Luke 10:17-18 “The seventy-two returned with joy and said, ‘Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.’ He replied, ‘I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.’”

Do you know who Irma Rombauer is? In 1931 she published a book titled The Joy of Cooking. It has been in print continually since 1936 and has sold over 18 million copies. I like to cook. I take no issue with the title. But I have known some people, not all bad cooks actually, for whom the idea of associating “joy” and “cooking” makes about as much sense as the joy of root canals, or the joy of paying taxes. They cook because they have to, not because they like it.

When the seventy-two men Jesus sent on their first missionary journey came back, they “returned with joy.” They were ready to promote “The Joy of Mission Work.” Maybe their response surprises you, maybe not. Many Christians I have known, myself included at one point, might be more inclined to describe “the dread of mission work,” or “the embarrassment of mission work.” It can be scary to talk to people about our faith.

But Luke clearly says, “They returned with joy.” Why? Great things happened when they shared their faith. They were impressed with the power of the word. “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.” The evil spirits were no longer able to maintain their control over the bodies they had invaded and enslaved. Even more, they were no longer able to maintain their influence in the hearts and minds of people who thought that God was just the big angry judge; or the cruel, heartless tyrant; or the humorless, depressing lawgiver. Jesus confirmed the disciples’ experience, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like lightning.” The gospel message has power, enough power to drive Satan’s kingdom back and Christ’s kingdom forward.

You and I are highly unlikely to confront demon possession in this time and place. In the United States the devils get more work done by hiding their presence than making it obvious. There are other places around the world where the demons are more out in the open with their work, as some of our world missionaries can testify. It is also true that there has been a rise in exorcisms even here.

That doesn’t mean we have to see demons fleeing some spiritual victim to experience the joy of the gospel’s power over the enemy. It’s just that our experience will usually be less dramatic. There is nothing like seeing the light of faith flash into existence in another human heart. Years ago I stopped to make a mission call at the home of a woman I had met a few weeks earlier. You may be familiar with the so-called “two key questions” sometimes used in evangelism: The first is, “If you died tonight, do you know where you would go?” The second is, “If you found yourself at God’s throne, and he asked you, ‘Why should I let you into heaven?’ what would you tell him?”

These two questions gripped the heart of the woman I was visiting. She had to know the answer. Of course, I was there to try to explain it to her. But she wouldn’t sit still long enough to let me speak. She called her best friend on the phone to see what she would say. While they were talking, a next-door neighbor rang the doorbell, and she ran to the door and asked her what she thought. Finally, I was able to get her to listen for a few moments, and when I showed her that none of us can do enough good for God to accept us, but that Jesus took away all our sin at the cross and provided all the goodness God demands in our place, her relief and joy was visible. Satan’s kingdom lost a member that day. God’s kingdom added one. Being part of the process, seeing the power of the gospel at work, was a joy for me as well.

Luke 2:34 “Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: ‘This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against…’”

The genuine way to God is uniquely humbling. Jesus came to empty us of all our delusions that somehow God owes us. We don’t live as his peers. We don’t endear ourselves to him by the way we live. He isn’t impressed by who we are. This is why Jesus could make shocking statements like these to the “church” people of his day: “The prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.” He isn’t referring to those who defiantly defended their “trade,” but to those who repented. These ladies weren’t filled with pride. They knew they had messed up. They didn’t have to be told to be humble. They just were. It was obvious they weren’t going to impress God into accepting them.

The other camp is the way of human pride. The Pharisees were the poster boys for this cause in Jesus’ day. “Be good” was their basic approach to God. And there is nothing wrong with being good. God wants us to be. The problem was that the Pharisees had convinced themselves that they were, or at least that they were on a steady course of personal improvement that would get them there. They took great pride in how hard they tried.

Another way to look at this division is the difference between those who are saved and those who are struggling. Jesus did not come to be the great Trainer. He did not come to be the great Helper. He came to be the great Savior. By his life and death, by the forgiveness of sins, he pulls to safety those who had no way of rescuing themselves.

But many, like the Pharisees, prefer to struggle on themselves. Have you ever tried to help a little child who was struggling to do something, and instead you were rebuffed with: “I can do it myself!”? How often God must shake his head at us when he offers to save us but people reply, “I can do it myself!” Unfortunately, we are like a 3-year-old trying to solve a problem in advanced calculus, or trying to assemble a car from nothing but parts, or trying to swim 500 miles to shore. It just isn’t going to happen.

The result of this division into two camps, these two approaches to God, is, as Simeon said, “the falling and rising of many in Israel.” The irony is that those who looked like they were so low had actually been raised, and those who looked like they were so high had actually fallen. Take the Apostle Paul, for example. When he converted to the religion of grace from the religion of works and pride, he gave up a career path that promised to make him a prominent and respected rabbi in Israel, maybe even a member of their ruling council, the Sanhedrin. In its place he received a life of persecution and prison chains, and eventually execution as a criminal. It looked like Paul had fallen.

But from God’s point of view, Paul was raised to the heights: the heights of being intensely loved by Jesus, the heights of perfection– not of his own doing but of having his sins wiped away and receiving credit for Jesus’ perfect life, ultimately, the heights of heaven itself. It was those who insisted on coming to God on their own terms who were on a steady downward course away from God.

Here is an application to take to heart. Even Christians in name can end up in the wrong camp. Here is a direct quote from a sermon preached in a “Christian” church almost fifty years ago: “Jesus is an example, a prototype of what I and all men can become. He is not a sacrifice, a substitute, that saves me from all pain and sorrow, no matter how strong my faith may be. If it is necessary to believe in that kind of fiction in order to be saved, then I greatly fear that ‘when the roll is called up yonder,’ I shall not be there.” Sadly, we must confirm this man’s conclusion about his fate because his is the graceless religion of pride, struggling, and works, not Jesus’ religion of salvation.

There are other people who can recite the formula of salvation by grace– Jesus died on the cross to take all my sins away– but who do so something like a trained parrot. It is little more than a theory which they repeat, but not their trust and confidence. In their hearts they are still convinced they are basically good. They feel no great need for Jesus to forgive their sins.

Follow Jesus to become a saved person, not because you think you are a better person.

Isaiah 40:6-8 “A voice says, ‘Cry out.’ And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’ ‘All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever.’”

We don’t naturally go looking for the kind of comfort that will last forever. Our world is full of counterfeit comforts, short-lived comforts, and you and I have probably tried most of them.

There is Southern Comfort, and other similar mind-altering comforts that come in a bottle, or in a pill, or in a syringe. They may make us forget our hardships for a little while, but they can’t make them go away. They usually end up creating more of them than we had before.

There is the comfort that comes from being comfortable, from having all the money we need, all the things that we want, all the prestige and success we have worked so hard to build. The problem is that when we look for our comforts here, we never seem to have enough to be truly comfortable.

We may try to surround ourselves with comforters of various sorts, people who can give us a feeling of safety and security. We strive to build the perfect family. We work hard to elect the right leaders. We look up to heroes and role models who show us the way.

The problem is that “all men are like grass.” Even the good ones may serve well in their time, but death overtakes us all. “And all their glory,” all the best things that their lives have produced, “is like the flowers of the field.” Human accomplishments rarely outlive the lives of the people who performed them.

My great-grandfather and grandfather spent their lifetimes building up a family farm. They worked on it until the day they died. Then one day the bank came and finagled it away.

The history of the world is littered with heroes whose life’s work benefits absolutely no one today, other than to make a great story. You can be sure the day will come when fathers of our own country, whose ideas and sacrifice we still benefit from hundreds of years later, will be added to the list of those whose glory has faded, whose flowers have fallen, and no one will benefit from their work other than a few interested historians.

But the word of the Lord, and the promise of comfort that it brings, will never end up on that list. “The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever.” The life’s work of Jesus Christ is no less relevant today than it was 2000 years ago. The power of his gospel to touch our hearts and bring us faith is no less effective today than when he first issued the Great Commission. The forgiveness of sins his gospel promises is no less valid and no less certain than when those comforting words first fell on the ears of his disciples in the towns and villages of Galilee. It is an absolutely sure message.

God’s comfort may not be immediately obvious to us in the stable at Christmas. It is even harder to see hanging on the cross. That is why so many artists have doctored the picture with halos and glowing skin. But we don’t need such special effects to see salvation in the manger. All we need to see is the comforting and certain message of forgiveness connected to that Savior, and know his word stands forever.

John 7:15 “The Jews were amazed and asked, ‘How did this man (Jesus) get such learning without having studied?’”

The question of the Jewish leaders does not suggest that Jesus was illiterate. Like most Jewish boys of his time, he had likely attended a synagogue school where he learned how to read.

But Jesus had never studied in one of the rabbinical schools. These were something like our seminaries. You may remember that the Apostle Paul studied in the school of the well-known rabbi Gamaliel. But Jesus had no college level degree in theology. He was a tradesman, a carpenter by training, who had a brilliant grasp of the Scriptures. His teaching did not come from what he had learned in a classroom.

Likewise, the test of true teachers of God’s word is not about the school they attended or the number of degrees they have earned. These may not be bad things. We don’t want ignorant or lazy preachers and teachers who have not worked at learning Scripture and prepared themselves for serving God’s people. Continuing study is a healthy thing for one’s ministry. But theology degrees from prestigious institutions do not necessarily make a better teacher of God’s word. Many things that could be learned from some theological schools would be serious problems today. In spiritual things, academia has often produced a skepticism that gets in the way of knowing God’s word.

Jesus himself prayed, “I thank you Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to little children” (Matthew 11:25). Paul made this observation to the Corinthians, “Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe” (1 Cor. 1:20-21). In the test of the true teacher, the right answer to the question, “Where does his teaching come from?” is not, “From some respected school.”

Where, then? “Jesus answered, ‘My teaching is not my own. It comes from him who sent me’” (John 7:16). With these words Jesus does not deny that he agreed with his own teaching, believed it, and claimed it for himself. He is talking about the source. His teachings were not new teachings he made up independently during his earthly ministry. Truth is never something new, though it may have been forgotten and rediscovered. Truth has a long history behind it. In fact, truth is eternal.

We live in an age that idolizes the new and the trendy. Christians also suffer from this disease. When people make some preacher or teacher popular, because, “Here’s something we haven’t heard before,” we can be too quick to jump on the bandwagon. Has he dusted off some Biblical teaching that has been neglected for too long? Then feel free to follow. But is his teaching some creative new idea spun out of his own imagination? Through Jeremiah God complained about the prophets who “dream their own dreams.” That is the wrong answer to “Where does his teaching come from?” in the test of the true teacher.

Instead, it needs to come “from him who sent me.” Jesus was a true teacher because his teachings agreed with those of his heavenly Father, the one who created the world. His words lined up with God’s revelation to the Patriarchs, and Moses, and the Prophets. Jesus’ claim that his teachings come from the one who sent him was not a claim that defied contradiction because there was no way to investigate it. Everyone present knew the way to check it out: compare Jesus’ teaching with the Scriptures.

When testing to see if someone is a true teacher, “From God through his Holy Scriptures” is still the best answer to the question, “Where does his teaching come from?”

Isaiah 11:1 “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.”

Jesse, as you probably know, was the father of King David. David began a royal dynasty in Israel that provided kings for 350 years. But over the years the proud family tree David established fell into decline. Many of the kings abused their power. Many ruled selfishly instead, not in the interest of God’s people. Some became idolaters and even used their position to lead God’s people into idolatry.

That is what led to God’s judgment upon the nation and the royal family. First he tore the nation in two by civil war. Later he let foreign nations invade. Eventually the capital city was burned to the ground and the best and brightest people taken into exile. Only a handful returned 70 years later.

All that was left of the proud tree David started was a stump. When Jesus was born, there had been no kings in the family for more than half a millennium. There was nothing to suggest this family would ever produce a person of influence again.

The surprising thing about Jesus’ background is not his family’s slide into obscurity or his now humble roots. History is full of stories of peasants and paupers who rose to become great leaders. Think of the stories we learned about Abraham Lincoln in grade school. He grew up in a log cabin. He was schooled by his mother at home. His early life didn’t include the kind of grooming some have had to prepare them for national leadership. Yet he rose to become one of the most influential presidents our nation has ever had. That career path is not unique. We could multiply stories of inventors and explorers and businessmen and statesmen and churchmen who rose from obscurity to change the world.

What stumps us about Jesus’ background, at least from a worldly point of view, is that he had a choice. While others worked their way up, Jesus was, in a very real sense, working his way down. From heaven he oversaw the events that led to his family’s fall from power. He guided the history that went into his being born in a stable instead of a palace, that went into growing up learning carpentry instead of statecraft.  Other great men of history may have appreciated the lessons they learned from having humble beginnings. I doubt that they would have chosen such circumstances for themselves. Jesus chose to leave his heavenly throne, and to remove his family’s earthly throne, before he became the new shoot on Jesse’s humble family tree.

Would you? Isn’t our life so often about bettering our position? Don’t we pour ourselves into making our lives easier? Doesn’t so much of what we do revolve around making things as comfortable for ourselves as we can? And doesn’t this so often lead us to a rather selfish approach to life in which we attempt to make ourselves the center of our universe and the god of our own little world?

But though Jesus truly is God, he came to serve. He came to save us from the sinful life and selfish little universe we try to construct for ourselves. And in order to do that he had to become one of us and die in our place. His humble background helped assure that nothing would obstruct his mission. Earthly power and riches never got in the way of people killing him. It also helps assure us there is no one so low or so obscure they are beneath Jesus’ saving work. Jesus was common and ordinary and human, just like you, and just like me. And so we are qualified to be the common and ordinary human beings he came to rescue and make his own.

Isn’t that what rivets our eyes on Christ as we prepare to celebrate his birth? Jesus’ humble background is not just a great human interest story for the 10 o’clock news. It is the story of unfathomable love willing to give up every earthly advantage, and eventually life itself, to set a world of sinners free. He chose this humility, because he chose to make us his family. We are the fruit produced by this lowly branch.