A Couple’s First Christmas - Part A

Truth of the matter is, we don't exactly know when Jesus was born. And I mean, not only do we not exactly know a time of day, we don't know exactly what day, we don't even know exactly what year he was born. So no, he was born in the year zero. No, actually, by our calendar, he was born around four to six BC.

But that's only a guess. The Bible doesn't exactly tell us because it doesn't think it's that important that we discover when. Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Pastor Skip launches into his series, Into the Night, beginning with a message about one couple's very special first Christmas. Hi, this is Pastor Skip Heitzig and here we are ending 2023.

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That is connectwithskip.com or call 1-800-922-1888. Okay, now we're going to be in Luke two as we join Skip for today's teaching. We're beginning a series that will take us through to Christmas Eve and even Christmas Day that is based on a theme that I'm going to explain to you in just a minute. I want to begin, though, with a fable, a story you may have heard. It's a classic fable about an Arab that was sleeping in his tent on a cold night. And outside the tent was his camel. And in the middle of the night, the camel spoke to the Arab. Of course, it's a fable, so in fables, camels talk. And the camel said, you know, it's really, really cold out here.

Do you think I could at least stick my head inside the tent just to get a little warm? And the Arab, being very generous, said, why, by all means, please stick your head in. So the camel did. Man went back to sleep. A little while later, camel woke him up again and said, I'd hate to bug you again, but it really is desperately cold outside. I would just wonder, can I put my neck and front legs inside?

That would really help me out a lot. The Arab said, sure, go ahead, and I'll scoot over, and you come on in a little bit. So he did.

And then you can see where this is going. Eventually, the camel just said, you know, it is just so cold. Could I just come all the way inside the tent? Well, the camel came inside the tent. Clearly, there was not enough room for both the camel and the Arab who had been sleeping in there. So finally, the camel said, look, there's not room for both of us here.

It would be best if you would stand outside so there's room for me. Now, that little fable illustrates what has happened with Christmas. Jesus has been forced outside his tent, while the secular world has dominated that tent. We come to Bethlehem to an inn, but we're turned out into the night to give birth to Jesus. Now, just a little bit of background before we even jump in, and that is we typically celebrate Christmas as a nighttime event.

It's part of Christian tradition. We believe that Jesus was born at night, and that is reflected in so many of our songs that we sing during this time of Christmas. Or the song Silent Night, Holy Night, All is Calm, All is Bright. Or the song It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, That Glorious Song of Old. Even the song Said the Night Wind to the Little Lamb, Do You Hear What I Hear?

And we could go on and on. That is part of the language of so many of our Christmas songs. The truth is we're not told the exact timing of Jesus' birth, what time of day he was born at. We're pretty sure it was at night, and the reason I say we're pretty sure is we only have one clue. And the clue is in Luke chapter 2 in verse 8 where it says, There were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.

That's the clue. So we think ostensibly that Jesus' birth was concurrent to the shepherds being in the fields at night. That must mean that Jesus was born at that time.

That's the only clue. We're going to devote the rest of this month to messages about the theme of Christmas, and here's why. The birth of Jesus Christ was the most incredible birth of all times. In one sense, it was a normal birth. It was a birth like any and every other child.

On the other hand, the child that was born was unlike any and every other child. Jesus' birth is what divides time. We talk about the year 2022 A.D. and everything before that B.C., B.C., before Christ, A.D., Anno Domini, in the year of our Lord. His birth divided our calendar.

So we mark time by his entrance into this world. So we're going to follow a theme, and the theme is into the night. Today we're looking at Joseph and Mary and Jesus' birth, and he was turned into the night.

They were turned into the night by the innkeeper. Next week we're going to look at the shepherds who are out in the field at night. They go into the night to Bethlehem to find this scene as the angel prescribed it, described it, and then they go back into the night to tell everybody else.

The third week we're going to look at the magi who followed the night star from Persia all the way to Jerusalem and eventually to Bethlehem. And that'll take us all the way to Christmas Eve where the culmination of it will be John 1 where it says of Jesus, In him was life, and the life was the light of men, and the light shined in the darkness, and the darkness could not comprehend it. Night time is also not only a physical reality. It is a spiritual metaphor, and we find that a lot in Scripture, right? The difference between light and darkness. Jesus said, I am the light of the world, and he infers that people are in darkness. It's a metaphor for wickedness. It's a metaphor for ignorance, especially spiritual ignorance. It's a metaphor for sin. In the Bible, demons are called rulers of the darkness of this world.

Paul said, you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Listen, the world was and still is very dark. It is dark morally. It is dark politically. It is dark institutionally. It is dark educationally. It is dark personally. It is dark privately.

It is dark professionally, and in any other way, it is a dark world. I remember being in school, and we studied in history what my professor called the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages, you've heard of those. The Dark Ages, the medieval period in European history before the Renaissance, AD 500 to AD 1000 or 1200. When people were in ignorance, in darkness, the Dark Ages, truth is, every age of mankind has been the Dark Ages. We're in the Dark Ages, and the age is getting darker and darker by the minute. Our greatest need then is always and ever to have the light of the world come in and dispel our darkness.

As Jesus said, he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but have the light of life. Now today, we're going through the classic Christmas passage, Luke chapter 2. In fact, Luke is the only one who writes about the event of the birth of Jesus Christ, so let's look at the text. Luke chapter 2, beginning in verse 1, and it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This census first took place while Carinius was governing Syria, so all went to be registered, everyone to his own city.

Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, the city or the house of bread, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed wife who was with child. So it was that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered, and she brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. What I'd like to do in this beginning message is show you four aspects of this very first Christmas celebration. First, let's consider the season of Christmas. You'll notice in verse 1 that it begins by saying, and it came to pass, or it happened, it came about, in those days.

In what days? Well, most of us think in the wintertime days, because that's when we celebrate Christmas, December 25th, it is just after the beginning of winter. Now, why do we think it's winter? Well, it's because it's always been celebrated that way. And by the way, the song even says, in the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone.

There it is. It's in the song. Or we're going to sing the song, probably, or you'll hear it at least, walking in a winter wonderland. Or I'm dreaming of a white Christmas.

All of that language is wintertime language. Now, you're going to hear me in this series, I refer to Christmas songs and compare them with Scripture and poke a little fun at some of these Christmas carols. I love Christmas songs.

I really do. But you need to know, if you don't already, that so much of our celebration of Christmas has been westernized and commercialized, so that some of the stuff we do is really more cultural than it is scriptural. And what that means is all of our customs, all of our religious traditions that are not prescribed in Scripture are all subject to review. Would you agree with that?

We all want to take the stuff we've done, all the traditions, and compare them with the Scripture, and they are all subject to review. Truth of the matter is, we don't exactly know when Jesus was born. And I mean, not only do we not exactly know what time of day, we don't know exactly what day, we don't even know exactly what year he was born. We say, no, he was born in the year zero. No, actually, by our calendar, he was born around four to six B.C. But that's only a guess. The Bible doesn't exactly tell us, because it doesn't think it's that important that we discover when. I'll give you a clue, though.

We do have clues. It happens to be the same verse that gives us the clue that it was at night. And it says in verse 8 that the shepherds were out in their fields with their flocks at night. So they're camping out with their animals.

Now, do you think that was December 25th? I mean, did you check the temperature lately, early in the morning? Bethlehem's a little warmer than here, but it can snow in Bethlehem in the wintertime.

It can get pretty cold. I know that sheep have nice jackets on. They have a lot of wool, right? They've got the fleece to keep them warm. But shepherds do not. And they weren't wearing North Face jackets from REI.

They just had what they had in terms of a couple articles of clothing. But we do know that shepherds would go outside into the fields with their sheep from the months of March through November, after which time they would bring their flocks back to town and put them in a sheepfold during the winter months. Not only that, but in verse 8, the verse that is providing the clue for us, it says, In the same country shepherds were living out in the fields.

And I found this I wanted to share with you from one source. The word used here for field denotes a specific type of cultivated land, not just land in general. The fields in Israel are only found in a narrow mountainous strip in the center of the country around Jerusalem and Bethlehem. These fields were where farmers raised barley, wheat, and other grains. The wheat was typically harvested in late June and July. After the wheat had been completely harvested, there was a two-week period where the poor people could come in and glean the fields.

If you know your Bibles, you know Leviticus chapter 19 and chapter 23 talk about this. The book of Ruth takes place in that setting. He continues, Only after the last day allowed for gleaning would the shepherds be allowed into the fields with their sheep to eat the stubble and whatever else remained. The time of year that they would have been allowed into the fields would have been approximately the first to the middle of August.

They would have stayed in the fields eating and fertilizing until late September or mid-October, departing in time for the owners to prepare their fields for the next year's crop. Now that just messes with our whole notion of Christmas, right? August, that's like the exact opposite time of the year that we celebrate it. So where did the date December 25th come from? Well, you should know that the very first date put forth to celebrate the birth of Christ in history was by Clement of Alexandria.

Clement of Alexandria, that's around 190 AD, that's pretty early. The date he proposed was May the 20th. Others came along and tweaked it a little bit and said it was April 18th. Somebody else came along and said it was April 19th. And then even later on somebody said March 28th.

So take your pick. You can do March, you can do April, you can do May. What about December? Well, years later, third century, end of the third century, almost 300 AD, a man by the name of Hippolytus of Rome, who was a theologian who lived in Rome.

That's very important. Rome is a very important marker for us. Hippolytus is the first guy in history to say December 25th is the day we're going to celebrate Jesus' birth, and here's why. How this happened we don't know, but for some reason he was able to figure that Jesus, or that Mary became impregnated with Jesus on exactly March the 25th. And he counted nine months to the date, which is December 25th.

Now, that sounds made up to me, but there's a little bit of background to that. He lived in Rome. At the time, there were some very popular celebrations in Rome that the pagans used to get involved in. Two of them, one called Saturnalia, the other called Brumalia. Both of them celebrated the solstice, the winter solstice, the shortest day, and then the days beginning to lengthen. So one feast called Saturnalia was celebrated from December the 17th to the 24th. That is the festival of the unconquered sun.

That was followed by Brumalia, December the 25th. That is the feast of the invincible sun because the days are getting longer and longer and longer. But get this, you know how the Romans celebrated those two feasts?

Getting drunk and giving gifts. And there was mistletoe involved and a number of other things that have become tradition. So probably Hippolytus of Rome and some of the other theologians thought, let's put forth December 25th and use this not to endorse paganism per se, but to offer an alternative holiday and say, no, we're not going to celebrate your feast of the invincible sun, S-U-N. We believe in the invincible S-O-N, Son of God, who has come into this world to turn people from darkness. That's probably their thinking.

Now, maybe they thought that the whole world would say, yeah, and catch on and didn't quite happen the way they anticipated. But that's the season of Christmas. Let's now look at the occasion of Christmas. It says it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus.

That's the occasion. A decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered, this census first took place while Carinius was governing Syria. So all went to be registered, everyone to his own city. There were two reasons why in ancient times a census would be taken. Number one was for military purposes. If you want to find out how many fighting men you have for a standing army, you take a census for that. Second reason, and probably this is the reason for taxation purposes, to find out how many people are there to levy a tax to fund the government. And governments always do this.

They always have, they always will. And it's amazing how governments figure out ways and study ways to tax us more. Ronald Reagan used to say government's view of the economy can be summed up in three phrases. If it moves, tax it. If it continues to move, regulate it.

If it stops moving, subsidize it. Caesar believed in all those things. And he burdened the people of Israel with taxes. About 25 percent of everybody's money went to funding the Roman government. Now that's because the Roman government provided perks. Caesar Augustus was an amazing ruler. He ruled for 45 years.

He's the guy who instituted Pax Romana, the Roman peace, a relative stability around the world. By force. But it took money for that. It took tax money.

He figured out ways to collect that tax around the Roman world. That's Skip Heitzig with a message from his series, Into the Night. Find the full message as well as books, booklets, and full teaching series at connectwithskip.com. Now, here's Skip with an invitation for you to join he and Lenya Heitzig on a Holy Land tour next year. Hey, our 2024 Israel tour is coming up.

This is Pastor Skip, and we still have space on this trip that Lenya and I are hosting. We will be touring Israel from May 1st through May 12th. I hope that you'll join us firsthand to see some incredible sites like the Sea of Galilee.

I'm sure you've always wanted to see that. The Temple Mount in Jerusalem and the Garden Tomb, the place many people believe is where Jesus rose from the dead. The final deadline for registration is December 31st, so there's still time to take action and join Lenya and I for the trip of a lifetime.

Find full Israel information at connectwithskip.com. Connect with Skip Heitzig exists to connect listeners like you to God's truth, strengthening your walk with him and bringing more people into his family. That's why we make these teachings available to you and so many others on air and online.

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We're glad you joined us today. Come back tomorrow as Skip reveals how the world tries to cast out the light of Christmas. The light of the world being cast out. That's the rejection of Christmas. Now I point that out and you've heard this before, but this scene is replicated every year.

In fact, I would say this scene is replicated every day of every week of every month of every year. There's no room for Jesus in the public square. They don't want you to talk about Jesus in normal society. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast all burdens on His word. Make a connection, connection. Connect with Skip Hyten is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever changing times.