A baby changes everything

LifePointe Church

The news on everyone’s mind 210 years ago was Napoleon and the French army sweeping across Europe. It was 1809, and the fall of the mighty Austrian Empire was imminent.

Nobody seemed to care about the babies being born that year. But they should have taken notice as William Gladstone in Liverpool, Alfred Lord Tennyson in Lincolnshire, Oliver Wendell Holmes in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Edgar Allen Poe in Boston, as well as Charles Darwin in England were born that year.

Another baby born was born that year in a rugged log cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky. The cabin was owned by an illiterate wandering laborer named Lincoln. His wife named their newborn son Abraham.

Few remember Napoleon’s Austrian campaigns of 1809. It seemed so important at the time, but it was not nearly as important as the birth of Abraham, Mrs. Lincoln’s little baby boy.

Now let’s go back 1,800 years before Abraham Lincoln. As one author said: “Who could have cared about the birth of a baby, while the world was watching Rome in all her splendor? Bounded on the west by the Atlantic…on the east by the Euphrates…on the north by the Rhine and Danube…on the south by the Sahara Desert, the Roman Empire was as vast as it was vicious.

“Political intrigue, racial tension, increased immorality and enormous military might occupied everyone’s attention and conversation. Palestine existed under the crush of Rome’s heavy boot. All eyes were on Augustus, the cynical caesar who demanded a census so as to determine a measurement to enlarge taxes.

“At that time who was interested in a couple making an 80-mile trip south from Nazareth? What could possibly be more important than caesar’s decisions in Rome? Who cared about a Jewish baby born in Bethlehem?

“Without realizing it, mighty Caesar Augustus was only an errand boy for the fulfillment of Micah’s prediction…a pawn in the hand of Jehovah…a piece of lint on the pages of prophecy. While Rome was busy making history, God arrived.

“He pitched His fleshly tent in silence on straw…in a stable…under a star. The world didn’t even notice. Reeling from the wake of Alexander the Great…Herod the Great…Augustus the Great, the world overlooked Mary’s little Lamb…Jesus…God in human flesh.”

In the Rospigliosi Palace in Rome is Guido Reni’s famous fresco, “The Aurora,” a work unequaled in that period for nobility of line and poetry and color. It is painted on a lofty ceiling. As visitors stand on the pavement and look up at it, their necks stiffen, their heads grow dizzy and the figures become hazy and indistinct. And so, the owner of the palace has placed a large mirror on the floor. In it the picture is reflected, and visitors can sit down before it and study the wonderful work in comfort.

Jesus Christ does precisely that for everyone when they try to get some notion of God. He is the mirror of deity. In Hebrews 1:3, Jesus is called the “the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of his person.” He interprets God to dull hearts. In Him, God becomes visible and intelligible.

People cannot by any amount of searching find out God. The more they try, the more they are bewildered. Then Jesus Christ appears. He is God stooping down to a human level, and he enables their feeble thoughts to get some real hold on God himself.