Mary Had a Little Lamb

What a picture of God's condescension. He entered the world of sin, the stable perhaps serving as a metaphor of the wretched sinful condition, the putrid nature of men's hearts, the despicable sense of overwhelming sinfulness that had enveloped humanity. He came down into that. He left the splendid nature of heaven and he chose the rags of humanity.

Ladies and gentlemen, he could not have stooped any lower and that was his point. One of the marvels of the incarnation of Jesus Christ is that he left heaven. He left the splendor of heaven and became a baby, born in a lowly manger. Prior to Jesus coming, there had been 400 years of silence. When God broke the silence, it wasn't with a prophet or a priest, he sent his son. Many in our culture today will celebrate the holiday but not the Savior whose birth we remember.

Welcome to Wisdom for the Heart. We're continuing our Christmas messages today with a series called Emmanuel. Stephen called the message you're about to hear, Mary Had a Little Lamb. When the prophet Malachi finished and he put his quill away with what we know to be the last book of the Old Testament, that last verse would be the last word heard from God for some 400 years. Between the last verse of Malachi and the first verse of Matthew, God did not speak. The heavens were silent. Those years were known as the 400 silent years. No prophet, no revelation, no angelic messenger from heaven, no fire from heaven, no sign, no miracle, no word from God.

In fact, it was such a bleak time in Israel's history that they referred to it later as the dark period. Plato, who lived a few hundred years before the birth of Christ, one day lamented maybe one day a logos, that is a word, an explanation will come from God. In other words, one day maybe God will speak again. The Apostle John in writing of the coming of our Lord, it's interesting to me that he said, in the beginning was the logos, in the beginning was the word, the explanation, the reason. It was with God, it was God and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, literally and pitched its tent among us. We beheld his glory, even the glory of the Father, full of grace and truth. Jesus Christ's coming shattered the silence of the heavens. And in a matter of hours after his birth, God's angelic advertising agency would light up the sky and with their brilliant singing, they would announce the news that the word from God had come.

The explanation had arrived from God in the most unexplainable way. We've taken time this season to look again, and I invite your attention back to Luke in his gospel account of those events, chapter two, verse one. Luke begins by saying, now it came about in those days that a decree went out from Caesar, the son of God. You could read that in there because Augustus means Holy One.

It was a name related only to the deity of the Roman gods, the ones they believed were truly God, the ones they worshiped. They had attributed to this Caesar for the first time in the Roman Empire of some 400 years, the title Augustus, Holy One, and this would begin Caesar worship and eventually lay the groundwork for what would become great persecution because the believers would never say that he was the son of God. They believed in Jesus Christ was the true and only living son of God. Well, this man sent out a decree that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth.

This was the first census taken while Crenius was governor of Syria and all were proceeding to register for the census, everyone to his own city. And Joseph also went out 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. As we mentioned, that last phrase would mean that they were the scandal of Nazareth. These two Jewish young people who were betrothed evidently and violated the vows of the Kiddushim. They had violated the laws of purity and now the text informs us that she was with child.

We know the inside story and we looked at it, but the community around them didn't. They simply knew that she was in fact nine months pregnant and when Joseph and Mary left their town and left for Bethlehem, they left their reputations permanently behind. The accusation, as I mentioned, of Jesus Christ's illegitimacy would never be lived down. In fact, 30 years into his life, just into his ministry, he was declaring himself to be the Messiah and the Jewish leaders scoffed at him and said, we were not born out of wedlock. That is, we were not born out of fornication. We were not illegitimately born like you were. How could you be the Messiah? The accusation would be something that Joseph and Mary felt deeply.

I have been struck all over again in studying this passage with the deep character and the deep trust of this teenage couple in nothing less than the Word of God. They would overcome at least three or four different and major obstacles. I've already mentioned the first one and that would be this unfair indictment, this accusation that would be painful to them that they would never be able to live down.

Second would be unexpected inconvenience. In fact, if you put the gospel accounts together, you discover that Joseph was spoken to four different times and after each revelation, he had to make changes in his life. The first time caused him to have to change his plans. He was going to put Mary away and rescue his suspect reputation, but the angel came to him and informed him of what was happening and he believed the Word of God and he changed his plans and he took her as his own. Over the course of their early marriage, Joseph was told to relocate with them three different times. In fact, the first two years of Jesus' life, the family was on the run.

They escaped with their lives and through God's revelation, Joseph would be told what to do next and where to go next. Three times he had to reestablish his career as a carpenter. Three times he had to move his family and reset his home.

Three times in less than three years. In verse 3 of this text begins with their story, which is a story of being on the road. Here, pregnant, poor, isolated, misunderstood. They wouldn't feel at home anywhere for years. The plan of God would forever change their lives. The will of God for them would be terribly inconvenient. It would end any dream that they would have had of a normal life.

The will of God for Joseph and Mary would rule out that comfortable life and I believe would often lead to times of total physical and perhaps even mental and spiritual exhaustion. You ask the average Christian today, how do you know if you're in the will of God? And they will respond with, well, because everything's working out. Ask Joseph, how do you know you're in the will of God?

Because nothing's working out, he would say. You ask the average Christian, how do you know if God is at work in your life? And they'll say, well, when things are improving, when things are progressing, when things are coming together, you ask Joseph and Mary and they would say, when nothing gets better, in fact, everything is turned upside down from anything we'd ever planned. Think of it. Have you ever had a believer, young or old, say something like this to you? God is so good to me.

Nothing is working out. No, we don't talk like that. We don't believe that. Joseph and Mary are heading to Bethlehem and they've packed just enough for this 80 mile journey and to get there and back. I'm sure they talked about when they return, setting up the practice and settling down the accusation and setting up their home. But they would barely get things set up before once again, Joseph would be told to take his family and flee to Egypt. They'd live on the run. A lot of pressure on a young couple. Their lives would be filled with unplanned inconvenience.

There's another thing that strikes me about them. Their lives would also be pressured, I believe, by unmistakable inadequacy. Would you notice at verse 21 what happens when eight days were completed before his circumcision? His name was then called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. And when the days for their purification, according to the law of Moses, were completed, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord, as it is written in the law of the Lord, every firstborn male that opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord and to offer a sacrifice according to what was said in the law of the Lord, which included a number of animals. These here mentioned a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons.

You need to know that this here reveals the depth of their poverty. And you know that Joseph and Mary, with what they knew, would have wanted to pull out all of the stops and to give God the best gift they could possibly give as they dedicated the Son of God to God the Father. But this text informs us that they chose, they purchased two birds. The law of Moses indicated that if a couple was poor, they could purchase two pigeons.

And I imagine they must have at this point in time felt their poverty deeply. This was an indication that even though I'm sure they wanted to do so much more, in fact the law of Moses indicated that the most prized, most expensive animal you could purchase to offer at the dedication of a firstborn son was an unblemished lamb. It's interesting to realize at this dedication ceremony that they had brought a lamb. Immanuel who had come to die was the final lamb. They brought a lamb. Can you imagine furthermore how inadequate they must have felt raising the Son of God? I don't know of any parent that says they're prepared. They're ready.

Each day is a new challenge. But just imagine how inadequate they must have felt. They were responsible for the education of Jesus Christ according to Jewish custom. They were to teach him the Old Testament Scriptures. They were to tell him the stories of the people of Israel and the great leaders like Moses and Joshua. I imagine it would have been rather wonderful on one hand for them to teach Jesus the Psalms of David and tell Jesus that he was singing the songs written by his great, great, great, great something grandfather David. I imagine it would have been wonderful to tell him the story of Boaz who redeemed Ruth and then tell him that Ruth was his great something grandmother. This was his family.

These were his relatives. But can you imagine how inadequate these two parents must have felt? There were no books on how to raise boys then. There was no book on how to raise the Messiah. That book had not been written, never would be written. Can you imagine, friends, teaching the prophecies of Scripture to the one whom the prophets had foretold? Can you imagine teaching the law to one who'd come to fulfill the law and who would never break it? Unmistakable inadequacy. God said to them in effect, I want you to teach the written Word to the living Word.

Before we go any further, let me at least make one application. Being who you are, where you are, with the challenges you face, with the pressures that you deal with, whether it's raising children, whether it's walking with God in the midst of pressure on that campus or in that corporate scene, trusting God perhaps today when His will for you is extremely inconvenient, maybe even painful. We can learn a lot from these two teenagers who are faithful to the Word of God. I'll just say one of them, and that is this, handling obstacles successfully, that is growing deeper in your faith does not depend upon previous experience, but personal obedience. More than likely, the things that you're facing that give you the greatest difficulty are things where you would tell a friend, I've never dealt with this before. I've never gone through this before. This is new to me.

Most often God whispers in your heart, I know it's new. You've never done anything like this before. There's no time to prepare. You can't get ready.

There's no manual to follow. Just obey me today and I will take care of tomorrow. Another challenge surfaced as I studied this paragraph. Joseph and Mary, back in the first part of chapter 2, experienced not only unfair indictment and unexpected inconvenience and unmistakable inadequacy, but unfortunate indifference.

Look at verse 6. 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. And of course some things never change, right? The inn was overcrowded then and the hearts of men are overcrowded today.

I think it's interesting though to get a little different picture in your minds. Justin Martyr, the second century church leader, stated that the specific birthplace of Jesus was not the wooden lean-to that you think of, but a shallow cave used as shelter for animals, which would have been common in this day. In fact, in the middle of the fourth century when the Emperor Constantine ordered that a church be built upon the birthplace of Christ, a church was built upon and over against a Bethlehem cave. A little recess in a rocky hill where the cattle or perhaps the donkeys and horses of travelers would be kept, for the most part in the open.

This is where they would come. I wonder if Joseph argued with the innkeeper. We have no indication that he did. But Joseph and Mary knew what was happening and if we knew and we were back then knowing what we know now, we would have gone in and cleared it all out and said, don't you know what's happening? They didn't know. I'll never forget something that happened a number of years ago with my twin boys. That September they had started first grade and also here at church, of course, we had promoted the kids and they were now in a new Sunday school class and they had a brand new teacher who was a fairly newcomer to Colonial. It was either the first or second Sunday of this new session when the teacher came up to me and introduced herself. She said, I'm your boy's new Sunday school teacher. She said, there's something that happened today that I think you need to hear about. I said, that's great. Can you tell her, their mother?

She's around here somewhere, I'm sure. Oh, she said, you'll like this. I said, well, what happened? She said, well, this morning after class, your boys were about to run out the door. And I said, stop right there. You're not allowed to leave until the parent comes. They argued. No, no, no, we can leave.

We do it all the time. We can leave after class and explaining away and she's, no, you got to stay right here. And then one of my sons, which will remain nameless, put his hands on his little six year old hips and looked at her and said, do you know who my father is? She didn't know. She said, I don't know who. He said, Pastor Davey. I said, what did you say? She said, I looked him square in the eye and said, I don't care.

You're not leaving this room. Which is a great answer, by the way. Oh man, he thought with his connections he could run the hallway.

In fact, he thought he owned the place, I'm sure. Well, that's how we are, aren't we? We don't grow out of that. We pull strings, we drop names. We do that all the time. Well, imagine this scene here. Jesus Christ owned the world. You talk about the ultimate connection. Joseph could have said, wait a second, you need to know who his father is. None of that.

Why? Because God's plan was a stable, a cave. We've got to erase from our minds this Christmas card picture of fresh hay and clean animals. Erase from your mind the picture of a warm fire.

The last thing you would ever build in a stable is a fire. It's cold, dark, maybe damp. The night air was punctuated by Mary's cries of pain, surrounded by manure, the stench of animals. The ground would have been packed hard by animals, their hooves or worse yet muddied by some recent rain. I'm sure Joseph made a soft place for Mary to lie as best he could, maybe with his own cloak. We're not told, but also don't know how long her labor was. Perhaps it lasted well into the night. Perhaps Joseph held her hand and cooled her brow and spoke encouraging words to her. Maybe he shooed away the animals. But I'm sure that being a normal 16 or 17 year old, he was filled with a mixture of anticipation and fear.

This would be new. And there wasn't anybody to help. He may be a 17 year old with his 14 or 15 year old bride or involved in something without any experience and they're alone and it's dark. Can you imagine for us delivering babies is much different, isn't it? But even still, if it's your first child, there's that mixture of fear, right?

I can remember when these twins I mentioned were born. We were in seminary. We were going to have children after I finished. God had other plans.

My last semester they were born. And I can remember Baylor Hospital was two blocks away from the seminary, which was very convenient. And our converted Jewish doctor had a wonderful system in place. He would deliver a seminarian's baby for free.

So we didn't look through the phone book and try to find somebody different. We just lined up at Dr. Godad's office and he delivered our babies. And I can remember my wife going for a usual appointment at that point in time and things became very urgent. They checked her in.

In less than five hours she would deliver the twins. I got the call and rushed over the two blocks to the hospital and Marcia went upstairs and they took her away and they left me there by that little office with a half door and they said, before you go up you've got to fill out all these forms. You never think you've got to be kidding.

You know, we don't know what's happening. And I was sort of filled with a little panic and so I just started signing my name. I was supposed to read the forms. I didn't. I just signed.

I could have signed four years into the Marines for all I knew. But I just signed my name and went upstairs and she was immediately processed into the delivery room. This was going to be the natural delivery of twins without a C-section which would be unusual. Because of that the room was filled with people.

I remember having to fight for a space. There were doctors, at least four of them, maybe five. There were interns who'd come.

There were medical students who'd heard about the delivery of twins and they wanted to see it happen. And I could have sold tickets, you know. Come on.

You want to see this happen? Sure. Everybody else is in here.

Come on in. I just sort of stood by the bed and didn't know what to say or what to do. And eventually they were born and I couldn't help but rethink. And maybe you've thought through in your own mind as I've rehearsed this your own story.

But I couldn't help but think of them. Two kids themselves. They're out of town. They don't know anybody. There are no doctors, no nurses. There's no midwife. No mother nearby to ask questions. No sister to help. No one. No one.

They are alone. The pain increased. Contractions increased.

The sweat and the fear. And Luke simply records in verse 7 one of the greatest understatements in all of the Bible. And she gave birth to her firstborn son.

That's it. And she gave birth to her firstborn son. By the way, you notice it's not her only son, but her firstborn. And that's important because that makes clear that this son has the legal rights of inheritance. This son can lay claim to the throne of his forefather David. This son is the rightful prince of Israel. But for now in a cave that reeked of livestock and perhaps damp hay, manure, this baby seemed anything like a king. This seemed anything unlike what you would think the entrance of a king would be like.

One author wrote his face. Like any babies was prunish and red. His cry, though strong and healthy, was still the helpless and piercing cry of a newborn baby. This was majesty in the midst of the mundane. This was holiness in the filth of manure and sweat. This was deity entering the world on the floor of a stable through the womb of a teenage girl into the calloused hands of a young carpenter. He wasn't born with a halo, by the way. The animals didn't kneel and worship him. I've seen pictures like that. Even a cow has a halo.

I've seen one of those pictures too. He was an ordinary looking, sounding, feeling baby. This is why Paul would say the mystery is so great that God became man.

We cannot fathom it. Mary was so exhausted she didn't even hold him. She at least swaddled him, the text tells us. Literally she swaddled him, meaning she wrapped strips of cloth around his limbs, which was their custom, and then a piece around his body and bound him up real tight. Then he laid their newborn in a manger.

The Greek word is phatene. It could be literally translated feed trough. Custom of this, especially if it were a shallow cave, they would simply carve along one side of the cave a trough and then they would hollow it out and they would lay their hay and there would be made of stone and evidently Joseph moved some of the old hay away and maybe he moved a donkey or two further in and he maybe took his cloak or a saddle or some strips of cloth and made the trough a little more comfortable and then they laid in that feed trough the Son of God. You could not have chosen a more wretched place to be born than this. You could not have scripted a more humble, impoverished beginning like this one. What a picture of God's condescension. He entered the world of sin, the stable perhaps serving as a metaphor of the wretched, sinful condition, the putrid nature of men's hearts, the despicable sense of overwhelming sinfulness that had enveloped humanity. He came down into that. He left the splendid nature of heaven and he chose the rags of humanity.

Ladies and gentlemen, he could not have stooped any lower and that was his point. Emmanuel, God with us, is synonymous with this one leaving riches and accepting rags. Paul wrote, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor so that through his poverty, his humiliation, his submission, you might become rich. Mary had a little lamb. His skin was bronze and smooth and everywhere that Mary went, she pondered in her heart the news. This was not an accident, some unfortunate incident.

This was planned from ages past. God's word from a stable was heard at last. I hope Stephen's lesson encouraged you today. If you'd like to share this lesson with others or maybe listen again yourself a little later in the day, it's on our website. The series is called Emmanuel and this lesson is called Mary Had a Little Lamb. Our website is wisdomonline.org and if you've never contacted our ministry before, today would be a great day to call us. That's because we're going to send you a gift. Stephen has a paperback booklet called Emmanuel. It's based on this series and we're sending it as a free gift to thank you for taking the time to introduce yourself. Call 866-48-BIBLE and then join us next time for more wisdom for the heart.