Luke 2:1 The Child and the Emperor. I. "It came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Cæsar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed." In the original meaning of these words, they express the fact that it is by the vast network, so to speak, of the Imperial Government at Rome... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 2:7 Christ waiting to find room. In the birth and birthplace of Jesus there is something beautifully correspondent with His personal fortunes, afterwards also of the fortunes of His Gospel. Even down to our own age and times He comes into the world, as it were, to the taxing, and there is sca... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 2:8 Whilst there is a striking contrast, between the Divine dignity of our Lord and the lowly earthly circumstances of His birth, there is at the same time a no less striking harmony between the events, and dispositions, and persons attending it. The time, the place, the tidings, the listeners... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 2:8 The Great Joy of Christmas. When we hear an angel from heaven declaring good tidings of great joy, which should be to all people, the heart is straightway set on remembering how wondrous true this declaration of his has proved already; set on considering how infallibly true it will prove... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 2:10 The days of life are not lived on one level range. There are days that are lifted, and days that are depressed; days which stand out radiant with opportunity, as summits of mountains stand forth to the eye when the sun shines upon them. When Christianity was born a sun rose into the darkn... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 2:10 When Jesus was born, the possibilities of human nature began to be realised. Humanity took a new start. The highest hope of all time was realised, and the possibilities of human nature had expression. Christianity comes to every one of us as an inspiration. It hangs, a star in the darkene... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 2:12 The Sign of the Babe reveals Four Things. I. That our Saviour was a real man. "Ye shall find the Babe." In the flesh our flesh Christ came; as truly man as He was truly God; and infinite though the mystery may be, that is the truth gathering about the Babe wrapt in swaddling clothes and... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 2:13 The Angels' Hymn. I. "Glory to God in the highest." This is the first jubilant adoring exclamation of the angels, as they beheld the fulfilment of that eternal counsel of God, which, partially known no doubt long since and foreseen in heaven, was now at length actually accomplished upon e... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 2:10 , LUKE 2:14 We have on the Feast of the Nativity these two lessons: instead of anxiety within, and despondence without instead of a weary search after great things to be cheerful and joyful; and again, to be so in the midst of those obscure and ordinary circumstances of life which the wor... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 2:16 The Hidden God. I. It is said in the Bible that God is a God that hideth Himself; and yet there is nothing of which we are more sure than this that if any man will heartily, and by all appointed means, seek and feel after the Lord, he will not fail to find Him; for not only doth He promis... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 2:20 Think what a changed world it has become because Jesus was born at Bethlehem. I. Remember that the Christian change of the world's history is a fact. The influx through Christ of a new power into the life of humanity is a known fact of experience, as certain as the battle of Gettysburg,... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 2:22 I. The entrance of our Lord into His Temple had been foretold by Malachi four hundred years before (Malachi 3:1). But the Lord did not now come in His glory, like as before when that bright cloud, the sign of His presence, filled the new-built Temple in the time of King Solomon: He came n... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 2:25 Some Aspects of the Presentation in the Temple. I. Two points strike us in Simeon pre-eminently, whether they are marks of a school of Jewish interpretation, or rather traits of a single soul, simpler and more receptive than most. One is that starting merely with prophecy, and not concern... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 2:26 I. This revelation was made to an old man who had waited on God continually in the Temple service, cherishing in his secret heart the promise given to the first fathers of his race, renewed from time to time by the mouth of God's holy prophets, and at length by one of them defined as to t... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 2:29 The Glory and Work of Old Age. What were the gains which blessed this old man's age? I. The first was prophetic power; not so much the power of foretelling, as the power of insight into God's doings. He saw the Child, and he knew that It was the Saviour of the world: "Mine eyes have see... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 2:29 Old Age. The examples of Simeon and Anna combine to set before us a picture of that old age which we must allow to be the most befitting, which we must wish to see realised in our own case an old age free from wordly harass and desires with leisure for higher things; occupied with the ca... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 2:32 The song of Simeon was very beautiful in its arrangement. First the believer's personal appropriation of a promise, "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word: for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation;" next the expansion of a Christian's Catholic spirit, "A L... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 2:34 The Dual Aspect of Christ's Advent. The words of Simeon in the text seem to be intended to check natural but undue expectations about the effect of the first coming of Christ. The Child of Mary, the everlasting Son of the Father, is set by the counsels of God, set in Jewish history, in h... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 2:34 I. That is the claim which Christ has upon us; that He _knows_us. As it is said, "He knew what was in man," and He does not merely know our faces, our forms, but our true selves. You know nothing of any science or thing until you know its hidden inner secret. Man has a great hidden nature... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 2:40 I. "The Child grew." He grew in stature, and He grew in character and goodness. He did not stand still. Although it was God Himself who was revealed to us in the life of Jesus Christ, yet this did not prevent us from being made like unto Him in all things, sin only excepted. Each one of u... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 2:41 It was at twelve years old that Jewish boys came personally under the obligations of the law of Moses. Up to that age they had been treated as children, taught by their parents at home, but not yet expected to obey the harder precepts, such as fasting, or attending at Jerusalem at the thre... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 2:41 This passage is one of peculiar interest, as this account which it gives is the only circumstance mentioned of our blessed Lord from His childhood till He was thirty years of age. And while it contains much matter for deeper reflection, it bears at once on the surface this information tha... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 2:42 Society in Religion. I. Companionship in religion is evidently the will of God, and is expressly commanded us by Him. Thus, in the Old Testament, we find the appointment of certain solemn feasts, at which the Israelites were to meet and rejoice before God in Jerusalem at the feasts of Pas... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 2:46 I. Christ has a house here below as well as in heaven above. Here is the light of His Word imparted to us; here is His dwelling and here are His provisions; the table which He furnishes for us. We must not surely think to find our Saviour in the highways of ambition and pride, in the plea... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 2:46 The story of our Lord's listening to the doctors in the Temple and questioning them shows how He compelled a set of men, who were the slaves of words or rather of letters, who believed that all power lay in them, to confess a mightier power in Him. I. This is the subject which is especial... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 2:48 The Finding of Christ in the Temple. I. One of the things which it would have been absolutely impossible for the intellect of a human infant to grasp would be the idea of Divine Sonship, the idea of that relation in which the Son of God stands to the Eternal Father. There must have been... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 2:40 , LUKE 2:49; LUKE 2:52 _(with Mark 6:3; John 4:34; John 10:18; John 10:30)_ The Germ of Christian Manhood. Man and God are in eternal relation. As you cannot have an upper without an under; a brother without sister or brother; a son without a father or mother, so you cannot have a true c... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 2:49 The Epiphany of Work. This Gospel may be called the Epiphany of Christ to the world of youth to that large portion of the great human family which has life before it, with its boundless capacities of use and abuse, of happiness and misery, of good and evil. How and in what sense is it an... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 2:51 The Christian Family. I. The household is the parents' kingdom. Only here can each one find food for every faculty. The family gives a practical solution to the great problems of moral truth. It is the typical form of the vast organisations that belong to human life. It teaches subordinat... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 2:40 , LUKE 2:49; LUKE 2:52 _(with Mark 6:3; John 4:34; John 10:18; John 10:30)_ The Germ of Christian Manhood. Man and God are in eternal relation. As you cannot have an upper without an under; a brother without sister or brother; a son without a father or mother, so you cannot have a true c... [ Continue Reading ]