CHRISTMAS ACCORDING TO LUKE :IDEA: Luke gives us the warm details of Jesus'' birth. TEXT: Luke
2:1-20
PURPOSE:
To point out to listeners how much we owe to Luke for what we
celebrate at Christmas.
Do you have a nativity scene at your house?
It''s amazing how many of the images of Christmas come from the gospel of
Luke. Without Luke we wouldn''t have much of a Christmas visually.
I. Luke gives us the warm coloring of Christmas.
Mary and Joseph coming to Bethlehem, searching for a place and having to
settle probably for a drafty cave.
Because Jesus was born in a stable, Luke brings us all the animals that we
have in a nativity scene, not to mention the shepherds and
angels.
Luke is responsible for most of the Christmas carols that we sing—"Angels We
Have Heard On High," "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," "Away in a Manger," "O
Little Town of Bethlehem," "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night,"
"Silent Night," etc.
If you like Christmas scenes, Luke is the one who gives them to us in Luke
2:1-20.
II. Luke was a physician who took it upon himself to write to a man named
Theophilus to give him an
orderly account of Jesus'' life. (He also wrote the
Acts of the Apostles to Theophilus as well.)
Who was Luke? He was an educated man, writing a very orderly gospel in
beautiful Greek.
It''s reasonable, then, that he would start with the events leading up to
Jesus'' birth.
Luke wasn''t trying to embellish the story. The birth of Jesus was pretty
earthy. Luke reports it, but God planned it that way.