Belonging - Week 3

Daily Scripture Readings

Monday          Luke 1:5-24

Tuesday         Luke 1:26-38

Wednesday   Luke 1:39-45

Thursday       Luke 1:46-56

Friday             Luke 1:57-80

Saturday        Luke 2:8-20       

Opening Prayer

Lord Jesus, remind us that You belong to a particular time and place in history and we belong to You.   AMEN

READING:

God’s timing is always perfect. A sovereign God made ready a time and a people to fulfill His eternal purpose for the redemption of a lost mankind.

Jesus was born at a time and place in history. The event is simply told by the physician turned historian. It occurred in the days of Caesar Augustus. When Christ was born Palestine was under the reign of a Roman ruler, Caesar Augustus. The long hundred-year-old bloody civil war of Rome has finally come to an end.  Dr. Luke is careful to give us historical details of Jesus’ birth. It is no mythology or dream of fantasy.

Oddly enough, Caesar Augustus was never aware of his greatest and most lasting achievement which was preparing of the way for Savior of the world.

The date is BC 4 or 5 and Herod the Great is king in Judaea (40-4 BC). These events took place probably shortly before Herod's death April 4 BC. Of Herod, the emperor Augustus once said, "I had sooner be Herod’s swine than his son," referring to the increasingly paranoid and cruel execution of his wife and several sons.

A sovereign God had prepared a people, a nation, and specific time in history to do the unimaginable thing.

Wil Pounds