Jesus' Birth in Bethlehem, Part 1 B

Had the Emperor Augustus made his decision three months earlier, or three months later, or one month earlier, or one month later, Jesus wouldn't have been born in Bethlehem, but He was. Every single detail was in the hand of Almighty God. God still directs history, and He still holds every king, every monarch, every ruler in His hand for His own purposes. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. If you live in the United States, you might know that 2020 was a census year. The U.S. Constitution requires one every 10 years, so while a census can be important, it's pretty routine and not that big of a deal, right?

Well, there's one particular census taken 2,000 years ago in the Middle East that is still talked about today, and deservedly so. Today you'll relive that census and the political world that surrounded the first Christmas. Jesus' birth in Bethlehem.

That's John MacArthur's focus today in his study that's preparing you for December 25th called The Promise of Christmas. And here's John with a lesson. 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. Let's look at the world setting.

I find this fascinating. I take off my theologian's hat from chapter 1 and put on my historian's hat. The world setting is in verses 1, 2, and 3. 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 Corinnaeus was governor of Syria, and all were proceeding to register for the census everyone to his own city. Critical. Critical that everybody go to his own city. Critical that Joseph and Mary go to Bethlehem, which was their own city, so that they would be there when the Messiah was born so the prophecy of Micah would come to pass.

Absolutely critical. Little did Caesar Augustus know that he was being moved by the Spirit of God to do exactly what he did on time, on schedule, to effect exactly the result God wanted. There was a few days in which Joseph and Mary had to be in Bethlehem. Right at the very time of the birth of the child, God knew exactly when that moment was, exactly when that day was. He knew when they had to be there, and He had planned for that to happen under the authority and power of a Caesar who was far removed from the little village of Bethlehem and utterly removed from the purposes of God and utterly ignorant of the Word of God. But nonetheless, he was a main player in bringing the prophecy to pass, which shows the mighty, incomprehensible providential work of Almighty God. Verse 1 says, now it came about in those days.

What days? Well, the days just spoken of. The days of chapter 1, go back to chapter 1 verse 5, in the days of Herod, king of Judea. In those days, Herod, by the way, was still on the throne, and he was on the throne when Jesus was born and for a little while afterwards.

We know a little about him, don't we? We know about his animosity toward the birth of one who might take his throne and how he slaughtered all the babies in that region, hoping that somehow he would kill a rival king who had been born. So we know about Herod. It was in those days, the same days when Gabriel came to Zacharias and Elizabeth, the same days when Gabriel came to Mary, the same days when John was born, the days of Herod. Herod was still alive, though he died soon after the birth of Jesus. These were the days not only of Herod ruling in Israel. Herod wasn't even a Jew, by the way, he was an Idumean, he was an Edomite, and the Edomites were despised by the Israelites.

They had been cursed because of the way they treated Israel and God. But nonetheless, they had an Idumean king by the name of Herod who was a vassal king under Rome. He was allowed to have a measure of power in Israel. Caesar Augustus was a wise man. In fact, he was a brilliant and astute man, and he gave the nations and the provinces under the authority of Rome in the Roman Empire some freedom to operate their own government to lessen the tension a little bit, and that was the reason Herod still had some authority in Israel.

Herod was still alive, as I said. These were the days, though, of Roman occupation in Israel. These were the days not only of Roman occupation, but that dreaded Roman taxation. Those two things really bothered the Jews greatly. They hated Roman occupation because Romans were Gentiles. They didn't like Gentiles. They felt the Gentiles were outside the covenant. They felt the Gentiles were unclean. A Jew rarely if he was committed to his Judaism tradition wouldn't go into the home of a Gentile because he would be defiled by even entering that place. He wouldn't eat on utensils prepared by Gentiles because they would be unclean and defiled. If he had to leave the borders of Israel and travel in a Gentile land, he would come back and he would do what's become a familiar phrase.

He would shake the dust off before entering Israel lest he bring Gentile dirt in and pollute his nation. They had no love for the Gentiles. And they had no love particularly for the Romans because they had these many gods and they were...they were a multi-god nation. They were polytheistic. They had all these idols which, of course, were distasteful to the Jews at that time as well and had been ever since the Babylonian captivity many years before. They brought their idols in on the banners that they waved on the suits of armor when they had the image of Caesar. They brought their idols in when they put Caesar's image on a coin and they believed Caesar to be a god, so they saw the coinage of Rome as idols. They hated those expressions of idolatry and Gentile disbelief in the true God. And secondly, they despised Roman taxation. They didn't think the Romans had any right to be in their land.

They certainly didn't think they had any right to exact taxes from them. And mostly they hated more severely the Jews who bought franchises to collect taxes for Rome. They were the ultimate outcasts, the ultimate defectors, the ultimate traitors. People like Matthew and Zacchaeus, you meet them in the New Testament.

When somebody really wanted to call you an outcast, he would call you a tax collector. So they hated Roman taxation. They hated Roman occupation. Now the best we can do in dating the birth of Christ is this, it came about in those days. Sometime in those days during the time of Caesar, a decree went out. Sometimes, by the way, Luke is very precise.

Chapter 3, verse 1, in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee and his brother Philip was tetrarch of the region of Idyria and Traconatus and Lasanias was tetrarch and Abilene. Boy, that is really specific stuff. Sometimes he's very, very specific, but sometimes he's very general.

For example, chapter 3, verse 23, when he began his ministry, Jesus Himself was about thirty years of age. Now here, he's not very specific. He just says, in those days, in those days, a decree went out. A decree is an imperial edict. Same is used in Acts 17.7, you can use that as a comparative.

Now this is common. The emperor, that's what imperial means, the emperor made an edict. He would pass a law or a mandate, a given order, and it would come from Rome, from the throne, and it would be addressed to all the subjects and it would have certain requirements. This edict went from the emperor right out of Rome, was carried to far off Judea and had critical bearing on the birth of Jesus Christ, critical bearing.

Now let's look at the edict. This edict that came out of Rome went out from the reigning Caesar of the day, Caesar Augustus. Neither of those is his name. Caesar is a title like king or emperor or hero.

It is not a name. But this man, Caesar Augustus, was a remarkable man. He literally created the world that facilitated the spread of the gospel.

Not only did he do that in general, but in specific, he made an edict that caused Joseph and Mary to have to go by a certain date to Bethlehem where they would have their baby and fulfill prophecy. To sum up the character of this man, we could say, once you look at him in the beginning of his rule, he was ruthless. I suppose he had to be to effect what he did.

He mellowed out later. He became a wise administrator, a famous organizer, especially competent in the organization of the military and his own bodyguard, which are referred to in Philippians 1.13. He chose his general wisely. Consequently, he won many, many great battles. He had many generals.

He had tremendous skill in dealing with his subjects. He gave them autonomy. He gave them freedom. He allowed the conquered provinces.

The Romans conquered them all. He allowed them to retain some of their own independent rule and self-rule. He respected their customs, their religion, all of that. He stimulated the arts. He encouraged cleaning up literature and making it more noble.

He was a great builder, an amazing man, humanly speaking. Although he did pass a law that made adultery a crime, his own personal life really did undermine the sanctity of marriage. He had a wife by the name of Screbonia who didn't produce a son.

That was a bad thing in ancient times. She did give birth to a daughter, Julia. So he had a daughter named Julia, but he divorced Screbonia because she couldn't give him a son. He married Livia, some lady he's supposedly fallen in love with. But Livia already had a son by a former marriage. Her son's name was Tiberius. So he forced Tiberius to marry his daughter, Julia, and therefore Tiberius sort of became a son-in-law and he passed to him the right to become the next Caesar. Tiberius, by the way, was married at the time, so he had him divorce his wife to marry his daughter.

So-propers are not new, folks, and they've always existed in courts of royalty. Let's look at his edict. He made an edict and this was the edict. The census was to be taken of all the inhabited earth.

All the inhabited earth would simply be another way to say all the known world, which would be all the Roman Empire, which covered the known world in that area. A census, apographe, simply a registration to write something. This was done for two reasons. It was done to draw people into military service, to find out who all of the military age young men were, but the Jews had been exempted from that.

In wisdom, as I said, Caesar Augustus had given a little in to some of these nations and some of their quirks and religious convictions and the Jews were free from providing military forces for Rome. The census on this occasion was not for that. We know what it was for because Joseph and Mary were involved in it. It was for the registration of a census for the purpose of taxation, taxation. This was the other reason they took a census. They were to go and register their name, their occupation, their property, their family entered into the Rome IRS agency for the purpose of taxation. This was to happen everywhere in the entire Roman world.

Now I want to give you some little history on this, very important. This census is called the first census in verse 2, the first census. Now that's important because Caesar Augustus didn't just call for one census, he called for a series of censuses apparently at fourteen-year intervals. And you can track these series of censuses every fourteen years all the way, I think it's to the year 270 A.D. Every fourteen years there was a census.

And he was big on this. He was very careful, very thoughtful and very statistical. When he died, he left in his own handwriting rather copious statistics on taxation which were derived from the census that had been taken during his reign. We do read some literature that's existing today from antiquity out of Egypt that indicates that Egypt was committed to census every fourteen years. And so that supports the idea because Egypt at the defeat of Mark Antony and Cleopatra came under the power of Rome and apparently went on to carry out these every fourteen-year census events. That would have been very similar to what Syria would have done. Syria was the region in which Judea exists.

So when it says Quirinius was the governor of Syria, that would include Judea was a component of Syria at large. Well, Rome then passed this edict on that everybody had to go and register because of the census. The Jews hated this. It was alien to them. It was a pagan thing. It was intruding into their life distastefully.

They wanted nothing to do with it. But God was at work, just like He had been at work in the decree of Cyrus that liberated Israel to send them back to reestablish their nation after the captivity, just as He was at work in the case of Nebuchadnezzar who ended up doing exactly what God wanted him to do for his own purposes. God takes pagan kings, pagan rulers, and uses them as His own servants for His own purposes.

Don't you think for one minute that God isn't sovereign in all the palaces of the world He is? And He was in the palace of Caesar Augustus. Verse 2 says this was the first census, the first of the cycle of fourteen-year censuses which Caesar Augustus had set in motion. Now we get a further input here.

When was the first one? Well, it was taken while a man named Quirinius was governor of Syria. Syria again is that large area in which Judea would exist. And over that area, this man Quirinius had some responsibility. Let me take the word governor for a minute. It's a non-technical word.

It doesn't mean he was the number one man. It doesn't define for us the nature of his leadership. It's a word like leader. It's a word like ruler, person in authority. It's not specific, it's non-technical. The Romans had technical titles which you can see in a pecking order, in a hierarchy. There were legates, there were proconsuls, there were prefects, there were procurators, and those are identifiable connected roles in the hierarchy of Rome.

Governor is a generic for leader. So this was the first census taken and it was taken at a time while Quirinius was governor of Syria. Now the reason that Luke is telling us is to help us pinpoint the time of the birth of Christ. This is a historical event.

This isn't a figment of somebody's imagination. It was in that first census that occurred under the authority of Caesar Augustus and it occurred at the time that there was a ruler in Syria by the name of Quirinius. This helps us get a little closer to when this happened.

And by the way, I want to tell you something. The people who read Luke in Luke's day would know exactly when it was. We don't anymore because so much time has passed, very hard for us to be precise about this. His name was Publius Sulpicius Quirinius. He was known to have governed Syria, listen carefully, A.D. 6 to 9, A.D. 6 to 9. A well-known census was taken in Palestine in A.D. 6.

Josephus, the great Jewish historian, records that it sparked a violent Jewish revolt which is mentioned by Luke who quotes Gamaliel and it's mentioned by Luke in Acts 5, 37. So Luke even refers to this census which provoked a revolt which occurred in A.D. 6. Quirinius was responsible for administering that census.

He also played a major role in quelling the subsequent rebellion. However, listen very carefully, that census can't be the census Luke has in mind here because it occurred about a decade after the death of Herod. And I have a note on that in Matthew 2, 1.

It's much too late to fit here. So we know there was a census in A.D. 6. We know that Quirinius at that point was a leader in Syria.

But here you have a little indication that this is not that one. Verse 2, this is the first census. So if that one occurred in 6 A.D. and they were normally at fourteen-year intervals, all we need to do to find the first one is back up how many years?

Fourteen years. That would take us to 8 B.C., 8 B.C. Now in my note, I say in the light of Luke's meticulous care as a historian, it would be unreasonable to charge him with an obvious anachronism or an error. Indeed, archaeology has vindicated Luke. A fragment of stone discovered at Tivoli, which is near Rome, in A.D. 1764. This is a fragment of stone discovered. It contains an inscription in honor of a Roman official who it states was twice governor of Syria and Phoenicia during the reign of Augustus.

Now we're starting to make sense. Somebody was governor twice. That could be just what we need, once in A.D. 6 to 9 and another time previously back in the B.C. time when that first census took place is what Luke says. The name of the official is not given on that fragment, but among his accomplishments are listed details that as far as is known can fit no one other than Quirinius, and we do have some historical records about him.

Isn't that wonderful? We had to wait till 1764 to have the Bible verified. The Bible is true, and whenever there is something found like that, it always verifies it. Thus he must have served as governor in Syria twice.

He may have been a military ruler or leader at the same time that history records Varus was the civil governor there. With regard to the dating of the census, taking it a step further, some ancient records found in Egypt mention a worldwide census ordered in 8 B.C. That would be exactly right. Now we've got Egyptian material saying there was one in 8. That fits the 14-year pattern exactly. That has some problems, though, because when you put all the chronology of the birth of Christ together, you can't have it any earlier than 6 B.C. And probably even 4 B.C. is better. How do you solve that problem?

Pretty simple, really. Augustus probably made the decree in 8 B.C., but Judea didn't comply with it until two to four years later, and that's what I put in the note. It was actually carried out in Palestine two to four years later, most likely because of political difficulties between Rome and Herod and conflicts.

Let me tell you something else. Why else would Joseph and Mary go down to Bethlehem in the dead of winter, sometime in the late part of the year anyway, when it could be cold, when it could be rainy, when it could be snowy? Why would she, nine months pregnant, be bumping on a mule or walking 85 to 90 miles from the north down really upward to Bethlehem because it's ascent in terms of the terrain? Why would she do that at the very end of her pregnancy unless there had been a deadline dropped, a la April 15th? It must have gotten to the place where perhaps non-compliance on the part of Israel had reached its limit and Caesar had said, that's it, this is the deadline and you've got to be there by then. Otherwise it would seem reasonable that they would have waited until the child was born. At some later time, Joseph could have gone on his own and taken care of the matter. It may be an indication that there was some extremity that had been perpetuated by the reluctance of Israel to comply. And after all, Judea was a far away land from Rome and certainly loved to exercise its independence. Therefore, the precise year of Christ's birth can't be known with certainty.

We don't know. The people who read Luke originally probably had a good idea, may have known exactly. But it was probably no earlier than 6 B.C. and certainly no later than 4 B.C.

by our dating. As I said, Luke's readers would have known. So this is the best we can do at setting the time by our calendar, somewhere by what we call, they didn't call it the dating that we do because that came later when we dated B.C.

and A.D. But somewhere in what we call 6 to 4 B.C., this birth of Christ took place. And it says in verse 3, and here's the point, and all were proceeding to register for the census, everyone to his own city. That sets the scene.

That sets the scene. There's no other reason why they're going to travel at a time like this. Now the Romans would normally register people in their own place of residence. They didn't make them go back to some initial homeland.

That must have been a Jewish custom or something that Herod required. And the Jews we know were big on ancestry. You remember when they came into the land of Canaan, the whole land of Canaan, you remember when they entered was divided into tribal areas? And every tribe had their own area. And within those tribal areas there were towns and villages that belonged to certain families. And through the years those families were connected to those villages and they owned the land. You remember every seven years the land would go back to the original owners so their genealogies were very, very important. They kept very careful, very detailed records of families and so they would go back to their tribal area, back to their family home area, back to their father's village.

That's where they went to register. And that sets the scene perfectly to put Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem when the baby is born in specific fulfillment of Micah 5 to this by virtue of a decree from a pagan godless monarch who had no idea of any word of any Hebrew prophet or of any of its significance. This was the world setting. This was how God was controlling the world events crucial to the birth of Christ. Set everything in motion for what for that little couple must have been a miserable trip, physically, distressing her to go far from home, far from her mother, far from her family, far from everybody who knew her and loved her and cared about her, to have a baby on the road as it were in an obscure place.

And remember, she was 13 or 14 and her husband was 15. But it was essential and they must have gone because they didn't have a choice. There are no accidental occurrences, in the realm of the Holy Spirit. Had the Emperor Augustus made his decision three months earlier or three months later or one month earlier or one month later or maybe one week earlier or one week later, Jesus wouldn't have been born in Bethlehem, but He was. God knew how long it would take to get the registration machinery in place. God knew how long Herod would resist it. God knew how long it would take for that little couple to trek those 85 to 90 miles in the winter. God knew exactly how long it would take so that they would be there for just a few days, but in those days, the baby would be born. Every single detail was in the hand of Almighty God.

And God still directs history and He still holds every king, every monarch, every ruler in His hand for His own purposes. That's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. John's current study here on Grace to You is titled The Promise of Christmas. Now John, as we think about proclaiming the gospel and about taking advantage of people's greater openness to biblical truth at Christmas time, what suggestions would you have for our listeners? How can they make strategic use of the Christmas season for the gospel? Well, Christmas is the most natural time to talk about the gospel because even the secular world has, you know, halted the normal processes of life to acknowledge the Christmas season and it may not be the focal point, but they can't escape that this is particularly focused on the birth of the Son of God as a babe in the manger.

You can certainly start by asking questions of your family and friends. What is the significance of Christmas? Do you understand what Christmas was?

Do you know who the Christ is? Do you understand why the angels said what they said? Do you understand why Herod wanted to take the life of every young male child in Bethlehem?

Can you imagine a slaughter like that? What is really going on at Christmas? So I think, like maybe normally you would do with people who you want to reach with the gospel, you start with a series of questions and Christmas as a season just gives you endless opportunity to dive into the story at all kinds of points and ask the compelling questions. And the ultimate question is, why, of all the people who have lived in this world, is Christmas focused on Christ? Why is it that He's the only one whose birth the world celebrates like this?

What particularly makes Him stand out? So I think those kind of probing questions, those people who don't know the gospel will perhaps not have an answer for, but you have the answer. And so again, just summing up, I would say, what you want to do is expose people's ignorance of something that they think they're familiar with, and then show them the truth that they may have never heard before. Thanks, John. That is a great reminder for us as Christmas gets closer. And friend, if John's current study has equipped you to share the gospel with boldness, if it has helped you focus on Christ, or if someone you know has come to faith in Jesus after hearing John's teaching, we would love to hear the story. When you can, write us a note, send it our way. You can mail your letter to Grace To You, Post Office Box 4000, Panorama City, California 91412. Or even quicker, you can email your note to letters at gty.org.

That's our email address one more time, letters at gty.org. Also remember, you can download today's lesson and the rest of this series, The Promise of Christmas, free of charge in MP3 and transcript format from our website gty.org. Or if you'd like to study another topic, perhaps a specific Bible passage, tap into our sermon archive. It has over 3600 sermons. It covers the entire New Testament and a significant portion of the Old. And you can check out the Grace To You blog where John and our staff often address controversial issues that affect the church. You can download the free sermons and read the blog at gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and our entire staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Watch Grace To You television this Sunday on DirecTV channel 378, and then be here Monday to see the amazing ways that God fit together countless events and details at the birth of Jesus to achieve His eternal purpose. It's another half hour of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace To You.