Thank you, Carl. We're looking at the first two chapters of Luke's gospel this month and this morning, we want to look at the references to David found in these chapters and explore and understand why it is that Jesus came as the son of David, the king after the line of David. I want to draw your attention first of all to chapter 1, verse 32, when the angel Gabriel speaks to Mary, reveals to her that she is going to become pregnant by the Holy Spirit and that she will bear a son, Gabriel said to her, he will be great and will be called the son of the most high. And the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever and his kingdom will have no end. Then a little farther in the chapters that arise the father of John the Baptist upon hearing of the birth of John his son gives praise to God and he praises God not just for his son who will be a forerunner of the Christ but for the Christ himself in verse 69 of chapter 1, God has raised up a horn of salvation for us and the house of David is servant. And the result of that, as I said in verse 74, is to grant us that we being delivered from the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. And in chapter 2, describing the events then that follow these prophetic words, we are told in verse 4 that Joseph went from Galilee to the city of Nazareth from the city of Nazareth to Judea to the city of David which is called Bethlehem because he was of the house and family of David. And then in verse 11, when the angels come to announce to the shepherds the birth of Christ, they tell the shepherds, today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior who has Christ the Lord. Oh man, let us pray. Our father, we pray that you would show us what it means that Jesus is the king promised from the house of David, that you would show us what the throne of David means to us. And I pray that you would help me to know nothing but Jesus and him crucified, and I pray to you in his name, oh man. When I was a small boy, I seriously thought that I had two grandmas with the lame glodo, the one with teeth and the one without. And I must have been five or six years old before I realized they were one and the same woman. We feel that way about Christmas a little bit. When we compare it to Easter, there's a Jesus with no teeth, the newborn baby Jesus who's helpless, who has to scream when he wants food, who's dependent upon other people to take care of him. And then there's the Jesus of Easter, the one who comes and confronts the status quo and who rips power out of the hands of earthly rulers and who brings victory for his people by his resurrection from the dead, that Jesus was teeth. And we think there are two different Jesuses often, the Jesus without and the Jesus with. We have some references in the story of Jesus birth here that tell us that the Jesus of Christmas is the Jesus of Easter because he comes as a king and a particular kind of king. He comes as a king which God had promised to send for his people. And we want to see why it had to be that the king would be born this way. But we're also going to see that in the way this king was born, that his victory for his people is foreshadowed and foretold. We need to see that Jesus is God's promised king. And the result of that, we need to submit to his reign in our lives. The first thing we need to understand from these verses is where is this Davidic king coming from? What is the whole basis for what Luke was writing about here? Well, he's thinking back about the Old Testament and the Old Testament, you have two basic kinds of kings. The first king in Israel is Saul and the people cry out for a king and then they receive Saul as king. But Saul is a particular kind of king. In Deuteronomy 17, Moses in the law said, when you choose a king, do not choose a king like the other nations. But if you read 1 Samuel chapter 8, you see that's exactly what happened at Saul's coronation. The people of Israel say, we want a king like the other nations. How will Saul, a king like the other nations? Well, we're told that Saul was an imposing physical figure. He was a mighty warrior. There's a song later that says Saul has slain his thousands. We also see that at the very day of his coronation, that the day that he was called for at the be king, he was found, though he was bigger than anybody else, he was found hiding among the baggage. That's a picture of one kind of king, a king according to the world's measures, who is mighty and strong and powerful and to be honored and worshipped and indeed. That's one kind of king. But that kind of king is the ones of whom God said, I have taken the king them away from you because you are little in your own eyes. Those kinds of kings are hollow kings, they're idols. They're the expression of a national value system. To be great like everybody else is great, measure according to, as a man sees, to look up on the outer mat, there was another kind of king in Israel, though. And it's the king to whom the king was given forever irrevocably. The seventh son of Jesse, a small man, when Samuel the prophet called for Jesse to bring his sons out that Samuel might pick one to be king of Israel, this is the one that Jesse left behind to keep the sheep. This is the one who stepped forward and volunteered to fight Goliath, which everybody at that point, that was a big joke. And he walked out without armor and he said, the battle belongs to the Lord. He was a king that the Bible describes as a man after God's own heart. You see, he wasn't a king like the other nations. He was what we can call a mirror king because of his smallness, because of his humility, because of his trust in God, he reflected God's kingship, not human kingship. And God said to him in 2nd Samuel, chapter 7, I will establish your throne forever, David. That was that king's name. And he said, there will always be someone ruling from your throne, David, and your house will stand forever. Your dynasty will be an eternal dynasty. When we come to the New Testament, Israel has known two kinds of kings, a king like the other nations, a king that people admired, a democratically elected king, and a king after God's own heart, a mirror king, who would reflect the kingship of the sovereign God of the universe. Now this can tell us some lessons today, this can inform us about some of the things we regard as important in our lives, even before we consider Jesus as the ultimate king. What kind of virtues, what kind of attributes do we admire in our leaders? That may be one set of attributes, but let me ask the 2nd question, what kind of attributes do we emulate, Terry Eastland, a White House advisor, and a couple of different administrations said, the problem with today is not that we admire Mother Teresa and despise Leona Helmsley. The problem today is that we admire Mother Teresa and emulate Leona Helmsley. You can look at what a culture imitates to find out what's important to it. And in our culture, power is important. Human power, financial power, gender power, but it's that way within the church too. Francis Shaffer, a number of years ago, noted the irony of the Pope, one of his titles, the servant of servants, being born on the shoulders of men in a golden litter. But within Protestantism too, that within the church outward power is more important than God's power. I have a relative who when I went to the ministry, he liked to tell me the story of a pastor he knew who had a Cadillac dealer in his church. And he thought this pastor was successful because every year this Cadillac dealer told him to go down and pick out a different Cadillac. Now I wanted to tell him that I got a great deal on a used car from Steve Lash at Blue Book Motors, but somehow I didn't quite compare. A authority in the church is a mirror authority. Power in the church is to be a mirror power. It is to be reflective of the God of the universe who is the king overall. And Israel had two kinds of kings, a king outwardly and a king inwardly. And that's the context into which Luke writes, the context into which the Christ is born. But we see when we look at Jesus' kingship a different kind of kingship than the kingship of Saul. We see the kingship of David. I read the verses where Jesus is declared to be a descendant of David and the fulfillment of God's promise. So we know that he is God's answer to the promise that God made to David, that there would be a king like David forever on the throne of Israel. But we also see that Jesus' kingship is better than David's kingship. We see in verse 32 of chapter 1 that in verse 33 that his kingdom will have no end, that he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. We saw in verse 32, he's got this name, son of the most high. So his existence is better than David's because he exists before him. And his rule will be eternal unlike David who died and was buried. This one died and rose again. He also has a greater victory than David. David subdued Israel's enemies for a time. But in verse 69, the words of Zechariah, Zechariah that in here is raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of David, his servant, verse 74, to grant us that we being delivered from the hand of our enemies. He's got an eternal reign. He's got a greater victory. Why is his reign and why is his victory greater? Well, in terms of where it begins, Micah, in the prophecy that we heard read in the lighting of the candle, Micah said, back on the hand of the prophet, you are too little to be numbered among the tribes of Judah. But yet one will come forth from you to be king in Israel, his goings forth are from long ago, and his kingdom shall know no end. It's where Jesus came from. Dr. Kistamaka talked about it in Sunday school this morning about the humiliation of Christ in the birth, not just in the death of Jesus. Before God took upon the body of a human nature, he had never had the screen to be fed. He had never depended upon anyone to clean him up. He had never been cold before, he had never been hungry or tired before. We know that during Jesus' ministry was often fatigued. This is a humiliation, this is a humble circumstances in which this king comes. It's not just that he came from glory, but he came into humble circumstances. He came from a nowhere place, and he was a nowhere man. This is the king of glory. We could rewrite Psalm 24 that we read responsibly earlier today. We could say, who is this king of glory? And besides saying, the Lord mighty in battle, we could say the Lord in diapers, in a food trough, crying to be fed. As a result of where he came from, as a result of the deaths in which he was born, he was a greater king than David and also in the victory which he wins by his resurrection. On the front of your bullet in this morning, you see the Apostle Paul reflecting that, Jesus Christ, born of a descendant of David according to the flesh who was declared the sum of God with power by the resurrection from the dead. It's in his humiliation which results in his exaltation that he is the greater king, that he is the eternal king, and his victory is greater. Jesus wins victory for his people. How is it that he wins victory for us? Well, in two ways. God's people have always been a marginalized people. They've always suffered in the world. They've always been alienated, shoved aside. And when Christ comes as our victor, he wins victory over all those kinds of things that come against you. There are probably not too many people here this morning who are directly severely persecuted for what you believe, but there are some of you here, I'm sure, whether it's alienation from family members, whether it's a loss of advancement at work, whether it's a struggle that you have being faithful to a spouse who doesn't believe in Christ. Christ has won the victory for you. Paul and Romans 8 lists a great number of enemies to the people of God. Fam and persecution soared, and at the end, he says, shall he separate us from the love of God? He said, no, through Christ, we are conquerors and more. You don't have to worry about your position in the world because Christ is your victor. If you have come to faith in Christ, if he indeed is your king. If you can do as Zacharias says, worship him without fear, but that brings us to the other way in which Christ is our victor. Because the first enemy that Christ encounters on an individual basis in our lives, the first enemy he encounters is us. To come to faith in Christ, Christ himself must overwhelm you. He must subdue you. He must pair out of your hands everything that you would hold on to as your sign of strength comfort and security in the world. This is why Jesus said to the rich young ruler, it's harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. The sole kind of things that we hang on to in life must be ripped out of our hands and this humble baby king is the one who does it. He shows us that you have to be from nowhere and you have to count yourself as nothing in order to know the victory which he is one. You have struggles in this life, I know. But if you have not come to faith in Christ, your greatest battle is with the king of glory himself. And I pray for you this morning that Christ will win that victory now by bringing faith in you that you will not be his enemy when he returns. Steve Brown, some of you know I teach with him. He's so quotable because he says things that I wish I had to nerve to say. Somebody one time said to him, Steve, you're awful judgmental and they said, well, wait till you see Jesus, but this is the king of glory that we see wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger because his victory had to begin in humiliation. Well we know there are different kinds of kings and some of the kings we worship, in fact when we worship them we worship ourselves and then there's the mirror king and Jesus himself and his humiliation and his humble birth is the consummate mirror king but as a result of his faithful servant kingship, he inherits the kingdom of glory in his resurrection. But that brings us into how we would respond to this king. And Zacharias says that we are to serve him without fear in holiness before him all our days. That we are to serve him why? Because he is the king, but because he himself is the servant king. Because he was a servant king, he makes us in the words of Jude able to stand in his presence, blameless with great joy. Some of you are fighting against God because you don't believe that you can stand in the presence of God, blameless without great joy, with great joy. You don't believe you can serve God without fear. But the victory of Christ gives you that place without fear. The victory of Christ means he bore your sin so that you have no shame and guilt before God and that he gave you his righteousness so that you are declared innocent before God's bar of justice. Faith in Christ brings you into that place to serve him without fear in his faith in the humble servant king born in a manger. We can serve him without fear. We are to serve him without fear and we are to do it in two ways in holiness and righteousness. Holiness referring to that vertical relationship with God. You have been reconciled to God through this servant king, through his victory. Therefore you can be a priest in his temple. Christ received we are going to talk about peace with God and what it means to be reconciled to no longer be an enemy of God. And here we see it reflected in this word in holiness to serve him without fear, in holiness, in right standing before him, but also in righteousness, righteousness is a judicial term. It refers to the horizontal relationship, the relationships we have with each other because you serve this king without fear and holiness. You no longer have to fight for yourself in the human sphere. You don't have to seek an advantage over your family members, over your children, over your spouse, over your parents. You can serve out of freedom, like Galatians 5.1 says, you have been brought into liberty but don't use liberty as an occasion for the flesh but through love, serve one another. You can do good to people who will do evil to you in return because God is the judge of the universe through Christ and that vengeance is his and you can keep on smiling and keep on loving because there is nothing anyone can take away from you because Christ took it all away when he conquered you and he gives it all to you as a co-air with God. You can actually love people in righteousness that we may serve him in holiness and in righteousness but to do it without fear. To come to this king, to consecrate ourselves, to die to ourselves in humility as he himself was born in humility. To be a nowhere man from a nowhere place so that we don't have to seek self-preservation but we can look to his victory as our sustaining power in life and in death. C.S. Lewis wrote that great children's series, Chronicles of Narnia. In the horse in his boy there are two talking horses from the land of Narnia which carry two children to that land and all along the way they are shadowed by the great lion Aslan who is the Christ figure in that story and they are afraid of him the whole way but they find out later on that the fear which he struck in them was the means by which they were saved from death and danger all along the way but it's not until they come to him face to face that they realize it was him. After those talking horses win, she sees the great lion Aslan bigger than the horse and much more fierce realizing the fear that they had from him all along the journey she sees him as he is and she loves him and she says this to him and she says something that we must say to Christ that Zechariah's words would have us say to Christ. We might serve him without fear and holiness and righteousness. Hear what she says and think of yourself saying it to the king of the manger, the king who has resurrected and ascended and seated at the right hand of the father. She said please you are so beautiful. You may eat me if you like, as sooner be eaten by you than be fed by anyone else. That's what the manger tells us, that's what Bethlehem tells us, that's what the son of David born in humble circumstances tells us that he is the king who will overwhelm us if we do not submit to him but if we give ourselves to him to be consumed by him it is more glorious than to know all of life's pleasures apart from him. This is a baby born in Bethlehem born a descendant of David but he is a baby with peace because the king of Christmas is also the king of Easter on man, let's pray. I pray Father God that you would join the Christmas king and the Easter king in our hearts that we may give ourselves entirely to you, that we may serve you, that we may live for you without fear and holiness and in righteousness. We worship you Jesus, born, suffered, died, resurrected Jesus, you pray in your name, oh man.