The angel says, you're going to have a baby. Your baby is going to be the Son of God as well as your son. And of course this young girl Mary said to the angel, how can this be since I'm a virgin?
This is impossible. The angel said, here's how it's going to happen. The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you and for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. This time of year, do you ever feel as if you are the only one who cares about the birth of Christ? And even if the true meaning of Christmas isn't lost on you, these days get so busy it's possible that your attention isn't fully where you would like it to be.
Well, you're not alone. And so the goal of John MacArthur's current study on grace to you is to help cut through some of the holiday clutter and focus your thoughts on the profound truths of the Christmas story. John's study is titled, The Promise of Christmas. And now with today's lesson, here's John. Luke chapter 2. Luke is one of the four gospel writers, one of the four writers who tell the story of Jesus Christ.
This is what he says in chapter 2, the first seven verses. 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 the city of Nazareth to Judea to 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. That last statement, there was no room for them in the inn, has become a very familiar part of Christmas lore, and it really is not legend, it is fact, as that text indicates.
We've all seen no vacancy signs posted outside motels, and sometimes I suppose we've seen no vacancy signs when we didn't want to see them. There was a certain level of desperation, it was very late, the kids were in need of a place to sleep, and the town was crowded and the no vacancy sign spelled for us a very serious potential situation. Well as far as Joseph and Mary were concerned, their circumstances made the no vacancy sign in Bethlehem all the more severe since Mary was about to deliver a baby. This young couple, Joseph probably being 14 or 15, Mary 13 or 14 years of age, the two of them had journeyed about 85 to 90 miles from their home in Nazareth. They had gone through land that was literally filled with sacred memories, memories which they would have because they knew the Old Testament history and the Old Testament stories. Shiloh would greet them where Hannah came to pray for a child before the Lord.
And then there was Gilgal where her son Samuel sat to judge Israel. They may have passed through the Valley of Bacchae of which the psalmist had sung. And the road perhaps would wind past Bethel with all its patriarchal memories and Ramah where Jeremiah pictured Rachel weeping for her children.
And then they would climb up a little bit to Gibeon where Solomon worshiped. And finally they would come to the great metropolis of Jerusalem and passing through Jerusalem would go by Mount Moriah, by the hill of Zion, cross the top of that mountain, that plateau on which Jerusalem sits. About six miles further they would come to the village of Bethlehem. Bethlehem, the town of Ruth and Boaz. Bethlehem, the place where Jacob's first love, Rachel, died and was buried.
And even the taxi drivers will point to the right as you go from Jerusalem to Bethlehem and say, that's Rachel's tomb. Bethlehem was most notably the town where David was born. David, the greatest king that Israel had ever known.
David, the great ancestor of royalty out of whose loins eventually would come the Messiah, the great King of all kings who would rule over a kingdom in Israel that would extend across the face of the earth and would last forever. When they came to Bethlehem, it says in verse 7, there was no room for them. Nine months pregnant in a matter of a few days to deliver a baby, no place to stay.
No relatives awaiting with a warm home, it was late fall or early winter. Nobody to care for this little couple, no room for them. And that note certainly is symbolic of the future for Jesus.
It seems to me that as far as Jesus is concerned, there's still a no-vacancy sign hanging on the world . Before we look, however, at the young couple, let me go back in the text a little bit because there's so much more here that we need to understand. Reviewing briefly, a startling event happened back in chapter 1, verse 26. In the sixth month of the pregnancy of Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, an angel came by the name of Gabriel to a city in Galilee. Galilee is the northern part of the land of Israel. It was Nazareth and it really was a town. This messenger from God, Gabriel, came to Nazareth, which was a nondescript kind of off-the-beaten-track, blue-collar town. And in that town, the angel came directly to a virgin, as I said, probably a 13-year-old girl. She had been betrothed or engaged to a young man whose name was Joseph.
Joseph was a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. To a nondescript town, to a nondescript family, to an obscure girl, came Gabriel. And this is what Gabriel said, "'Hail, favored one, the Lord is with you.'" Of course, she was greatly troubled at the statement, kept pondering what kind of salutation this might be. Nobody had seen an angel in literally 400-plus years, perhaps 500 years, until an angel appeared to Zacharias and Elizabeth, and this was the same angel, Gabriel, who's appearing again.
She is afraid. The angel says, "'Don't be afraid.'" Verse 31, the angel says, "'You will conceive in your womb, you will bear a son, you shall name Him Jesus.'" That's the announcement from God to you. You're going to have a baby, and your baby will be Jesus. Jesus means Savior, and He will save His people from their sins, as Matthew records it. Further, the baby is described in verse 32, He will be great. He will be called the Son of the Most High.
The Most High is a term for God, El Elyon. He will be called the Son of God. The Lord God will give Him the throne of His father, David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever and His kingdom will have no end.
It'll have no limit, it'll have no end. You're going to have a baby. Your baby is going to be the Son of God, as well as your son. He is going to be David's heir. He is going to reign over the throne that was promised to David, and his reign will have no limit and no end. And, of course, this young girl Mary said to the angel, how can this be since I'm a virgin?
This is impossible. The angel said, here's how it's going to happen, verse 35, "'The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you and for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God.'" In other words, it's going to be a miraculous conception. God is going to plant life in you without a man.
Verse 37, nothing is impossible with God. So the promise had come to this young girl that she was going to be the mother of a baby. Even though she was a virgin, the baby would be miraculously conceived by God.
The baby would be the Son of God, God in human flesh. When Mary appeared soon after this to be pregnant and Joseph, to whom she was engaged, found out about it, he was shocked, he was stunned because there was no explanation for her pregnancy humanly than that she had had a relationship with someone else. Joseph knew her to be a godly young girl, a righteous young girl. He was shaken by the fact that she was pregnant and was trying to decide what to do, whether to divorce her, to break the engagement covenant, or whether to stone her to death for this sin when an angel appeared to him, as recorded in Matthew chapter 1, and said to him, "'Don't be afraid to take her as your wife because that which is conceived in her is by the Holy Spirit.'" And she's going to bring forth a child named Jesus, and this child is going to be Jesus because He will save His people from their sins, and further His name will be Immanuel, which means God with us. And Joseph got the message from the angel that she was with child by the Holy Spirit to bring into the world the King, the Savior, God in human flesh. Now when you come to Luke 2, the prophecy has come to pass.
Nine months have passed since Gabriel's announcement. Mary is full term, and she in this passage gives birth to the baby Jesus. Now as Luke tells us the story of the birth, which is very simply told at the beginning of verse 7, and she gave birth, that's it. Another one of those classic understatements, and she gave birth. Nothing particular about that birth of note was like any other and every other birth.
The child was not like any other child. The birth was like every other birth, and we'll look at that in a moment. But Luke, wanting us to grasp the significance of what's going on, provides for us, as any good historian does, a setting for this event.
The event is verse 7, she gave birth. The setting is what enriches it and informs it. And he works his way down, starts with the world setting, and then a national setting, and then a personal setting. First we learn the role that the larger world played in this, then the role that is uniquely designed by God for the nation Israel, and then the particular circumstances of the couple in Bethlehem and the birth of the baby. And so we get the big picture narrowed down to the little picture so that we can grasp in every perspective the wonderful solemn richness of this remarkable unheard of event.
Let's turn to the second setting, the national setting. Luke is concerned now to move from the world scene to the land of Israel itself. And so in verses 4 and 5 he says, And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from...or literally in the Greek, ek, out of the city of Nazareth where they lived, to Judea...that's the lower portion of Israel...to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, probably a term meaning house of bread.
And he went there 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. Now this gets us into the context of the land of Israel. We're out of the Roman Empire.
We're away from Quirinius and Caesar Augustus. We're now talking about Galilee, Nazareth, Judea, the city of David, Bethlehem, etc. We're now looking at the nation Israel. And the nation Israel is connected to Scripture. God gave to the Jews the Scripture. And the Scripture was very, very specific about where the Messiah was to be born. There was a prophet by the name of Micah. And in his prophecy, Micah chapter 5 and verse 2, this is what we read, But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrata... if you go back to Genesis 35, 19, you don't have to go there, just in your mind if you go there, Genesis 35, 19, you will find this village was called Ephrata originally, later became known as Bethlehem. And so the prophet identifies it by both names, Bethlehem Ephrata. He says, you are little among the clans of Judah, or too little to be among the clans of Judah. There's a couple of ways to translate that. In other words, it's insignificant.
It was always a very small place, insignificant. But from you, Micah 5, 2, one will go forth for me to be ruler in Israel. You're going to give birth to a ruler. It can't be David that he's talking of, even though David was born there, because David had been born 300 years before this. David was born a thousand years before the Messiah. Micah's prophecy was 700 years before the Messiah. So here we are, Micah's talking 700 years before the birth of Messiah. He says, one will go forth for me to be ruler in Israel.
You say, how do you know it's the Messiah? Because the next line says, His goings forth are from long ago from the days of eternity. He is an eternal being. There will be a ruler born in Bethlehem who has been alive forever. That is a very specific prophecy.
His appearances are from long ago, from eternity. An eternally existing one will become ruler born in Bethlehem, born in Bethlehem. So Luke wants us to understand this. He never...interesting enough, he never mentions the prophecy of Micah. Luke never refers to the prophecy of Micah, doesn't say anything about it. But every Jew who was waiting for the Messiah knew the prophecy of Micah.
It was an unmistakable prophecy, unmistakable. And Matthew does mention it. In Matthew chapter 2, Matthew says, it has been written by the prophet and you, Bethlehem and so forth, out of you shall come forth a ruler who will shepherd My people Israel. They knew that Bethlehem was to be the place of Messiah, they who knew their Old Testament and waited for the redemption of Israel.
Luke doesn't need to mention it. It was crystal clear besides Matthew specifically mentions it. But it becomes very important because when Caesar Augustus put the census in motion, the end result of that was this young couple were going to be in Bethlehem and because of the date established, they were going to be there at the very moment when that child was born.
They went there in the ninth month of her pregnancy. And so Joseph went up from Galilee out of the city of Nazareth to Judea. By the way, going up, you look at a map, you see Galilee up here, you see Judea down here, you think that's up. Well it's up on the page on the map, but geographically Galilee is lower than Bethlehem. In fact, Nazareth sits up on a hill at the north part of the plain of Esdraelon, the Valley of Megiddo, and you would go down into the valley or the plain and then you would start a slow climb to about 2564 feet or so to where Bethlehem is almost on the same hill as Jerusalem.
So that's why it says he went up. He went up to the city of David, it says, up to the city of David. Judea is the southern region. The city of David is called Bethlehem, it says, and I want to tell you something here because I don't want you to be mistaken about your understanding of this, to the city of David which is called Bethlehem. If you go to the Old Testament and you read the city of David, if you're looking, for example, in 2 Samuel chapter 5 and elsewhere, you'll read about the city of David. In the Old Testament, the city of David refers to the hill of Zion in Jerusalem where David sat as king. In fact, you will, if you talk to a historian or a guide in Israel, they even call this section of Mount Zion, which is a little bit to the south of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, that...they call that hill of Zion the city of David.
The city of Jerusalem was the larger city. The city of David was the place where David reigned and ruled on Mount Zion. It was the city of David within the city of Jerusalem. So when you're reading in the Old Testament about the city of David, it's referring to the Mount Zion where David reigned, but here he tells us the city of David he's referring to is called Bethlehem. That also is the city of David.
It's not the city where he reigned, it's the city where he was born. That too is the city of David. He was born in Bethlehem. Now Bethlehem, as I said, was a pretty obscure place, but there was a man living there identified in 1 Samuel 16 as Jesse the Bethlehemite. And in 1 Samuel 16, God goes to Samuel and he says, look, I've had it with Saul, he's history. Saul's out.
I have pronounced a curse on his line, so forth. And he says to Samuel, so we're going to have to get a new king. I want you to go to Bethlehem because there's a man there by the name of Jesse the Bethlehemite and I'm going to pick one of his sons. As it turned out, he got everybody all shined up and polished and all the sons stood in line and God picked the most unlikely one, picked the baby boy of the family, David. But he was the son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, 1 Samuel 16.
Now it's important then, since Micah said the Messiah is going to be born in Bethlehem, that the Messiah be born in Bethlehem. And so God uses Caesar Augustus, uses Herod, all the political machinations work together and here comes Joseph down to the city of David which is called Bethlehem and he goes there because he was of the house and family of David. As we learned earlier in chapter 1, he was a descendant of David. Mary was also a descendant of David and that's important through Mary.
Jesus got royal blood through His father Joseph who was not His physical father but was His earthly father. He got the right to be the ruler and so they went down to register because they were supposed to register in the house of their ancestors. And again I remind you, all of this is perfect in the plan of God, providentially getting them exactly where they need to be because the Messiah was a son of David and was to be born in the city of David.
The prophets said so in order to fulfill that prophecy. That couple had to be there and God made sure they were. Verse 5 says, they went to register for the census along with Mary who was engaged to Him and was with child.
Really a fearful thing for a 15-year-old and a 13-year-old or so to take such a trip under such circumstances. Now historians have struggled over this issue of along with Mary, was it required that she go to register? Wouldn't it have been enough for a father to register for his wife and his family? We really don't know the answer to that. We don't know whether she needed to register or not. We don't know whether it was required to have her signature or whether it was required to have her indicate some properties or some ancestry or whatever.
We don't know that. But we do know this, that upon being pregnant, she knew there was only one person in the world who would understand her condition. It must have been difficult to explain to her mother and her father how all of a sudden a 13-year-old girl appears pregnant and she's never had a relationship with a man and everybody is suspicious that she's lying. It would have been hard enough for her parents to even understand that, let alone strangers and outsiders. One can only imagine the gossip which must have gone on, the certain amount of shame which she must have had to bear. I don't think there's any way in the world that Joseph who had to make the trip to register would ever have gone without her. I think it was a way for him to take her out of that environment which was very difficult for her and it's also for certain that he wanted to be there when that little life came into the world. He knew what was going on. He knew she was pregnant with the Son of God. He wasn't about to say, you know, I've got a business trip, you might have the Son of God while I'm gone. I don't think so. I really don't think so.
I think this is one you don't want to miss. He knew, he knew this was Jesus that would save his people from their sins because the angel told him that. He knew this was Emmanuel, God with us. He knew what Gabriel had told to Mary. How many times had Mary rehearsed that conversation? I can imagine when he first found out she was pregnant and she said, well, it's like this, Joseph. Gabriel came and told me I was going to be impregnated by God.
Sure. How many times did she have to tell him that? Well, probably a lot of times until the angel finally appeared to him and told him the story and now he knew exactly what was going on. They had to go. Whirly conditions pressed them to go. There wasn't any way he was going without her. So a forced journey to Bethlehem was necessary for the Word of God to be fulfilled.
Bethlehem was the place because that was their lineage and that was the place they needed to be because that was the home of David, the great king, and that again would ensure by virtue of Scripture, not only the decree of Caesar, but by virtue of Scripture, God moved them there to fulfill the clear statement of the prophet Micah. That's John MacArthur, chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, looking at some amazing details from the first Christmas. The title of his current study here on Grace to You, The Promise of Christmas. Well, it really won't be long before Christmas is behind us and the start of the new year is directly ahead and something that you and a lot of listeners may be wondering is, what can I do in 2025 to build spiritual muscles, so to speak?
How can I experience even greater growth next year than I did this year? And so, John, what advice would you have for our listeners as far as some helpful routines to get into? Well, again, I go back to what Jesus said, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. I think there are some Christians who assume that spiritual growth is tied to some emotion or it's tied to some quote unquote worship experience. There are a lot of those experiences that have nothing to do with spiritual growth. And in fact, in many cases, what is offered as worship is the absolute antithesis of anything that would build up a person genuinely in Christ. But there are tools that build the believer.
There are tools that strengthen you. And I'll simplify it by saying they're all in the word of God. It's all about what you know about scripture. So how do you get yourself into a pattern of living and loving the word of God?
Let me suggest some helpful tools. The MacArthur Daily Bible has a reading for every day of the year and each reading has Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms, and Proverbs. Manageable chunks that you get through the entire scripture in one year.
And just reading the scripture will transform your life. And then digging deeper than New Testament commentary series, 33 hardbound volumes plus an index volume cover every New Testament book. Reading commentaries is the richest and most deep dive you can make into the text of scripture. Most people haven't read commentaries. They read a devotional book or something.
Commentary is way deeper than that. And the deeper you go, the more you mine out of God's treasure. If you ordered the whole series, we'll give you a special discounted price as well, but you can order any parts of the New Testament to get started on that. And then finally, the MacArthur Study Bible featuring 25,000 detailed notes to explain every passage from Genesis to Revelation. And now for the first time, Christmas 2024, the MacArthur Study Bible is in the Legacy Standard Bible text of scripture. You can get it in the New King James, the NAS, and the ESV as well. And you can get the MacArthur Study Bible in Spanish, Russian, French, German, Chinese, Italian, and even more. So place your Christmas order today.
Thanks, John. And so, friend, to pick up the MacArthur Study Bible or the MacArthur Daily Bible or one of John's commentaries, don't delay. Call or go online today. Our phone number here is 800-55-GRACE.
You can call weekdays, 730 to 4 o'clock Pacific Time, or you can order online anytime when you visit GTY.org. As John said, the MacArthur Study Bible comes in the New American Standard, New King James, and English Standard versions, and it's also now available in the Legacy Standard text of scripture. The cost is reasonable in hardcover and leather. Premium goatskin is also available. And as for the New Testament commentaries, there are 33 to choose from. Each volume is affordably priced, and you get a substantial discount if you order the entire set. The MacArthur Daily Bible is a gift that can bless your loved ones throughout the New Year and every year.
To ensure delivery before Christmas, we recommend placing your order using the second-day shipping option. Our number again, 800-55-GRACE and our web address GTY.org. And now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson with a question. How closely does the traditional nativity scene resemble what Mary and Joseph faced when Jesus was born? John MacArthur shows you an aspect of that familiar story that you may have never considered. So be here tomorrow for another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.
