Now there were several reasons why this message was a message of joy to the shepherds and why, in exactly the same way, it must be a message of joy to us. And the first is that it had to do with the Savior. The ancient world wasn’t unaware of the births of saviors or even of certain so-called miraculous signs that were supposed to accompany their birth. In the ancient world, whenever a Roman emperor was born, or sometimes when an emperor succeeded to the throne after another one had been laid aside, there were supposed supernatural events that went with it. Sometimes it had to do with priestly omens, or stars falling from the sky, or a comet or some such thing. When Alexander the Great was born, it was said that he was conceived by the god, Zeus, who appeared in the form of a dragon to his mother, Olympias. Those things were well known to the ancient world. But those things always had to do with human saviors. There were people who appeared and who, in one way or another, did something that was significant. They would, for example, achieve a great military victory and bring a measure of peace in their day. Or they would extend the prosperity of their nation by their military conquests—significant, yes, but always on the human level.
Here, in the birth of Jesus, we have One who was not merely a human savior, not merely one who brings peace in human terms, but a divine Savior who, because He is divine, is able to bring the peace that all of us desire and our hearts need. It’s a funny thing in our day how we’ve gone after different techniques to provide the salvation that we think we need. In very recent times, I suppose most people have focused on political programs as the solution to this world’s problems. We’ve thought that the way to solve the ills that confront us as a people or a nation is by electing to office people who can bring about a change and who can pass legislation which will somehow make everything alright.
So if one politician fails to do what we think should be done, well, the solution to that is to elect another one—a new president who will bring a new program, or a new congressman or senator who will pass the kind of governmental legislation that will somehow make the problems of our cities, or the problems of our economy, or the problems of the poor go away.
The interesting thing about that is that there is a large measure of disillusionment with politics today and, above all, among the politicians themselves. Sometime ago, I was in Washington, D.C. And a man who works in the Senate, who knows the senators on an intimate basis, was saying to me, “You know, there is a great deal of disillusionment with legislation as a solution today in the United States Senate.” He said, “One senator said to me just this last week, ‘You know, as we pass these laws, not only does it not solve the problems, our legislation actually seems to make the problems worse.’”
So we’ve had a turning away from that in recent times. A generation or so before, people were looking to science and technology to be the savior. And it’s true that science has brought a certain measure of prosperity, raised the standard of living for some people, at least in some nations of the world. But it’s wrong to look to science as a savior. It’s significant, I think, that when people in America are polled today—that is, people in the country that have been most blessed by scientific advance—the number one fear of people in our country in our time is that technology is some day going to blow us all off the face of the planet. People are afraid of the very thing that is supposed to provide blessing.
The most recent of these fascinations is the Human Potential Movement. People in past years have looked outward to see a solution in politics, on the one hand, or science, on the other. They’re disillusioned with that. So they’ve begun to look inward. They’ve said, “Well, the solution to our problems must be found somehow by rediscovering ourselves.” So we have Mind Dynamics, and EST, and Life Spring. And we have books, and all those organizations. We have the whole health movement, video tapes, and audio tapes, and seminars, and all the things that are supposed to help us find ourselves, and be healthy, and well-adjusted, and peaceful, and saved.
And yet, there’s a tremendous amount of disillusionment even there. The reason, of course, is that our problems can’t be solved, humanly speaking. Our problem is sin. Sin is something that permeates everything that we are and everything that we do. And so when we try to solve things humanly, what we do inevitably is bring our problem with us. You see, the problem with the “me-first” philosophy is that “me” is the problem. We remember the wise words of that great comic strip sage, Pogo, who said on one occasion, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”