[00:00:01] You're listening to Theology and Apologetics with Thomas Fretwell, bring Theology to life. So we are continuing our life of Messiah series so we're just going to do the first seven verses in Luke chapter two now. We've pretty much done all of the introductions, the birth
[00:00:23] announcements we've seen the birth of John the Baptist and now we're going to see that monumental event, the birth of Jesus Christ. So let's turn to Luke chapter two first one please. And this is now in those days a decree went out from Caesar or
[00:00:38] gustus that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth. This was the first census taken while Carinius was governor of Syria. So what I would like to do now is to paint a slightly
[00:00:49] fuller picture for you of the world that Jesus was born into, we need to give some attention to the historical markers that we have in this text and it's also worth noting that such historical markers and when I say historical markers, I'm referring to the reference
[00:01:06] to people like Caesar or gustus and Carinius and the fact that Syria had its own governor. These are local geographic knowledge and local people at the time these are not something you would generally find in mythology. You may hear many times today that the Bible is just
[00:01:23] a story, it's history, it's not history. Things like this would prove quite the opposite. These are what we call historical markers and they are generally found in writing that is trying to cook itself to a period in history. And of course Caesar or gustus is a very big
[00:01:38] historical marker so let's take a little look at him. You may remember a while back when we were doing our Philippians study and we took a little detail into this character, Caesar or gustus
[00:01:50] and we're going to do that again now but we'll look at a few different things from what we did last time too. So Caesar or gustus here, this is obviously he's kind of famous because of this verse
[00:02:01] here he always turns up around the Christmas time if you want to reach this verse so they know Caesar or gustus but let's look at him in a little more depth. He was born in 63 BC under the name
[00:02:11] Gase Octavius or Octavius some people call him Octavian but his name was Gase Octavius and his mother was the daughter of Julia who was the sister of Julius Caesar so that in effect makes him the
[00:02:26] grand nephew of Julius Caesar most people have heard in some respect of Julius Caesar so here's of a kind of royal lineage here royal family. Julius Caesar was actually extremely fond of the
[00:02:38] young Gase and he used to shower him with affection and give him gifts and things like that and when Gase Octavius was 20 years old Julia Caesar the then emperor adopted him as his son and declared him to be
[00:02:53] the next in line for the throne of the Roman Republic at that time. Now if you remember you may remember from your school days shortly after this 44 BC, Julia Caesar was murdered. Do you
[00:03:06] remember the story? He was murdered by those who were his friends in the Senate who were concerned about his greatly growing power at that time to people particularly from the republican side called Brutus
[00:03:17] and Cassius and they snuck in and they killed him on the eyes of Mark on the eyes of Mark March 15 and that's where the expression of the way the eyes of Marks come from. Julius Caesar was killed
[00:03:27] on that day. So when Julia Caesar was killed Octavius this man took over from him. Octavius had a sister who married a man called Mark Anthony. I know this is going to be a lot of history here in this
[00:03:41] respect but you've probably heard some of these names before so it gives you a bit of context for what we're dealing with. Mark Anthony was a loyal general to Julia Caesar, say he's firmly on the
[00:03:50] side of Caesar and Octavius there and now of course he'd married Octavius's sister so that gave them a very strong power block. So basically if you can imagine right there were two major power blocks
[00:04:02] fighting at this time. But kind of like politics today in many ways it's very partisan isn't it? It usually just two main parties that we have here. You had the forces republican forces of Brutus
[00:04:12] and Cassius and then you had the other the more dictatorial ones we could say of Octavius and Mark Anthony who wanted an empire not so much a republic at that point but that was what was going on.
[00:04:24] So you had these two people growing in power both of them and opposing one another and this eventually led to a civil war. 42 BC this was called the Battle of Philippi which is why we studied it
[00:04:37] at our Philippians study and that was we weren't going to that again but basically Octavian, the adopted son of Julia Caesar and Mark Anthony fought against the forces of Brutus and Cassius
[00:04:49] and they soundly defeated them at that battle and that really marked the end of what we would call the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire. That's what happened there. So Octavius and Mark Anthony ruled together for a while and obviously that didn't last long
[00:05:05] being politics these things tends to get messy. Mark Anthony begun to do it began to act in a way that really bothered Octavius at this point and there was a reason for that he had been he'd fallen
[00:05:18] under the sway history tells us of the legendary Cleopatra from Egypt, the queen of Egypt, the legendary Cleopatra who was said to be so beautiful is she could take any man under her sway
[00:05:31] that was just legend we don't know the truth about that but she had Mark Anthony under her sway so much so that he had an affair with her and he used to basically put her interests above everything
[00:05:42] and as you can imagine this man was married to Octavian sister so he was not best pleased when he heard about this and this is basically again what led to another civil war within the Roman
[00:05:54] Empire so as you can see these things it's very human things that cause these kind of wars often isn't it and this is what we have here going on again in the Roman Empire. And this showdown
[00:06:06] happened at what they called the Battle of Atium 31 BC and this was a naval battle the Egyptian navy basically got involved in this because of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony's relationship they should have known better their navy was very weak the mighty Roman navy absolutely destroyed the Egyptian
[00:06:24] fleet every single one of them and won that victory soundly and now Octavian was the sole ruler of the Empire both Mark Anthony and Cleopatra committed suicide shortly after that that fate
[00:06:37] for them was better than being taken by Octavian at this point. I'm sharing with us with you because this is context for this man that we're reading about now at the birth of Christ. So Octavian
[00:06:47] now he ruled for the next 45 years he was an accomplished military leader he'd won these battles he was a very accomplished political leader he was a very good ruler actually in many ways he put an end
[00:06:59] to all the internal squobbles in Rome he extended Roman territory from the east to the west really to give it the vast empire he brought in what they call the Paxra Manor which is the piece
[00:07:11] of Rome because he ended all the civil wars and everywhere that he controlled benefited from the piece of Rome now it was peace obviously in the sense of you step out of line and the full
[00:07:22] force of Rome will come down and use that you don't match with the Roman Empire but it did actually bring a peace which was crucial for the early years of Jesus' ministry and these sorts of things
[00:07:32] that we have and the spread of the gospel in the early days you can see the Lord's hand upon all of these things he also built the Roman road system you may see many of those Roman roads
[00:07:42] survive today and he seemed to be much better built than many of our roads today but they still survived and that this facilitated travel across the whole of the empire it also meant that we're
[00:07:53] no borders across the whole of the empire and you could go in and out of different places and again this was just a very pivotal event for the apostles as they would travel around preaching the
[00:08:04] gospels so all of these things were laying the groundwork now what's interesting I shared this with you before but after he won these battles the Senate of Rome gave him the full title they
[00:08:15] they gave him the the title Augustus and they also gave him this was his full title in perita of Caesar, Divi, Phillyus or Augustus which roughly translated means commander Caesar, son of the
[00:08:28] divine this is because they had posimously declared Julius Caesar his adopted father to be a god and this is what you see in the new testament the idea of worshipping the emperors this is where it
[00:08:40] came from this is what happened so now he was declared divine but he couldn't be God he was called the son of God which is very interesting for our study here we have many coins from this period with
[00:08:51] Augustus's image on them so he changed his name from Octavian now to Caesar Augustus so it's the same person and that is how we got Caesar Augustus he was called Caesar Augustus the son of God
[00:09:03] and that's a very interesting point that we have here and he was emperor worship really took off around the empire at this time we have an Egyptian inscription that calls him the star shining with brilliance
[00:09:14] the great heavenly saviour in 17 BC there was actually a comet that came over that period area of the world we have record of it even have it on the back of some of his coins and because of this
[00:09:27] many of the poets pronounced that this was the turning point of the world this was the age to come Caesar Augustus the son of God and you kind of see the background that is being set for
[00:09:38] the arrival of Jesus into the world emperor worship now temples went up to the emperor's all around his empire and Christians had to then go and pay Romans citizens had to pay homage to the emperor as
[00:09:50] God and when you read these first seven verses that we're going to read in Luke now you can kind of see in the background the answer to what is going on here all of these themes the heavenly saviour
[00:10:02] the son of God worship that they're coming out in the life of Jesus Christ and it's basically showing you that all of these things that Augustus is claiming for himself on or true they are true
[00:10:13] of the one who was coming the son of Jesus so that's the background that we have here to this man Caesar Augustus it says this was the first census verse two taken while Korean Korean yes was
[00:10:24] governor of Syria now this would have been a tax registration census the idea is that they wanted to know how many people they could charge money from for living in the empire and this is what they did
[00:10:36] and the way they did this they would send everyone back to their ancestral towns and take a register there and that's why we have verse three it says everyone was on his way to register for the census each
[00:10:47] to his own city so we went back to his ancestral home remember this is talking about Mary and Joseph here so here we see that the self-proclaimed son of God Caesar Augustus gave it a crey that would lead the
[00:11:01] real son of God to fulfill the prophecy of where he must be born and in that event you can really see God's hand on history there because it was in fact the false son of God Caesar Augustus who thought he
[00:11:14] was a God and he is just merely being used by the real God to get Mary and Joseph back to Bethlehem look at verse four it says Joseph also went up from Galilee from the city of Nazareth to Judea
[00:11:29] to the city of David which is called Bethlehem because he was of the house and family of David in order to register along with Mary who was engaged to him and was with child so the journey from
[00:11:40] Nazareth to Bethlehem that's about 1980-19 miles roughly in their way they would have had to travel and remember Mary and Joseph were nothing more than teenagers at this time probably within the
[00:11:50] bracket of 14 to 18 for both of them at this time so they were young she was heavily pregnant they were very poor they most likely would have been she would have been on a donkey he would have been
[00:12:01] leading the donkey throughout that 80-90 mile trip think about that but it's a pretty massive undertaking that we have there Joseph was of the house and family of David we went through that as we did the
[00:12:12] genealogies and thus he had to travel to the city of David Bethlehem and it's talk a little bit about Bethlehem this was a small city was about six miles outside of Jerusalem yet this tiny
[00:12:25] insignificant city was going to play a major part in the history of the world and we know this to be true ask yourself right now how many ancient Judean cities around the outskirts of Jerusalem
[00:12:36] can you name today right now a lot of us maybe one or two most of us none probably but most people in the world will have heard of Bethlehem and this is again a good reason really to show you that
[00:12:50] something amazing happened there there's no other reason why Bethlehem should be known by everyone it was a tiny little insignificant city 200-300 population maybe at this time and it was rural it was
[00:13:02] agricultural city really at this time but what we find here is one of the greatest things in the world happened what happened here really did change the world and there's a history to Bethlehem
[00:13:16] some of the stories you read in the Bible actually happened in Bethlehem one of the greatest love stories that we find in the Bible in the Old Testament happened in Bethlehem the story of
[00:13:26] Ruth and Boas we have heard that story there the lovely story of Ruth and Boas this happened in Bethlehem Boas who's the hero of that story or other than Ruth was a Bethlehemite he was from
[00:13:38] Bethlehem and this is significant because he marries Ruth who is a mower bite and he brings her into the family line of Jesus the Messiah Boas is referred to as the Redeemer the Kindsman Redeemer
[00:13:52] who had a right to marry and redeem back the land and this is obviously a picture one day of the ultimate person who would come from Bethlehem who would redeem not just Ruth but he would
[00:14:02] redeem the whole world to himself through through the cross that's what we have here you can see this being laid down to tell you that there's something important about Bethlehem also it's
[00:14:12] called the city of David why because this is where King David was to be born he also was from the family in Bethlehem Jesse his father was also a Bethlehemite and King David was born here this is
[00:14:25] where King David was shepherd the flocks of his father Jesse and again it's a picture of that future descendant of David who was also going to be born here and this is why Jesus refers to himself
[00:14:37] as the good shepherd he's using the imagery from his birth from his family line that happened in Bethlehem now Bethlehem is most famously known because of a prophecy found in the Old Testament and let's
[00:14:49] read it you can turn to Mike of five chapter two this is a famous prophecy about Bethlehem it is but as for you Bethlehem, if Ratha it's just a location that Bethlehem if Ratha
[00:15:01] too little to be among the clans of Judah I mean it's too little it means it was just a tiny insignificant town but it says from you one will go forth for me to be ruler in Israel
[00:15:13] his going forth are from long ago from the days of eternity so one will go forth from Bethlehem who will rule over all of Israel and it also says that this one's lineage will be from eternity
[00:15:27] basically meaning he will be eternal this is a very clear statement again that this Messiah we're talking about was to be both fully God and fully man this is what we have we've seen this over
[00:15:38] and over again and he's early chapters of the Bible so here we have this ancient prophecy that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem and think about this this is a hugely restrictive
[00:15:47] element of Messianic identity this rules out so many people who have claimed to be the Messiah in the history of the world so many false religions have been started many of the world's major
[00:16:00] religions claim to be the true religion but yet they will fall short of fulfilling Messianic prophecy which is why the Lord gave us Messianic prophecies so that we could be sure about these things
[00:16:12] if he wasn't born in Bethlehem then he was not the Messiah and the very fact that this little town of Bethlehem is known the world over for me is very good reason to believe there's something
[00:16:22] did occur that changed the world there and we'll look at that more as we go through now what is the meaning of Bethlehem if you can see there that the word is made up of two Hebrew words
[00:16:31] the first word back to which this means house and let him which means bread still is still the word they used to date for bread so Bethlehem it means the house of bread and this is
[00:16:42] because they used to grow a lot of grain around there we remember the story of Ruth and Belaz he let her go in in the fields and take the grain for the sides of the field this is why it was
[00:16:50] called the house of bread but it's no surprise that we see this future descendant of David this Messiah who was to be born here he comes to the world and he teaches that he is the bread of life
[00:17:01] and whoever eats of him will never perish you see coming from Bethlehem the house of bread all of these things are connected to what we find here about Bethlehem it's a very important city
[00:17:11] it's look at verse 6 it says well they were there the days were completed for her to give birth and she gave birth to her first born son she wrapped him in cloths and laid him in a
[00:17:22] manger because there was no room for them in the end so here it is really we could say the most profound event in human history up until this point described really by Luke in
[00:17:34] probably the most understated way possible just two verses here describing it very matter of fact as Luke often does and so it was the most insignificant town really in this area gave rise to the most significant person in all of history Joseph and Mary had traveled from
[00:17:52] Nazareth to Bethlehem the son of God had traveled from the throne room of glory down to the stable in Bethlehem you see this is the this is what we have going on in the background of this text
[00:18:04] fascinating Charles Spurgeon said it best he says now how Kevin E. Glory wedded earthly poverty and henceforth let no man dare to despise the poor in the needy since the son of the highest is born
[00:18:16] in a stable and creed old in a manger how low the king of glory stoopes and how gloriously he uplift the lowly to share in his glory this is really the story of Bethlehem
[00:18:27] now due to the fact it says there was no room found for them in the end because of the census obviously the town was going to be full to capacity that weren't used to having so many people coming to Bethlehem
[00:18:38] no one went to Bethlehem really unless you were a shepherd and you needed somewhere like that you passed through Bethlehem but because of Caesar Augustus because of the census people were
[00:18:47] flocking to Bethlehem when they say an in it's not like a hotel that we would have think of it's not even like an in-keeper like we would think of in Medieval England it was basically it would have been
[00:18:58] a large square of what we would consider farm buildings really today with a courtyard in the middle for with place for animals and there was probably a couple of open rooms during in that square
[00:19:10] where people could stay for free while the animals were sheltered that was basically what we're talking about but because of the excessive people even those rooms were full so Mary and Joseph
[00:19:20] could not so they had to find somewhere else to stay and they looked for somewhere else and they found what's described as a stable and again it's very unlikely that this was like we would
[00:19:30] think of in England like a barn or a wooden shack or anything like that it was most common in the hill country of Judea in this kind of area that they would use caves for sheltering animals there
[00:19:39] would be many caves along the way the shepherds knew this area so well they would know all of these caves and often you would find a small feeding trough here in these caves for shepherds who
[00:19:49] passed through with their flocks that's the idea that we have here so not finding anywhere in the communal quarters they obviously went a little bit further inland and they found this cave and that
[00:20:00] is really where Jesus was born and the trough there the manger was nothing more than an old feeding trough usually just some stones piled with a little dip in it it's either be filled with water
[00:20:12] or food that's basically what we have here you can still see some of them when you go to Israel today in various places that was it and it says wrapped in linen strips and laid in a manger
[00:20:23] and I like this it points towards for me a point towards the end of his life there's one misson of god born in Bethlehem here at his birth he was wrapped in strips and laid in a cave
[00:20:34] basically on a piece of concrete or stone points I'm very much to the end of his life doesn't it where once again he was wrapped in strips this time not his birth it was his death and he was
[00:20:45] laid in a tomb in a cave again which again if you've ever seen an ancient cave tomb they very similar they just were a cave and they had a piece of stone or concrete where they would lay the
[00:20:55] body on them so both life and death he had the same thing of wrapping himself in strips and being laid in a cave for us there pointing to the death that he would die for us this is the most
[00:21:07] significant birth that has ever been on this planet yet it's one of the most humble circumstances we see here a little cave in Bethlehem no problem no ceremony no comfort yet what is going on here
[00:21:20] remember we read in Galatians God said this was the fullness of time at the fullness of time God brought forth a woman to bring forth his sub this was the exact time that God wanted the Messiah
[00:21:30] to be born into the world Caesar Augustus the Roman Empire all of these things have played their part and this was the moment in this small little backridden town in Bethlehem the King of Kings was born
[00:21:43] it's an amazing story really which is why what we call the Christmas story but the story of Jesus Christ has such enduring long lasting power in this world because of these things not only because
[00:21:53] of that obviously but because it is such an amazing story I want to just take a little digression with you now before we we carry on with the text next week because as I was thinking of
[00:22:03] this question this birth of this man this baby rather that we see here in Bethlehem and yet looking around our world just looking at the impact that this boy this baby from Bethlehem has had on the world
[00:22:17] we can ask ourselves in the negative would the world be different how would the world be different if Jesus has never been born and that's the question I want to just explore with you now looking
[00:22:26] at the impact of this child of Bethlehem on the earth because there's really no human, no secular explanation as to why this Jewish child born into poverty 2000 years ago virtually
[00:22:38] are noticed by the the mass of the world at this time why he should be the most colossal figure in human history there's no natural explanation for that there's no reason for it something different must have occurred the Yale historian Yaroslav Pelican just recently he wrote regardless of
[00:22:55] or anyone may personally think or believe about him Jesus of Nazareth has been the dominant figure in the history of Western culture for almost 20 centuries if it were possible with some sort
[00:23:05] of super magnet to pull up out of history every scrap of metal bearing at least a trace of his name how much would be left and if you actually study our world our history our culture may
[00:23:17] would not be much left most of what we know in this world would be different if Jesus Christ was never born many of the things that we take for granted even many of the things that you see
[00:23:28] nonbelievers assuming are normal are assuming are obvious are in fact not they are a result of just how much they have been shaped by this Christian revolution by the thought and the teaching of Jesus
[00:23:40] of Nazareth a few examples before we get into some of the details things like the equality of people people fight for that today don't they and and they they should but all people should be
[00:23:50] treated equal with respect that is a concept that most people just assume we arrive at naturally through our reason maybe we could say it is not it was absolutely not like that for most of history
[00:24:02] in the world in fact it was the exact opposite it was a scandalous comment to say that people were born and equal because in the ancient world people were born into different classes and there was absolutely no way you could come from one class to the other really
[00:24:15] and some people were class this car system was all over the world and it was definitely in the Roman Empire hugely at this point that we had things like human rights you have heard of that people fight for human rights today whether their believers are nonbelievers that also
[00:24:31] really owes its origin to the thought of Jesus Christ things like charity this concept that we have of freedom but it is good to be free that is a Christian thing this concept that we should educate
[00:24:42] people that is also a Christian thing this idea that we should take care of the poor and the downcast that comes from Christ this idea of consent and force and when I mean consent I do mean
[00:24:55] the idea that you have a right not to have someone forced themselves upon you in whatever way that may mean we consider that to be absolutely front found foundational to human existence don't we all
[00:25:06] laws a base on those kind of things in the western world anyway that is a new invention in the Roman Empire there was no such thing a master could do what he wanted with his slave there
[00:25:15] was no idea of consent that was not a concept that owes its origin to Christianity things like protection of children the idea of children in fact the actual concept of a child the innocence of a
[00:25:28] child as we call it again had did not exist in these days that is an idea that came from Christianity virtues like fidelity monogamy humility compassion for giving us these were virtues that
[00:25:40] were squand in the ancient world but when the Jesus revolution happened these were the things that were now virtues that we should seek two thousand years since the birth of this child in
[00:25:52] Bethlehem and he is still the most famous Jewish person across the world there's no one really who comes close and there's been some very famous Jewish people who have impacted the world a lot
[00:26:02] but nothing even comes close to this man Jesus Christ his message is so powerful that it has affected every inch of the world from the highest throne rooms to the lowest slums in the world
[00:26:14] you'll find people worshipping this boy from Bethlehem this man the king of kings because he was the son of god let's look at some specific areas I'll go into some of these things I mentioned in a little
[00:26:24] bit more depth now in the way that the message of Jesus has impacted this world and most historians will tell you one of the main ways is to do with women and children if you study the ancient world
[00:26:37] you'll realize that the lot of women and children were often the ones who suffered the most in the ancient world they had no rights in many ways and they were it was just a horrible world in many
[00:26:48] ways you read history you don't have to read much history to say that that is a true statement but yet all of a sudden two thousand years ago we see this incredible movement of women converting to Christianity
[00:27:00] in fact the early church was so saturated with female converts that it was often criticized in the Roman Empire as being a women's religion now what was that that made the difference ultimately it was the message and teaching of Jesus Christ you read through the gospels Jesus
[00:27:15] came he treated women with dignity unheard of in the ancient world with respect and I love that stood in stark contrast to the society and all the cultures around at the time this is what he did
[00:27:26] this is why women flopped to Christianity in the early days and still do in many parts of the world today because of these same reasons children like I said the concept of an innocent childhood
[00:27:39] that you should allow kids just to be innocent and enjoy their childhood unheard of really in the ancient world and we're not just the ancient world it was kind of unheard of until the
[00:27:48] revivals in the 18th and 19th century which I'll get to in a moment Jesus encouraged care for children he said that if you cause one of these little ones to stumble it's better for you to put a
[00:27:58] millstone around your neck and be cast into the sea he encouraged care for them rather than slavery or labour and we see this throughout the ancient world the concept of child sacrifice was an
[00:28:09] everyday practice in the ancient world and when you say everyday I do mean every single day it was not even blinked out it would be considered the strangest thing not to get rid of children
[00:28:19] that are a burden to you they used to call this exposure and Greek and Rome it was absolutely commonplace they had places marked out in the cities that they could expose their fields they
[00:28:30] also had things called baby towers where if you wanted to do it quickly you could put them in a bag and chuck them off the edge of the tower and the dogs would be down at the bottom and that would
[00:28:37] that's just the ancient world it sounds crazy to us this was just commonplace to these sorts of things it was Christianity that outlawed that practice in the ancient world make no mistake about it
[00:28:48] it was Christianity and nothing else and like we've seen a women's life was considered cheap in the ancient world little girls were considered much less valuable they were exposed as we could say in much higher numbers and again it was Christianity that outlawed that practice unfortunately we
[00:29:03] still find this going on in many places of the world but they are generally the places that did not come under the sway of the reformation and these sorts of Christian movements it's not just the ancient
[00:29:14] world this was a massive issue in China right up until the 19th century in fan-to-side of girls and again it was Christian missionaries that went there and started adopting these babies and starting
[00:29:24] orphanages for them and these sorts of things right up until the 19th century in many places in Asia with those were voluntarily burned on their husbands funeral powers when they died children were often sacrificed to the gods in many different places in Asia it was missionaries
[00:29:39] like William Kerry and these people who forced the government in many ways to outlaw these things to make them illegal and it's not long ago like we think that we've been so civilised for so long
[00:29:49] don't we this is it's not long ago child widows which of which there were many in the ancient world because of the high death rates but young girls again suffered the most they were usually
[00:29:58] forced into some sort of temple prostitution many Christian stories of people like Amy Carmackle and these missionaries who went there and just adopted these girls put them into homes and gave them lives we see these things on and on again I could give you many examples things like
[00:30:15] polygamy were abolished in many parts of the world due to the impact of Christianity the big one of course slavery was abolished in the ancient world because of the growing influence of Christianity and also in the modern world the modern abolitionist movement as we call it
[00:30:29] people like William Wilberforce it's not often taught but the reason that they wanted to abolish slavery was because of their Christianity William Wilberforce and the Clapham set to these people were all evangelicals and they labored tirelessly with their lives to stop
[00:30:43] some of these abominations that were happening at the time this is always how it's been go back to ancient Rome the blood sports in the Coliseum they used to often put Christians in
[00:30:52] and they used to have gladiatorial wars and many of the things that they used to do there with the lions and the animals and things like that that was outlawed when Christianity spread across the empire these things are outlawed health going compassion Christianity played an important
[00:31:07] role in the development and institution of what we call the hospital today most people run aware of this in fact the early church stated a law that wherever a church or cathedral
[00:31:16] was built in a new area they had to build a hospital too or some sort of care for care field with it it would often missionaries that were going to these unreached places and they would start health
[00:31:26] centers and villages where they would be able to get care and bring medicine to them this is why when you drive around countries you'll see many hospitals founded have Christian names they have names of people like St Thomas sent by thornamus this is why because they were
[00:31:42] started compassion really came from Christianity yes you had a few field hospitals in the ancient world and an ancient Greece but they were generally reserved either for soldiers or for the elites
[00:31:52] but the actual idea of going out onto the down and outs in a culture like the ancient Rome was and caring for the sick was again unheard of but this is what the early church started doing
[00:32:04] even up until as late as 1935 half the hospitals in China were run by Christian missionaries until they were asked to leave some of the world's largest medical organizations have Christian routes we call it sent John's ambulance service we have the red cross operating in 145 nations across
[00:32:21] this reason why these have things like sent John and the cross on them the modern nursing movement Florence Nightingale sent Thomas his hospital in London that started the modern nursing movement
[00:32:31] again this was born out of her Christian faith you come back into the 18th 19th century in England many of the social reforms that again gave us the world that we have today people like Lord
[00:32:43] Shaftry he was a tireless social reformer he reformed many of the institutions that we have today starting with what they used to call them as silence or mental health institutions which were really nothing more than prisons most people put in them which has been changed to a wall
[00:33:00] with very little clothes and they'd sleep on a bail of straw that was idea he was the one who actually said that these people needed to be treated with care and he started reforms to do that
[00:33:10] that was Lord Shaftry among other things he led the child labor laws again this idea that children shouldn't have to do this he was the one that stopped children working in the mills he stopped children going up the chimneys he gave factory reforms for better condition he's the
[00:33:25] one that pushed through what we call the mine act which bands children under ten from working in the minds again this was just a couple hundred years ago we don't realize when he started investigating
[00:33:34] this he found children as young as four in the minds many of them young girls and boys stripped for the waste half naked laboring in the minds you see this was the world really and until this
[00:33:46] great revival mainly started by Wesley and then the next generation swept the world this was because of Christ's teaching of compassion he also led housing reforms for the poor then we have things like prison reforms Christians like Elizabeth Fry this young lady that used to go into
[00:34:02] these women prisons that were basically again if you read the descriptions of them things that we couldn't really imagine in our part of the world today but this is what they were she would read
[00:34:11] the Bible to them she would teach them a trade and do things like that since you push Parliament to reform prisons and then we have orphanages that was a Christian invention an orphanage that was
[00:34:22] a unheard of concept in the ancient world many of these were people like binardos people like George Mula and going back further into history this is what monasteries often used to do all of these
[00:34:32] people were obeying the words of Jesus Christ all of these things come from the impact of that one child born in Bethlehem there's nothing in the world comparable no other person that can come close
[00:34:41] to that sort of impact and I'm really just getting started let's talk about education Christ gave a command to love God with all your mind and this led to a love of learning
[00:34:53] and a desire for literacy in the world much of what we call scholasticism or the scholastic world had its roots and origins in the Christian church ancient monasteries were learning centers and libraries of the world many of the universities of the world were started by Christians
[00:35:09] for Christian purposes to train people in the word of God Oxford Cambridge Harvard Yale Princeton at hundreds more universities were started by Christians for Christian purposes most missionaries when they would move to new areas the first thing they did was start a school
[00:35:25] so they could teach people to read the Bible public education we have this idea today don't me there everyone should be allowed some sort of education again that was an invention of the Protestant reformers and they had to push hard to get people to have public education
[00:35:40] now fortunately it's been taken over in a different way but originally it was from the church that you had this many nations in fact owe their entire literacy to missionaries teaching them to read
[00:35:50] the message of Jesus is said that island is a literate nation because of St Patrick it's also said that island is actually responsible for preserving much of the wisdom of the ancient world when Rome fell it was some of the Irish Christians that grabbed all
[00:36:04] the manuscripts and things like that and took them over to their monasteries and copied them and copied them and they survived and that learning existed public schools cathedral schools Sunday schools all of these things came from the church and still in many parts of the world
[00:36:17] today Christians provide the only education for many children go even further what we call the modern scientific revolution was birth from a Christian worldview because it believed that the her historical basis of modern science depended on the assumption that the universe
[00:36:35] was made by a rational creator and orderly universe makes perfect sense if there is an orderly creator and although science has been kind of hijacked by naturalism today that is not how it began most of the modern branches of science were founded by believers
[00:36:50] believers in creation actually you go through all of the major disciplines physics people like Newton Faraday Maxwell all of them believers chemistry boiled molten ramsi biology, Ray Leneis, Pastor geology woodwood, butchland, kuviae astronomy, kapanicus, Kepler, mathematics, Pascal and Libneis all of these people believers Christians doing their work
[00:37:13] for the glory of God because they believed that's what it commanded love God with all your minds we could move on to things like literature, music and art there was not a single person in human
[00:37:24] history who has had more poems, more songs, more pictures painted about him than this boy from Bethlehem no other person you go through all of ancient the classic literature particularly in the western world from Shakespeare to Milton to Bunyan to Dickens all of these stories that we know
[00:37:40] all of a twist pilgrim progress the Christmas carol they're infused with biblical principles even without knowing it sometimes they are telling they are influenced by the message of the one born in Bethlehem even modern people like CS Lewis that we have the chronicles of
[00:37:55] Narnia all of these stories talking the Lord of the Rings all of these things infused again with biblical principles talk about music music is powerful one of these things has been on
[00:38:06] the earth as long as people have been on the earth really and before it existed and haven't long before that the birth of musical notation we call it the modern scale today don't we you learn
[00:38:17] an instrument the first thing you'll get toward is really how to do scales isn't it this was invented by an Italian monk he came up with what we call do Amy far so late today you've ever heard that
[00:38:26] we see in the sound of music you probably heard that there's the ancestor to the modern scale what that basically is it is the first line of an old him a him that reads so that your servants
[00:38:36] may sing at the top of their voices the wonders of your deeds the first syllable of each of those words in Latin gives us do Raymefacelatidou and that developed into the modern scale there again
[00:38:49] this was developed in the monasteries in the church in these particular areas and then you could go through all of the great musicians J. S. Bach George Handel Beethoven Mendelssohn all of these people you read their manuscripts often you'll see them writing prayers at the side of their
[00:39:04] manuscripts saying that their work is done for the glory of God things like handles Messiah still in theaters today every Christmas time you'll find people singing about that it's basically just a work that reads the text of the King James Bible set to music talking about this one
[00:39:19] child that was born in Bethlehem 2000 years ago the hymns of Isaac Watts Charles Wesley John Newton still sang around the world today singing because of this one who was born in Bethlehem what about
[00:39:31] the great works of art you can travel to any museum pretty much in the world today and find works from the Bible great biblical scenes put up on the walls these themes permeate arts we could talk about architecture the globe is littered with buildings with cathedrals with churches
[00:39:47] from hearts in the jungle to beautiful Gothic masterpieces in the cities that were built for the purpose of worshiping this one born in Bethlehem on and on and on I could go that's just
[00:40:00] a glimpse of some of the impact that this one child has had so make no mistake about it when Luke writes while they were there the days were completed for her to give birth and she gave birth
[00:40:10] to her first born son she wrapped him in clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no room in the inn that statement there in those two verses is a monumental announcement it is an event
[00:40:21] that has really impacted our world more than we could ever think obviously combining it with the life and the death of Jesus too if Jesus had never been born in this world the worlds as you know it
[00:40:32] would really not exist all of those things that you take for granted over their origin to the one born in Bethlehem and there is no good explanation as to why the world should be so impacted
[00:40:45] from his coming if he wasn't the Messiah there's no good reason and it won't happen ever again no other contender could do that Caesar Augustus couldn't do that think about it he was the most
[00:40:56] powerful man in the world he claimed to be God he claimed to be the son of God he ruled a vast empire he had everything at his fingertips no one outside of a history department or church knows
[00:41:06] name today did I you might have heard of Augustus he probably didn't know his name is Octavian really no one knows his name today everyone knows the name of the boy born in Bethlehem the true son
[00:41:18] of God so make no mistake about it really for me the only explanation for that is because he is exactly who he claimed to be Jesus the son of God the divine savior of the world the word made flesh the
[00:41:29] prince of peace and the evidence of that impact of his life is still everywhere all over this world even as we live in what we could will maybe a darker world in some respects you still cannot avoid
[00:41:42] the confrontation with the boy born in Bethlehem amen you've been listening to theology and apologetics this podcast has supported by your generous donations to help us continue to bring you great content please visit our patreon site at patreon.com slash theology and apologetics if you've been blessed
[00:42:01] by this podcast please leave us a review and remember to connect with us on social media for more resources please go to theology and apologetics.com thanks for listening
