At the Perfect Time

Before you start todays devotional, ask the Lord to use it to grow you up in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Every book in the Bible was written in a specific time, place, and culture; each has a specific purpose. Luke wrote this Gospel reflecting a Greek perspective in order to show us Jesus as the Son of God.

The Greek culture prepared the world for Jesus’ arrival. Historically, God used Alexander to help spread the gospel—building roads that would carry the Good News, speaking Greek, the language most of the world understood.

At the exact right time for Jesus to be born, the Roman Empire announced the civilized world would be taxed. Caesar Augustus signed a tax bill that prompted a peasant couple to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem, the town of their heritage. The baby the woman carried in her womb was the Son of God. Nobody reveres or pays taxes to Caesar Augustus today, but millions still worship Jesus as Savior of the world.

In the Spring of that year, as shepherds watched their sheep in the fields, angels appeared in the night sky and shouted to the shepherds that their Messiah had been born. Jesus could have come in great power and glory like He will the next time, but on that night He arrived in the weakest way possible, as a baby.

After the angels announced Jesus’ arrival, they disappeared back into the night sky and the shepherds hurried to Bethlehem where they found Mary, Joseph, and the baby. Jesus’ first visitors were poor, wide-eyed shepherds.

As good Jews, Mary and Joseph took eight-day-old Jesus to the temple to be circumcised. According to Moses’ Law, they brought two doves, a poor man’s offering, to sacrifice to the Lord for Mary, considered unclean after childbirth.

In the temple there waited an old man named Simeon to whom the Holy Spirit had made a special promise. God told Simeon he would actually see God’s salvation before he died. When Simeon sees the Lord wiggling in His mother’s arms, he knew he saw the Savior of the world. Right from the start, Christianity has been for all people everywhere.

Born six months before Jesus, John the Baptist’s life and ministry was specially ordered by God, tied to a specific time in history.

No one who met John would ever forget him. To some, he was like Elijah, an unusual man with zeal to match. He is picturesque, unshaven, and shaggy, wearing camel’s hair clothes. He is the last of the prophets, walking out of the Old Testament. He will receive the same reception many prophets received—he will be put to death.

John preached repentance—turn to God and away from your sin. Today we proclaim the grace of God, but if you receive God’s grace and have turned to Him, you are going to turn from your sins. If you do not turn from your sins, you have not really turned to God. Repentance is involved in salvation, but today God’s message is, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved …” (Acts 16:31).

John certainly got people’s attention. Some turned to God in faith and others scoffed at him and walked away. Nobody can hear the message of salvation and remain neutral. You will decide with your actions.

1. Why would God announce the birth of the Messiah to a bunch of shepherds rather than kings or other important people?

2. God Himself came to live in human flesh. Why was that necessary?

3. God chose to allow His Son to live in a house with two people, Mary and Joseph, who had little in the way of money or resources. Can this tell us anything about our perspective on money and material things?

Additional Resources

Listen to Dr. J. Vernon McGee’s complete teachings on Luke 2:1-30 and Luke 2:31—3:8.