Jesus' Birth in Bethlehem, Part 1

Two thousand years ago, the Creator of the universe, the eternal God entered human society as a baby.

The Creator of the universe put on humanity. On a night like every other night in Israel with no fanfare, a child was born. It was a night like any other night, but it wasn't a child like any other child. You know how it is when you're starting the car on a wintery morning. Frosted windows can keep you from seeing what's most important. Well, with the holiday haze that seems to form every December, and with the extra distractions that have not let up in 2020, I think you'll find today's message especially encouraging as John MacArthur cuts through the clutter and draws you into the profound significance of Christmas. Thanks for being here on Grace to You as John launches his study called The Promise of Christmas. John, over the years you have taught dozens of sermons on Christmas, and by way of introduction to this study on the promise of Christmas, let me ask, what is it you come away with when you go through the story of Jesus' birth? What aspects of the nativity constantly amaze you or interest you more than any others? All the elements of the Christmas story, all the features of it, and everybody knows them, you know, from the baby and the manger and Bethlehem and the shepherds and the wise men and Herod and all the death of the babies and all those kinds of things, are all part of the drama. But the overwhelming reality of Christmas to me is the incarnation.

It is that God became man, that the eternal Son became human flesh. I was having a conversation yesterday with some of our guys at church, and they were saying we want to do some pictures of Jesus for a children's book. And they said, we wonder whether we should show his face or we should never show his face because we don't know what he really looked like, and some people might be offended if we try to, you know, make the face of Jesus. So maybe we could have the back of his head, or maybe we could leave sort of a vague kind of art that his characteristics are indistinguishable.

And I said, you don't want to do that. He came so that you would see he was human. You don't want to veil his humanity. He veiled his deity, but he did not want to veil his humanity. Of course we know you don't know exactly what he looked like, but children need to look at a book and see his face, and they need to see expressions on his face.

Whatever those expressions are, as you tell the stories for children, let them see that he was a real person, he was a real man, and I think that's so very important. And that to me is the essential reality of Christmas, is God in human flesh comes into the world for the sole purpose of dying in our place and then rising again to provide salvation for us. The promise of Christmas comes from a verse-by-verse exploration of the book of Luke.

You don't want to miss it. We're going to be looking at this promise in just a moment. That's right, and friend, I think these verse-by-verse lessons will give you a renewed appreciation for the amazing birth we celebrate this month. So look with John MacArthur now at The Promise of Christmas. I would invite you to turn with us to the Word of God, Luke, the gospel of Luke and chapter 2, this familiar and wonderful chapter that describes the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. Surely this chapter is the most widely known chapter in the Bible because it tells the story of Christmas. This chapter, this story, of course, has been the source of songs and carols and cards and celebrations and gifts and books and dramas and pageants since it occurred. Very familiar story, and yet I think we're going to be seeing it in some profound and rich and perhaps unfamiliar ways as we come to grips with its great truth. Two thousand years ago, the Creator of the universe, the eternal God, entered human society as a baby.

The Creator of the universe put on humanity. The Lord of heaven came to live on earth. On a night like every other night in Israel with no fanfare, no celebration by anybody, a child was born.

It was a night like any other night, but it wasn't a child like any other child. This child was the Lord Jesus Christ, God and man fused together in indivisible oneness. This birth was so monumental that it became the high point of history, the peak, the apex. All history before this birth is B.C., before Christ. All history since is A.D., Anno Domini, Latin for the year of our Lord. The birth of God in human form then is the most important moment in all of history. Let me read to you the first seven verses of chapter 2, which in plain and simple and clear language describe this great event. Now it came about in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth. This was the first census, taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all were proceeding to register for the census, everyone to his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee from or out of the city of Nazareth to Judea, the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, in order to register along with Mary who was engaged to him and was with child. And it came about that while they were there, the days were completed for her to give birth, and she gave birth to her firstborn son, and she wrapped him in cloths and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.

Very familiar words. Behind these simple, straightforward, unembellished words of narrative offered with delicacy and reserve, unmistakable meaning and significance, there is the profoundest event in the history of the world. But as I said, the story of Jesus is generally familiar to anybody who knows anything about Christianity and many people who know very little about Christianity. Sadly, the worldwide celebration of the birth of Christ, which is called Christmas, has become so cluttered and so confused with paganism and personal indulgences as to obscure the simple, clear reality of the birth of God in human form. The world celebrates the birth of Jesus in December for all the wrong reasons, for the expression of self-indulgence, materialism, partying, social events of all kinds, but largely misses the point, as we know. The real significance of the birth of God in human form is overlooked, treated trivially, overshadowed by everything else that's going on. And I suppose it's a fair question to say, how can you take such a simple story, as we've just read in seven verses, and come up with such a complicated celebration? How do you get from the account of Luke and the account of Matthew, how do you get from those accounts to what we have today?

Well I'll give you a little bit of history you might find it interesting. About the middle of the fourth century, right at the time of the establishing of the great world empire of Rome under Constantine, the Bishop of Jerusalem wrote to the Bishop of Rome, and he asked him to determine the actual date of Christ's birth. Well, no one knows the actual date of Christ's birth.

The fact of the matter is, we don't even know for sure the actual year of His birth. But the Bishop of Rome sent word back to the Bishop of Jerusalem that it occurred on December 25th. By the end of the fourth century, that had been accepted by the church, was really put into church fiat or church law, became the regularly accepted day to celebrate the birth of Christ. Now, most scholars would tell you today, if not all of them, that the Bishop didn't know the day of Christ's birth because we don't know the date of Christ's birth, December 25th is purely arbitrary. But he didn't do it for purely arbitrary reasons. He was a fairly shrewd guy, and he had a reason for putting the celebration of the birth of Christ on December 25th.

And here was his reason. For centuries before Christ was born, the month of December had been an occasion long established and still being celebrated at that time as a pagan festival of significance. In fact, most boisterous pagan revelries were celebrated in December. It marked the winter, and great celebration was held in anticipation of the coming spring. Everything around was dark and dreary and trees were without leaves and things didn't grow, and in the midst of winter they put on these great celebrations for the hope of the return of the sun, the return of the strength of the sun, to bring back the spring and make things grow and warm up the cold. Feasting was part of it. Parties were part of it. Adorning your house with evergreens, anticipating those deciduous trees and plants that would soon bloom. They even adorned their houses with mistletoe.

They exchanged gifts. There was a general merrymaking held at that time of the year by the pagans. This was all a part of their traditional pagan celebration. Now the bishop's idea was...now this is such an orgy.

This is...this is sort of like carnaval in our modern world. This is the worst of pagan decadence celebrated. The bishop's idea was let's take the birth of Christ and put it on the same day around the same time to coincide with all the ancient festivals and all the wild winter revelries, and that way we will bring a sanctifying influence into this celebration and draw the attention of the people away from those things that they're engaged in to more spiritual pursuits and start making them think about the fact that God came into the world in a human form.

That was a nice thought. Let's sanctify these celebrations by imposing on the same day the celebration of the birth of Christ. Well, needless to say, the heathen festivities never missed a beat.

They kept on going at the same pace they were always going at. And the church, which frowned on them and wanted to change them, finally accepted them and let them be assimilated into the celebration of Christmas so that today Christmas is a conglomeration of all that is distinctively Christian and biblical and all that is distinctively pagan. To the Romans, for example, this winter December festival, this feasting and orgy was called Saturnalia, named after Saturn who was the god of agriculture. It was he who presided over the planting of crops. And during the time of celebration of Saturnalia, gift giving was the most popular custom.

That's where we get that from. The most common gifts of the Saturnalia were small idols, small deities, small gods, replicas of the Roman gods made out of clay, sometimes marble and sometimes silver. Candles were used extensively in their idolatry celebration and evergreen branches were given to friends to hang on their houses and sometimes trinkets were placed hanging on those evergreen branches, forerunners to what we know today as Christmas decorations and trees. In the really barbaric Northlands among the Norsemen, a similar winter festival was held and it was called Yule, or Yuletide as we refer to it. It was in honor of the gods Odin and Thor. It involved feasting, music, drinking to drunkenness from horns.

In Persia, fires were kindled to the god Mithra. If you know anything about legend, you know Mithra was believed to be the god of light and so at this time of year when the daylight was briefer than at other times and winter was on them, they would pray and celebrate the god of light in anticipation of the sun and the spring and summer. In England, it was the druids who gathered sacred mistletoe and they made live sacrifices to their many gods. Mistletoe, by the way, was venerated by the English. It was venerated by the druids. It was venerated by a lot of pagans in pre-Christian times. The druids, for example, gathered mistletoe during their December celebration. They had some priests. They would get a few white-clad priests and they would march to a sacred oak tree with a large entourage where the mistletoe would grow and then they would have the chief priest climb the tree.

He would go with a golden sickle. He would cut the plant which would fall from the tree and be caught in a cloth so as not to be defiled by touching the ground. Then two white oxen were sacrificed and the mistletoe given to the people to be hung in their homes.

Now the mistletoe was supposed to be an emblem of peace and an emblem of good fortune and whenever the tradition of the druids was, whenever an enemy passed under the mistletoe, you had to embrace the enemy and it was supposedly a little ploy to try to help people reconcile, hence kissing under the mistletoe, which is some deviated form of that original embrace. Adding to that, you have the drama of the crib or the creche, the manger scene which was popularized by St. Francis in the thirteenth century. Three hundred years after that, Martin Luther of all people brought a tree into his house at this season of Christmas and decorated it with candles. He said he put the candles on it to simulate the starry sky glittering over the stable where Christ was born.

But long before, pagans had used boughs of evergreens decorated with trinkets to celebrate their own pagan holidays. In Holland, there was a favorite saint by the name of St. Nicholas. This white bearded bishop of Asia Minor was believed to have appeared around December 6th riding a white horse leaving gifts for good children and leaving switches for the parents of bad children.

And he would leave one or the other on the porch. The Dutch called St. Nicholas Sinterklaas, from which we get the derivative Santa Claus. Caroling started in the fourteenth century along with jesters and musicians and mummers, and there's still a mummers parade, I think it's in Philadelphia, people wearing all kinds of masks and crazy garb, eight-hour feasts. That all comes from fourteenth century partying. Now stockings, where did they come from? Well, it was believed in Holland that St. Nicholas, when he was dropping his switches and his good stuff on the porch, on some occasions threw coins down a chimney and they just happened to land in some stockings hanging there to dry. Out of that came the whole idea that Santa Claus comes down the chimney and fills your stocking. Well, the old bishop might have had a good motive for what he did, but it didn't help.

Putting the birth of Jesus Christ on the same day as all the rest of this only served to clutter the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ with a whole lot of unrelated pagan elements. For the moment, back to the text, for the moment in Luke's history, the curtain has fallen on the story of John. The curtain fell on the story of John momentarily in verse 80 at the end of chapter 1, speaking of John who was just born, just circumcised, the child continued to grow, to become strong in spirit.

He grew physically, he grew spiritually. He lived in the deserts or the wilderness, the Judean wilderness in the south of the land of Israel. He lived there until the day of his public appearance to Israel. His public appearance to Israel will be taken up in the third chapter of Luke. We'll meet John the Baptist again, as he was known, in the third chapter of Luke. But we don't know anything about what happened from the eighth day when he was circumcised and his father Zacharias gave the great song of praise that ends the chapter. We don't know anything about his life from the eighth day of his circumcision until he began his ministry. All the rest is contained in one verse. All we know is he grew physically, he grew spiritually, he lived in the wilderness.

That's all we know. But all that time we know God was preparing him to be the forerunner of the Messiah, to proclaim Jesus as Lord and Messiah. So the curtain falls at the end of chapter 1 on John and we don't meet him again until he's an adult. The curtain rises in chapter 2 on the birth of Jesus. We've already gone through the birth of John.

We've already heard the annunciation of the angel Gabriel to Mary. She told him that...he told her, I should say, that she was going to have a child, that the child would be born to her as a virgin and that that child would be the Son of the Most High, the Son of David. He would reign on the throne of David forever and ever.

His kingdom would have no end. She asked, chapter 1, verses 31 to 35, how is that going to be since I'm a virgin? And the angel Gabriel told her that the Holy Spirit, the Most High God, the Holy Spirit would come upon her, overshadow her, and that would be placed in her womb, which was actually a miraculous creation of God so that she would become pregnant without a man.

She then is a virgin and she is ready to bring forth the Messiah, the Son of David, the Son of God as we come to chapter 2. And the curtain rises on the birth of Jesus Christ. Now, Luke does a wonderful thing here, simple, straightforward, unembellished language.

That's important. It's uncluttered, it's marvelous, and it's clear. But as clear as it is and as simple as the language is, what's going on here is profound and far-reaching. Now, everybody in Israel knew some things about Messiah. Everybody in Israel knew the Messiah would come and be king, that He would come and He would be in the line of David and He would reign on the throne in Jerusalem and He would establish a glorious kingdom for Israel.

They knew that He would come with a rod of iron, the psalmist has said. They knew some things about Messiah and one thing that was absolutely explicit about Messiah was recorded by the prophet Micah. In the little book of Micah, chapter 5, verse 2, the prophet Micah said the Messiah would be born in a village called Bethlehem, originally in Genesis 35 called Ephrata, but came to be known as Bethlehem, which means house of bread. The Jews all knew that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, at least that's what the Old Testament said. Well, Luke in writing this passage never quotes Micah. He doesn't refer to Micah, but he shows us how God orchestrated the birth of Messiah in Bethlehem in explicit fulfillment of that prophecy in what really was an amazing work of God. Because if things had just gone on normally, Jesus never would have been born in Bethlehem. He had to be by word of the prophet and the veracity of the word of the Bible was at stake, but God did some mighty working to make it happen and exactly and precisely on time. Joseph and Mary were only in Bethlehem for a matter of days.

It had to be exactly the days when that child was born. Luke makes us understand this without ever quoting Micah because he knows his readers know that passage. He gives us here some profound insight into the fulfillment of Micah 5 to that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. Now as we come to these seven verses, and I'm only going to give you the first of them, he gives us three settings here. He gives us a world setting, he gives us a national setting with Israel, and he gives us a personal setting. And all three of these are very important in identifying the nature of the Messiah, in identifying the fulfillment of prophecy, in identifying His role to the world. He is to be the Savior of the world, and it's important to understand the setting in the world when He comes. He is coming as the Messiah to Israel. It's important to understand the prophetic Scriptures that related to Israel. And He is coming as the Savior of every individual who puts their trust in Him, and it's therefore important to understand something of the personal circumstances of Joseph and Mary.

So we're going to see the setting for the birth of Christ. The whole story of the birth of Christ is in verse 7, the first part, she gave birth. That's all it says.

That's all it says. She gave birth, unembellished. But what is coming together at that moment involves the world, the nation, and Joseph and Mary personally. It's wonderful to see the Savior who came to save the world and how He in His own birth is literally involving the world.

He came as the fulfillment of Jewish Scriptures, and it shows here how He fits into the Jewish anticipation because of Old Testament prophecies, and He comes to redeem individuals who for the most part are common and humble like Joseph and Mary. We see that in the personal setting. So the world setting, the national setting, the personal setting, sadly I have to say and it's common knowledge, the world has largely rejected Him. The nation Israel has largely rejected Him. And among the lowly and the humble and the needy, few have believed in Him and been saved.

That continues to be true. Let's pray. Father, we acknowledge that You are the omnipotent, sovereign God who rules all the affairs of men and who accomplishes His purposes. No matter what, we know that You can move the mind of the King who doesn't know You and doesn't know about You to do Your will. Even Satan is Your servant, and all men are subject to Your sovereign providence and power.

Oh, Father, how we see Your hand in this immense, immense event, the baby born, God in human flesh, how You move to make history set the scene. We give You praise and glory that You, the God of creation, the God, the sovereign of history, are the sovereign God of our hearts whom we know and love through Jesus Christ. We thank You that we have come to know You personally, that You are our personal God.

You live in us. You love us. You bless us.

You forgive us. You fill us with peace and hope and joy. You have given to us the promise of eternal bliss in heaven with You. God, we are in awe of Your greatness and of Your grace. Help us, Lord, to worship You, the God of sovereign power, the God of history. We thank You for this most monumental of all moments in history when Your Son and our Savior was born, Jesus, who would save His people from their sins. In His name we pray. Amen. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

Thanks for being with us. John is Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary in Southern California. Today he kicked off his study titled The Promise of Christmas.

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