“The Nativity” by Romans
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What images come to mind when you think of a Nativity Scene? Stop and think for a moment of that scene. Think of the individual people who are represented there. We are familiar with each of them, but Scripture has much more to tell us of that scene, and the people that are there of which the average believer is aware. So let's take a good and close look at the Nativity Scene, and deepen our understanding of the arrival of the Messiah, and the people who participated in, or witnessed that miraculous arrival.
Only two of the four Gospels, namely Matthew and Luke, shed light on the details of the birth of Jesus Christ. The Gospel of John begins at the beginning, but his reference is to the same beginning that is recorded in Genesis 1:1. We are going to touch on Jesus before His human incarnation a little later, but for right now we are going to focus on Matthew's and Luke's Gospels, and some of the things that can easily be glossed over and missed in their Accounts of Jesus' birth.
Let's focus on the opening of the first book of the New Testament in general, and its author in particular: Matthew. Critics and doubters of the Bible like to claim that the New Testament was not written by anyone who was an original follower of Jesus, or even alive when Christ was alive. They try to assign a 2nd Century authorship to the New Testament in an effort to undermine the trustworthiness of what is written, as well as maximize the implication of both fabrication and embellishment.
In two hundred years, a whole lot can be added to accomplishments and personal details of any individual, especially if the main source has been verbally handed down. Under such circumstances, embellishments and exaggerations are likely to fly like fireworks on the 4th of July. But this is not the case, here. There are many remarkable things about the Gospel According to Matthew that I think are not given enough consideration by the average person.
Matthew is identified in Matthew 9:9 as a tax collector. While we in America have no great affection for the IRS or, in all honesty, its employees, the situation was radically different in Roman Empire-dominated Israel. Allow me this brief aside: I make a point to call it Israel because that is where all of these events take place. I hear so many preachers talk about Christ walking the dusty streets of Palestine but, from all that I have ever read, Jesus could not have, and did not do walk any streets in Palestine, dusty or otherwise! Hear me out...
When Jesus walked the earth, there was no country named “Palestine.” Consider Herod's official title: the Procurator of Judea. Similarly, Pontius Pilate's official title was the Governor of Judea. So where did the name Palestine come from? In 70 AD, the Jews revolted against the Roman Empire. They were mercilessly crushed. Jerusalem was invaded and destroyed, the Temple was destroyed.
Many Jews were dispersed after their loss to the Romans, but enough apparently remained to launch a second revolt around 125 A.D. After conquering that second revolt, the Romans said, in effect, “We are not only going to evict the rest of the Jews, we are going to call this land by the name of their worst enemies.” They did some research and found out that the Philistines were the Jews' worst enemies, so the Romans renamed the land after them.
Hence, we get “Palestine,” the Latinized version of Philistine. The name Palestine appears nowhere in the New Testament. It does, however, appear just once in the Old Testament: We find it in Joel 3:4: “Yea, and what have ye to do with me, O Tyre, and Zidon, and all the coasts of Palestine?” Here, however, it refers to the areas (Tyre and Zidon) in Syria where the Philistines were actually living. Jesus walked the dusty streets of Judea since the name “Palestine” would not be applied to that area until over 90 years later.
But this brings us to another point about the entirety of the New Testament which helps to better establish that it was written within decades of the events they describe for us. Nowhere in any Gospel Account, nowhere in the Book of Acts, nowhere in any epistle, and not even in the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible, is there any reference to Jerusalem having been destroyed.
It is absolutely impossible, and beyond anyone's rational imagination, that Jerusalem could have been reduced to an smoldering ashtray, the Jewish population deported, and the Temple destroyed by Roman Legions, while none of the seven authors of the New Testament referred to such a cataclysmic event, with such monumental importance to the Jewish people, as having happened.
But none of them do in a historic context. Matthew, Mark and Luke each discuss the destruction of Jerusalem in Jesus' Olivet Prophecy regarding the signs of His return. But Jerusalem and the Temple are both untouched and in full operation when the New Testament was written, which tells me with in no uncertain terms, that the entirety of the New Testament was written prior to 70 AD.
But, as I was saying before I took these several detours, Matthew was a tax collector. And the Jewish people hated tax collectors for two reasons: First, they sat in receipt of custom for the Roman Empire. It wasn't bad enough that Israel was a conquered and occupied land, its conquerors also demanded the payment of tribute to them. And sitting at the tax collection booths were fellow Jews collecting the money. And if that wasn't bad enough, the Romans allowed the tax collectors to add extra to what they collected for themselves, above and beyond what the Romans required.
Matthew, then, was a one such tax collector, or publican. His very presence, as one of the original disciples, and then as one of the original apostles, and then as one of the original four authors of the Gospels is a clear signal to everyone who knew about Matthew's background that this Messiah was a Messiah of forgiveness, a Messiah of inclusion, a Messiah who was not a respecter of persons or position, nor did He exclude anyone because of their current or former position, or sinful behavior or ungodly lifestyle. In John 8:11, He told the woman taken in adultery, “Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more”
This was a Messiah Who was building a Church in which there was “neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, bond nor free” as the Apostle Paul described it in Galatians 3:28. Matthew closes his Gospel Account with Jesus' commissioning His Church with the words, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations...”
But He was more specific to His disciples in Acts 1:8, to make sure they excluded no one in their preaching: “... ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria {the land of the Samaritans}, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.”
Jesus was also a Messiah who was a friend of sinners. In His first public sermon in the synagogue in Nazareth, found in Luke 4:18 He quoted the prophecy found in Isaiah 61:1 and applied it to Himself and His ministry: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.”
Of the original prophecy found in Isaiah, Matthew Henry has the following to say: “The prophets had the Holy Spirit of God at times, teaching them what to say, and causing them to say it; but Christ had the Spirit always, without measure, to qualify him, as man, for the work to which he was appointed. The poor are commonly best disposed to receive the gospel, James 2:5; and it is only likely to profit us when received with meekness. To such as are poor in spirit, Christ preached good tidings when he said, Blessed are the meek...
Christ was to be a Comforter, and so he is; he is sent to comfort all who mourn, and who seek to him, and not to the world, for comfort. He will do all this for his people, that they may abound in the fruits of righteousness, as the branches of God's planting. Neither the mercy of God, the atonement of Christ, nor the gospel of grace, profit the self-sufficient and proud. They must be humbled, and led to know their own character and wants, by the Holy Spirit, that they may see and feel their need of the sinner's Friend and Saviour. His doctrine contains glad tidings indeed to those who are humbled before God.”
But I'd also like to look more closely at one specific reference Jesus made to preaching “deliverance to the captives.” That deliverance was not then, and is not now limited to captivity behind physical bars. All of us have been, and may yet be imprisoned in one fashion or another. Many are imprisoned behind the bars of various prejudices: racial, political, national, cultural, and even denominational.
There is also sexism, ageism, elitism, and class warfare. Man is quite proficient in finding excuses to segregate, ostracize and persecute a fellow human being for whom Christ shed His blood. In every situation of both literal and figurative captivity, Jesus delivers both the jailor and the inmate from every manifestation of captivity. In Colossians 1:13, Paul writes that God, “... hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son.”
Far and above the mere presence of a publican among the originals of Jesus' followers, the very first thing we read in Matthew's Gospel Account is Jesus' genealogy. Taking a step away from both tradition and the male-dominated culture of his day which devalued women, Matthew includes four women in the lineage of Christ: And each of the four women he included were also those whose names were linked to scandal in some way, yet their names appear in spite of their origins and their scandalous histories.
There was Tamar, the patriarch Judah's widowed daughter-in-law who dressed as a prostitute and was impregnated by Judah; there was Rachab, a Canaanite prostitute who helped hide the spies who came as an advance scouting team before the Israelites invaded Canaan; there was the non-Israelite Ruth. She was a Moabite who, after her husband died, declared her allegiance not only to her mother-in-law Naomi, but also to Naomi's people and her God;
And then there was Uriah's wife Bathsheba with whom King David committed adultery. These are the four women from Matthew's genealogy. But the New Testament includes a fifth woman in Jesus' lineage whose reputation was scandalous, not for sin, but for obedience that was not recognized by the gossips who knew her. Any guesses as to who that woman might be?
If you guessed Jesus' mother Mary as woman #5, you would be correct. Matthew's genealogy of Jesus is through Joseph, so Mary is not included in his genealogy. She does appear in Luke's genealogy. As with the four women Matthew includes in Christ's lineage, Mary is a woman whose character came under close public scrutiny and widespread disapproval. As believers we routinely overlook the scandal that surrounded her because we know that her pregnancy was the result of her being overshadowed by the Holy Spirit.
But all her neighbors and the community knew was that Mary was found to be pregnant before her wedding day. In that culture, such a thing was an abomination. I don't think we have sufficiently considered the inescapable reproach, the public ostracism and the grave condemnation that Mary knowingly and willingly accepted when she responded as she did to the angel who told her that she was chosen to give birth to the Messiah.
We read in Luke 1:38: “And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.” Her response to the angel was one that reflected a level of maturity that was far beyond her years. Most scholars say she was a woman in her middle teens, but her response to God was a beautiful and an inspiring picture of humility and selfless obedience.
Her fiance` Joseph was, in his own right, also a godly man. He discovered that his bride-to-be was pregnant. He knew that was not his child, yet he did not respond to this information with what some might say was justifiable vindictiveness at having been betrayed, or even any desire to publicly condemn her, himself. Instead, with respect and compassion, he intended to put her away privately.
In a dream, , however, an angel encouraged Joseph to go through with their planned marriage, explaining to Joseph that Mary had not been unfaithful to him. She was a virgin, as another prophecy indicated that the Messiah's mother would be. The prophecy is found in Isaiah 7:14: “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.”
Mary went to live with her cousin Elizabeth for three months, but her scandalous pregnancy and ruined reputation was the hot gossip of the day. We can know that because Jesus was confronted with it during His ministry over three decades later! During one of the many altercations Jesus had with the Pharisees and His Jewish opponents, the scandal of His being born to a woman out of wedlock was thrown in Jesus' face.
Notice: Jesus is speaking first, here, in John 8:41: “Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God.” Among the many accusations Jesus endured, illegitimacy was one of them. But, besides boldly listing women with questionable reputations, Matthew also provided for us a genealogy that included both Abraham and David, to solidify Jesus' rightful place as both Heir of the Promises of God, and ascendancy to the Throne of David.
One prophecy that attests to Jesus' being the Heir having a rightful place as the ruling Son of David is one that is most familiar in a partially quoted form. It is found in Isaiah 9:6: “For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder...” Jesus acknowledged His kingship to Pilate when He said “My kingdom is not of this world,” in John 18:36. Who, but a King, refers to any kingdom as “My Kingdom”?
The wise men who came to King Herod were aware of the kingly aspect of the Messiah. When they inquired of Herod regarding the Messiah's birthplace, they asked in Matthew 2:2, “Where is he that is born King of the Jews?” Have you ever given thought to how the wise men were answered? They didn't go to the Social Page of that morning's newspapers. They went to written prophecies that foretold, 700 years in advance, where the Messiah was to be born. The Prophet was the Prophet Micah.
The scrolls that were researched were of writings that were over three times older than our Constitution is to us today! And they were consulted to determine where a particular baby was going to be born! The wise men had traveled thousands of miles fully expecting to find one newborn. And their impossible quest was successful because a 700 year old prophecy directed them to the city where He was to be born! Can such a thing be said of any other human being, or for whatever religious beliefs are written by believers in any other so-called god?
Allow me one more aside as we look at the arrival of the Wise Men: In the average Nativity Scene, they are usually represented as being present at the birth of Christ. Scripture indicates a much later appearance. Remember, Jesus was born in a stable setting; His first crib was a manger, a feeding trough. The angel gave the shepherds a distinct sign to find the Messiah in Luke 2:12: “And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.”
But it was not the same for the Wise Men. We read of them in Matthew 2:11: “And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.” The Wise Men did not find a babe in a manger, they saw Him as a young child in a house. This is why Herod had his soldiers target young boys as old as two years old.
But there is yet more here that we can learn from this story: The prophecy that answered the Wise Mens' inquiry was recorded in Micah 5:2: Matthew tells us what Herod did to answer the wise mens' unsettling question: “And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born.” Herod did not merely inquire of the scribes where Christ was to be born.
Herod had bought and paid for his position as “King of the Jews” from the Roman rulers. The Wise Men inquiring after a rival King of the Jews was a direct threat to his position. This explains why he “demanded” an answer from them. But he had to feign calmness to not alert the Wise Men to the threat that Christ posed to him.
The scribes found the prophecy of where the Christ was to be born, and they responded in Matthew 2:5: “In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet, And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.”
But Matthew shared only the first portion of the prophecy with us. If you limit your familiarity with Jesus being born in Bethlehem to Matthew's quotation, you miss a critically important characteristic of the Messiah's pre-human identity. The rest of the verse reads: “... whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.” Far from the Deity of Jesus being a 2nd Century embellishment, 700 years before Christ was born, the Prophet Micah identified the Messiah as having a past history that had been “from of old, from everlasting.”
That “babe in a manger” had an Eternal pre-existence! Who besides God can be described as having such an existence before they were even born? In addition, in the prophecy (in Isaiah 7:14) that foretells of a virgin who would conceive, the Christ Child was to be named “Immanuel,” meaning “God with us.” This prophecy can only have been fulfilled by God, Himself.
As John wrote in the opening of his Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Paul adds his own corroboration in 1 Timothy 3:16, and in no uncertain terms, “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh...”
Here is something else to consider: If a prophet in Israel made the statement, “Thus saith the Lord,” Who would the prophet be quoting? Who was the only One Who anyone in Israel would understanding the Lord to be? The Lord was God Almighty. In Greek, the word translated “Lord” is the word, “kurios.” In the wilderness, Jesus countered Satan's temptation with the words, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God (Gk. kurios), and him only shalt thou serve” (Matthew 4:10).
In Mark 12:28, Jesus was asked, “Which is the first commandment of all?” Jesus answered in verse 29, “The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord,” the word for Lord is the Greek word “kurios.” Now let's go to the night Jesus was born. Beginning in Luke 2:8, we read: “And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid...
And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord” (kurios). The angels' use of the word “kurios” clearly identified, beyond any shadow of a doubt, Who that babe in the manger was... it was “Christ the Lord.”
Many names in Israel had “God” as a part of the name with the suffix “el:” Samuel, Daniel, Gabriel, Othniel. But where the Name Emmanuel is concerned, which means “God With Us,” it was more than a Name. It was an expression of a literal manifestation, an actual incarnation of God taking on human flesh and blood. John identified the Word as being God. In verse 14 of the first chapter of his Gospel, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.”
We know why the Word became flesh. When He came to John the Baptist in the wilderness, John announced Him with the words in John 1:29, “Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.” He came to die for our sins. But He also came, as we read earlier, to “dwell among us.”
We read Paul's words in Philippians 2:6-8: “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” But as important as it was for Jesus being sacrificed for us, He had so many other things to accomplish.
Before being made flesh, the Word was omnipresent throughout the Universe He created. But as Jesus Christ, the human being, and having also set aside His power and Glory, it was necessary for Him to function as an itinerant preacher, He could now only visit various towns, one at a time, at the speed of walking, or on the back of the fastest borrowed donkey. As the Creator God, He had spoken and a Universe full of billions of galaxies appeared (Genesis 1:1).
As the Creator, He had named all the stars (Psalm 147:4), but now as a human being, at sunset He could watch those same stars become visible against the inky black of the night sky bled to the horizon. As He looked heavenward, I imagine Him reflecting on their stellar majesty, but now from an earthbound perspective, He was limited to viewing them with the same limited scope that His fellow-humans saw them.
We read in 1 Timothy 2:5-6, “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.” Having been God in the flesh, only Jesus could have qualified to be the Mediator between God and men. And as that Mediator, only Jesus could speak to the Father on behalf of those He created, and for whom He died.
He experienced the ongoing warfare between our spirits and our flesh. He said in Mark 14:38: “Watch ye and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. The spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak.” Jesus was God... feeling what we feel, and experiencing, firsthand, what we go through in the flesh.
We read in Hebrews 4:15, “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” He lived and experienced being a human into adulthood so that He could be a far more effectual High Priest (Hebrews 4:15) and Advocate with the Father (1 John 2:1).
Besides all of the above, as that itinerant preacher, Jesus had many things to impart to us. The wise men gave gifts to Jesus: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. These were expensive gifts... gifts worthy of a king. But very soon after their visit, Jesus' family was warned to escape into Egypt as Herod sought to kill Him. Those gifts took on new meaning and purpose as they enabled the family to travel to a foreign country, and secure lodging and food until it was safe for them to return to Israel.
The scribes had told Herod that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. I wonder if the scribes read, or Herod listened to the prophecy long enough to hear that the Messiah had an “everlasting” pre-Existence. I wonder if Herod would have realized the utter futility in attempting to defy the Will of God, or somehow thwart a 700 year old prophecy that accurately foretold the Messiah's birthplace.
I have to wonder also, since the gossips had picked up on and spread the word that Mary was pregnant before she married Joseph, if Jesus' accusers also did the simple math, and connected the timing of the birth of Mary's son with the arrival of the wise men arriving in Jerusalem as they searched for the “King of the Jews” Who had just been born.
Think of the priests and scribes whom Herod summoned, and who had been waiting all their lives to see if the Messiah would be born in their own lifetimes. Should they not have been electrified at the arrival of the Wise Men and their stated mission? Would they not have logically followed up, and listened for any and all miraculous activities being performed anywhere in Judea as time went on?
He had a teaching and healing ministry the lasted over three years. He delivered the Sermon on the Mount, gave us the Lord's Prayer, spoke the many Parables, performed the many healings of the blind, the lame, the deaf and the leprous. There were also the raisings, plural, of the dead back to life: Jairus' daughter, the widow's son and Lazarus.
He left so many examples for us to follow, expressions of mercy, and compassion, and generosity and forgiveness. He condemned and distanced Himself from the cultural prejudices by having shepherds who were social outcasts be the first to hear that the Messiah had come. Jesus chose a hated tax collector to be a disciple.
He routinely traveled through Samaria, an area which Jews routinely went miles out of their way to avoid. He preached to a Samaritan woman at the well, she calls her others to hear Him and He stayed and preached to them for two more days, He made a despised Samaritan to be the hero of a Parable, and He selected women, second class citizens in that culture whose testimony was disallowed in court, to be the first witnesses to His Resurrection.
And after His resurrection He was able to establish and empower His Church, to go, as He had commanded them, into all the world, spread His Gospel, preach His Word, heal the sick, raise the dead, and write down the words that made it possible for us also to come to the knowledge of the Truth.
Very recently, I learned something new about the scene of Jesus' birth. I always thought it was significant that the Creator God of the Universe would have come to the earth, and placed in a manger, a feeding trough, But I now learned that when the shepherds of Bethlehem, who provided sacrificial lambs for sacrifices at the Temple, identified a lamb without spot or blemish, they would wrap it in swaddling clothes to protect its body, and place it, away from the flock, in a manger, to further identify it as a lamb worthy to be sacrificed.
Now I think back on the angel's words to them, how they sign to them would be a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. What they saw when they arrived at the original Nativity Scene, was view through eyes that only shepherds could fully appreciate, like no one else in Israel. I thought was a fantastic thing! And I wonder how it can be in any way possible that I never heard this before!
Yes, the birth of Christ is celebrated at this time of year. But there is much we can still learn from the details of that birth with which we thought we were so familiar. The next time you see a Nativity Scene displayed in a Church Yard, or on a Christmas Card, look at each individual of the Scene: Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, the Wise Men, the lambs who would one day, themselves, serve as sacrifices for sin, and even the manger and swaddling clothes which identified the lamb as a worthy sacrifice. .
As you re-think the events that surrounded the birth of Christ, I hope you can think of each participant with a deeper and fuller understanding than you did yesterday. I have found that researching and writing this for you has been greatly inspiring and edifying to me. I sincerely hope that it also had the same impact on you.
This concludes this Evening's Discussion, “The Nativity.”
This Discussion was originally presented “live” on December 8th, 2021.
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