warships and their forces, they decisively
defeated Antony and Cleopatra, the forces of Octavian did at this great
Battle of Actium. And so the big struggle was over.

No longer were there two or three people struggling for supremacy over
this dominion of Rome. Now, there was one man named Octavian. And when
he came and ruled over the entire Roman dominion, he brought three
things that brought with them a dramatic change.

First of all, he brought peace. But it was the peace of a man who had
defeated all of his rivals and was strong enough to keep everybody else
down. This wasn't the peace of the birds singing and the flowers in the
meadow.

This was the peace of a lockdown in a prison. Nobody dared raise their
head. Second, Octavius brought political and administrative skill to the
Roman dominions.

You might even say it was brilliance. This man was a leader and he knew
how to organize and he knew how to administrate. And things became more
efficient and more effective than ever in the government of Rome.

The third thing he brought was a truckload of money from Egypt. You
know, Egypt was a wealthy nation. And Octavian brought all that money,
all that wealth, and he pumped it into the army and he pumped it into
the Roman economy.

And it was a time of great peace, great prosperity. But yet there was an
oppressiveness over the whole Roman dominion. Now, a man as great as
Octavian was yet only a man, and he brought a lot of resolution, a lot
of answers to the Roman dominion.

But he did it at a great price. He demanded absolute power over the
Roman dominions. And this was different.

This was a break with history because for hundreds and hundreds of
years, Rome prided itself on being a republic. Do you know what a
republic is? I'll give you just the briefest lesson in political science
on this. A republic is a nation or a dominion governed by laws, not by a
person, but by laws.

And in a republic, no man is above the law. Everybody answers to the law
from the highest to the lowest. The law rules supreme in a republic, but
not in a dictatorship.

In a dictatorship, the dictator is the law. He's above everything. Well,
Rome held tightly to that idea that no man was above the law.

And the Roman Senate and the army and the various political leaders,
they lived together in this somewhat difficult arrangement. But they did
it and they pulled it off for centuries until Octavius came to power.
And in the year 27 B.C., he arranged for the Roman Senate to give him
the title Augustus.

Now, that title Augustus means exalted or sacred. Before Octavian's
time, it was only applied to sacred buildings or sacred places or sacred
property. But now, now a man was declared to be sacred.

A man was declared to have that kind of power. And now Rome was no
longer a republic governed by laws. By the way, that's why Julius Caesar
was assassinated.

Because when he started becoming more famous and more powerful, the men
around him feared that he would become a dictator and that he would end
the Roman Republic. And out of fear of that, they assassinated him. And
now his great nephew brings that to pass.

The Republic of Rome was over and the Empire of Rome had begun. It had
begun, I should say. Now it was an empire governed by an emperor.

And the first emperor of Rome was this man you read about right here in
verse one, Caesar Augustus. So let's read it again. And it came to pass
in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the
world should be registered.

That's our first king. Do we look at our second king now? Start at verse
two. This census first took place while Crinius was governing Syria.

So all went to be registered, everyone to his own city. And Joseph also
went up from Galilee out of the city of Nazareth into 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 wife, who
was with child.

So it was that while they were there, the days were completed for her to
be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in
swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger because there was no room for
them in the inn. The story of the second king is a lot simpler to tell.

Here's a man who was born in an obscure village in a backwater province
of the Roman Empire. You know, Bethlehem was not the center of the world
at that time. The only thing it was famous for was many centuries before
the greatest king of Israel came from that city, King David.

Not much had happened in Bethlehem since David's time. It was a
forgotten place. It was the kind of place that nobody really.

Bethlehem, where is that? I get that about Simi Valley when I tell
people that I'm from Simi Valley. You hear that? Simi Valley, where is
that? Isn't that where they make all those computer microchips? And I
say, no, no, that's the Silicon Valley up in the Bay Area. I end up
having to tell people where Simi Valley is in relation to other
communities nearby.

A lot of people know Thousand Oaks more than they know Simi Valley,
because if you drive on the 101 up north, you drive through Thousand
Oaks. And so I explain that. But sometimes people don't know where
Thousand Oaks is.

And so I got to say, well, it's sort of by Los Angeles. It's north of
Los Angeles. It's halfway in between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara.

A lot of people understand it then. Friends, Bethlehem, it wasn't like
Los Angeles. It wasn't like Thousand Oaks.

It wasn't even like Simi Valley. It'd be like saying Jesus came from
Piru. That's how obscure this place was.

I mean, people just didn't know it. It didn't have the world's attention
focused upon it. So Jesus came from there, from Bethlehem.

He was the child of a peasant girl. And I say girl because most people
would probably say that Mary was in her late teens when she gave birth
to Jesus. And he was born in suspicious circumstances.

Oh, you and I today, we know and we rightfully recognize the truth of
the virgin birth. Yes, very much so. But you can imagine and sympathize
that people in Mary and Joseph's day didn't catch on to it so quickly.

If a girl in the youth group came and she said, I'm pregnant. Well, you
know, oh, boy, we're very sorry to hear it. And then she says it's of
the Holy Spirit.

It's probably not going to go very far and that the youth leader or her
parents, for that matter. And so they recognize that this is suspicious
circumstances for this child to be born in. And when you think about it,
he was born in a barn, a place where animals were sheltered.

It wasn't in a house. It wasn't in a hospital. It wasn't with proper
medical care.

He was laid not in a cradle, not in a crib, not even on a soft bed. He
was laid in a manger, a place where animals feed. The mass media of his
day, they took virtually no interest in his birth.

There wasn't a fancy birth announcement in the Jerusalem Post or the
Rome Gazette or anything like that. Nobody took notice. And I say, now,
wait a minute.

Didn't he have an angelic announcement? And yes, he did. Now, that's
pretty spectacular. I would agree.

But who did the angels make the announcement to? Did they go to Caesar
Augustus in Rome and tell him no. Did they go to King Herod, the man who
was sort of the sub king under Caesar Augustus ruling over Judea at the
time? No, they didn't even go to the religious or the political leaders
of the day. No, they went to shepherds.

And you should know that in Jesus's day, shepherds were regarded as
disreputable people. Matter of fact, the testimony of a shepherd was not
accepted in a court of law in Jesus's day. They had notices and sayings
that when the shepherds walk through your village, you better make sure
that your stuff is secure, because they were known to have sticky
fingers and pick up things as they walk through.

And that's what the angels came to to give the announcement. Again, it
wasn't a great publicity deal by any means. And this this man born in
such humble circumstances, he worked in a carpenter shop until he was
about 30 years old.

And then for three years, that's it. Three years he traveled around his
somewhat obscure region and he traveled around the region teaching and
helping people. He never wrote a book.

Never had a hit record. Never went to college. Never organized a
demonstration or a protest.

He never ran for public office. The sound of his spoken voice was never
recorded. He never had a family.

He never owned a home. He never appeared on television and he never
painted a painting or had a painting made of him. He never had a tape
ministry.

He never had a radio ministry. He certainly never founded a Bible
college or a seminary. Never had a website.

Never had an email address. Never established a hospital or a charitable
foundation. He was famous in his region for a brief period of time and
then public opinion turned against him violently.

He was forsaken by his followers, arrested and most all of his friends
denied that they ever knew him. He was tried, found guilty and then
executed among other criminals. And it's true that he was buried in the
tomb of a rich man.

But that was only because of the of the unexpected generosity of that
rich man. If it wasn't for Joseph of Arimathea and his donation of his
tomb for Jesus to lie in, his body would have literally been thrown into
the garbage dump. Now that's a pretty good contrast between two kings,
isn't it? You have Caesar and you have Christ.

Look at the power of Caesar. Look at verse one again. And it came to
pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all
the world should be registered.

Amazing! You can picture the scene in your mind, can't you? You've seen
enough movies to have some kind of image. I don't know if it's accurate
or not. But you have any image of what a Roman emperor looks like in his
palace? No, there he is in a marble palace.

Pillars and columns all around. There's a smoky oil lamp burning, giving
a wonderful illumination to all the room. There's rich tapestries all
around.

There's soldiers in that distinctive Roman soldier's uniform all about.
There's courtiers rushing in and out. And servants waiting upon him hand
and foot.

And as he sits on a very ornate throne, he has the idea that the
treasury needs more money. And so he says, we're going to tax everybody
in the Roman Empire. And everybody's going to go back to their hometown.

I'm going to make this decree. And when I say it, the whole world is
going to do it. Look at it again in verse one.

It came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar
Augustus that all the world should be registered. Now look at verse
three. And so all went to be registered, everyone to his own city.

He said it and it happened. You parents, you wish you had that kind of
power over your own children. And Caesar Augustus had it over the whole
Roman Empire.

You could argue that there had never been one man who had such power
over the lives of so many other people until the time of Caesar
Augustus. Nebuchadnezzar? No. A small kingdom compared to Caesar
Augustus.

You know, the previous rulers, Artaxerxes and all the rest, all these
great pharaohs and all the rest. They did not rule over as vast a
dominion or have such concentrated power as Caesar Augustus. Now, you
should know that overall, Caesar Augustus was a good ruler.

He expanded the territory of the Roman Empire and he did much for his
people. But like almost every man of such ambition and such authority,
you can just imagine how invincible he felt upon his throne in that
marble palace. Think about it.

I make a decree and the whole world answers. Everybody acts when I tell
them to. But I would suggest to you here this morning that Augustus
really wasn't all that powerful at all.

Certainly not as powerful as he thought. Do you remember in the Gospel
of John chapter 19, when 33 years after this time in Luke chapter 2,
when Jesus stood before a later Caesar's representative, a guy named
Pontius Pilate. When he stood before that representative of the Roman
emperor, Pilate was frustrated because Jesus didn't seem to be
cooperating the way that he should.

And Pilate tried to get Jesus's attention and he said to Jesus, this is
in John chapter 19, verse 10. He says, Are you not speaking to me? Do
you not know that I have the power to crucify you and I have the power
to release you? That was Roman power. The power to coerce, the power to
manipulate, the power to make people do what you wanted them to do.

And Pilate was saying to Jesus, don't you know that I have this power
over you? You know what Jesus answered to him in verse 11 of John
chapter 19? He said back to Pilate, he said, you could have no power at
all against me unless it had been given to you from above. Pilate, you
think you know all about power. You think you wield it within your hand.

You don't have any power except it's been given to you from above.
Matter of fact, when when Jesus spoke with Pilate a little bit earlier
in the gospel of John, Pilate was mystified that Jesus claimed to be a
king, but where were his soldiers? And Jesus said, my kingdom is not of
this world. If it were, my soldiers would fight on my behalf.

Pilate, you have one kind of power with all your soldiers, with all your
coercion, with all your dominion, but I have a kingdom of a different
kind of power. And Caesar didn't know about that power, but it was over
him nonetheless. You see, as he sat in his palace and made his decree,
he thought that it was the supreme exercise of his will, the ultimate
flexing of his muscle.

But Caesar Augustus, who made that decree, he was just a tool in God's
hands. You see, God had a problem, if you could say that God ever has a
problem. But here was this woman who conceived miraculously when the
Holy Spirit came upon her.

And this woman was about ready to give birth to the Messiah, but the
problem is that she's a Nazareth. And the scripture specifically stated,
for example, in Micah chapter five, verse two, specifically stated that
the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. Now, she would not be inclined
to travel a great distance, and it was a great distance between Nazareth
in the north and Bethlehem in the south.

It was a great distance and you had to go up and down a lot of
elevation. She would not be inclined to make such a trip during the days
of her pregnancy. So how do you get this woman from Nazareth to
Bethlehem so that prophecy can be fulfilled? Well, you just put a bug in
the ear of Caesar Augustus and tell him to tax the whole world and make
everybody return to their hometown, because that's where Joseph has to
go and he brings Mary with her.

And so they make an unlikely and unexpected trip. And so here, Caesar
Augustus, all his pomp, all his power, all his might, he's just a tool
in the hand of God. And that's it.

Friends, look, look at Jesus, the second king. All of this happened
almost 20 centuries ago. And yet today, Jesus is far and away the
leading figure of the human race.

He's the ultimate example of love, of leadership, of sacrificial
service. A couple of years ago at the coming of the new millennium, Time
magazine did something. They did it to sell more magazines, I'm sure.

But they they put Jesus on the cover and they named him the man of the
millennium. You know, they have a man of the year. They have a man of
the decade, a man of the century.

Well, they couldn't resist at the coming of the new millennium to name
Jesus the man of the millennium. And this is what Time magazine wrote
about Jesus in the article inside that magazine. They said, quote, The
single most powerful figure, not merely in these two millenniums, but in
all human history, has been Jesus of Nazareth.

A serious argument can be made that no one else's life has proved
remotely as powerful and enduring as that of Jesus's. They went on to
write, It's an astonishing conclusion in light of the fact that Jesus
was a man who lived a short life in a rural backwater of the Roman
Empire, who died in agony as a convicted criminal. Yet here he is far
and away the leading figure of the human race.

I had to explain to you in great detail who Caesar Augustus was. You
know who Jesus is. Now, it's not that we need Time magazine to tell us
about Jesus.

It's not like we care all that much about Time magazine's opinion of
him. But I think the point is obvious. If they can see it, why can't
you? If Time magazine can see who Jesus is, well, why can't you? It's
right in front of us.

Friends, it's no exaggeration to say that all the armies that have ever
marched, all the navies that have ever set sail, all the rulers who have
ever ruled, all the kings who have ever reigned on this earth, all put
together have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as this
one man, Jesus Christ. So you see the contrast between the two kings?
Now, let me conclude with applying it for something for you to do. For
you to change in your attitude and in your life.

You see, not only do we have two kings, Christ and Caesar, but we also
have two kinds of power. You have Caesar power and Christ power. Now,
which one is more active in ruling in your life? Think of it in your
relationships.

You have Caesar power and Christ power in your relationships. Caesar
power is always looking for the advantage, always looking to dominate,
always looking to control, always looking to have its place and for it
to be the center. That's what Caesar power is all about.

But but Christ power is different, isn't it? Christ power is about love
and sacrifice and being quick to forgive and being generous with
reconciliation and all the rest of it. You see the difference between
Caesar power and Christ power. And you see now why those relationships
stubbornly stay messed up in your life.

As you're approaching them with Caesar power instead of Christ power,
you can apply it to church life, can't you? Some churches seem to
operate on Caesar power. For them, it's all about domination and and
ruling and and power and and exercising that over people in the church
and outside of the church and ruling with that kind of attitude and that
kind of demeanor. Might I say that Jesus never intended that for his
church, not to rule by Caesar power, but by Christ power, the love of
sacrifice and truth and and reconciliation.

And as I said, being quick to forgive and quick to reconcile, that's
that's Christ power. And then you have Caesar power and Christ power in
your salvation. Caesar power would say about your salvation.

I got to save myself. I mean, that's how Caesar thought. I've got to do
what I got to do.

I got to issue a decree. I've got to save myself. That's Caesar power in
your salvation.

Christ power in your salvation is to say, I'm going to look at Jesus
Christ and what he did for me on the cross. And I want him to transform
my life by his love and his humble submission. Won't you convert me,
Jesus? I surrender before you.

That's Christ power in your salvation. Which will it be for you this
holiday season? For every day of your life, Caesar power exercised by
coercion and ultimatums and demonstrations. And I'll show them who's in
charge or by Christ power with love and generosity and giving and being
quick to forgive and long suffering towards others.

What a difference between the two. I'm going to pray now to conclude my
time with you this morning. As I do, I'm going to give an invitation
during the prayer.

I'm going to invite any whose heart has been touched this morning. And
you want to receive Jesus and be converted by his power. You're tired of
living under the domain of Caesar, so to speak.

And now you want to live under the dominion of Jesus. If that's you and
you'd like to surrender your life to Jesus in the middle of my prayer,
I'm going to give you the opportunity to respond by raising your hand.
And I'm going to ask the prayer team all around the room to look for any
who raise their hand and they will come up and speak to you afterwards.

They will come up and want to pray with you. If you would like to commit
your life to Jesus Christ this morning. Let's pray together right now.

Father, we thank you for your great love. We thank you that your power
with us is the power of Christ, not the power of Caesar. Even though you
have every right to rule in this reign, in this way.

Lord, you rule, you reign over us with love. How appreciative we are of
that God. And so, Jesus, now we commit ourselves unto you.

And we ask that in our relationships, in our church, Lord, in our lives,
in our salvation, that it would all be dominated by Christ's love
instead of Caesar love. Father, pour out your spirit upon this blessed
congregation. Let them walk forth this morning and all this week with a
vital awareness of the surpassing love and power and glory of Jesus
Christ.

Bless them in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Audio: https://sermonindex1.b-cdn.net/10/SID10680.mp3
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/david-guzik/two-kings/
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