Luke 2:1-3 “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria). And everyone went to his own town to register.”

On the day that Jesus was born, Caesar Augustus was the most powerful man in the world. The Roman Empire was the world’s greatest superpower. The historians tell us that this census, which may also have included paying a tax (like you remember from the King James translation of these verses), was a huge innovation from the emperor. Nothing on this scale had ever been tried before. It continued to be done every fourteen years for the next two hundred years.

No doubt the emperor prided himself for his great new idea. It demonstrated his political genius, his competence to govern this vast collection of countries under his control. It reinforced the power and glory of Rome, the capital of the civilized world.

It wasn’t really the emperor’s idea. Seven hundred years earlier the God of Israel had made a promise through the prophet Micah. He announced that a new King, an eternal King, a universal King, a divine King, was going to come and deliver his people Israel and rule the world. He was going to be born in Bethlehem. God doesn’t take his promises lightly. Jesus could have been born anywhere, and he would still be the Savior, the King. But God said he would come from Bethlehem, and if that meant he had to move an empire to make it happen, so be it. In order for him to come down, God moved an emperor to issue the decree that moved an empire. The most powerful man in the most powerful nation had no choice but to submit to the will of God.

Sometimes I look at the world in which I live, and I doubt, or I forget. On the national and world scene, the people in power manage to make one mess of things after another. There may be a war on terrorism, but there certainly hasn’t been a victory. Injustices pile up. Social problems grow, too many to list here. Corruption infects everyone and everything.

Close to home, frustration is never far away. I can’t get ahead like I want. I can’t get work done like I want. I can’t control my own behavior like I want. And the question rises in my head, “Where is God in all of this?”

The answer is, “He is here, on Christmas day.” When Love came down that first Christmas, he didn’t magically repair all the suffering and dysfunction in the world. That’s not what he came for. He came as Love, not Control, not Judgment. But for his purposes, to redeem a lost world from sin, to rescue me from the death and hell I deserved, he came with all the power he needed.

People who are passionate about doing something for someone else sometimes say, “I would move heaven and earth to…” You fill in the blank: “to be with you,” “to get you back,” “to help you recover.” When God wanted to save you, he moved an entire empire to come down to you, so that Jesus could live and die as our Savior.