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In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. (Luke 2:1-4)

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Jesus would be born the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.\xa0 The Royal King who would sit on the throne of David.\xa0 But first he and his family would be subjects, and not of the Kingdom of God.

The Romans taxed subject peoples.\xa0 And the way of determining that tax was through a census.\xa0 That means of course that for non-Roman citizens\u2014mere subjects who would be taxed by their overlords\u2014a census was a fairly unwelcome thing that led to a lot of political tension and unrest, much like the tax itself.\xa0 It also led to a lot of upheaval as people had to organize themselves according to the dictates of the bureaucracy that intended to count them.

In Joseph and Mary\u2019s case, that meant a move to Bethlehem.\xa0 It didn\u2019t matter that Mary was pregnant or about to give birth.\xa0 It didn\u2019t matter whether there was room for them in Bethlehem or not.\xa0 Nothing personal or humane mattered at all.\xa0 They were just marginal, inanimate pawns being moved around the chess board by the powerful whims of an emperor leagues away.\xa0

And yet, despite that emperor and his whims, God was at work anyway.\xa0 Even though this subjugation of the Jews by the Romans was unfair and the tax and the means used to assess it were unjust\u2014even though it was impersonal and inhumane\u2014even still, God used it for his purposes.\xa0 Bent it toward his will.

Everyone knew the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem of the house and line of David.\xa0 So how did a young girl in Nazareth get the nod to become the mother of the Saviour, and that even before she was technically married to a descendant of David?\xa0 Well, through the movements of kings and emperors, through the work of righteous men like Joseph and angel messengers, God worked out his plan.

His boy would be born in Bethlehem, sure enough.\xa0 Joseph had to go there.\xa0 The emperor had said.\xa0 He would bring Mary with him and he would adopt her child, making Jesus, born in the town of David, an adopted son of the house and line of David as well.\xa0 Human impossibilities and corrupt systems bent all together to the will of God who in Jesus would redeem them both.\xa0

Today as we watch our lives again be shaped and restricted by forces outside of our control\u2014a viral force of nature and a powerful government\u2014may you remember that God can and does still work through such things.\xa0 Though forces may be outside of our control, they are never outside of his.\xa0

Take heart and hope: for our King of Kings, Jesus of Nazareth was born, not in Nazareth, but in Bethlehem of David.\xa0 A testament to God\u2019s Sovereign ability to knit his work his will through even the strongest forces of our world.

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