When Was Jesus Born?

INTRODUCTION

I want to welcome you this morning to First Christian Church, I am so glad you chose to join us this morning as we worship our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  We are glad you are here and I am so glad you have joined us today as we dive into the next sermon in our “Jesus 101” series.

Last week we asked what was important about Jesus, and we said the most important thing is that Jesus is our redeemer.  The first week we talked about who Jesus is.  He is fully God, fully man, a teacher, and our savior.

Early Saturday morning I was asking a lot of “W” questions myself. At about 1:30am yesterday our door bell rang. Not a normal time for it to ring. Obviously I flew out of bed and struggled to find my glasses to get to the door and figure out what was going on. I was asking, in my head, all of the ‘W’ questions, who, what, when, where, and why. Well nobody was at the door and after some investigating I realized that it was actually the transformer in the actual chime that went bad and was causing the bell to ring, but it was not how I wanted to be woken up that morning.

Today we jump into the when and where Jesus was born.  Would you join me in prayer this morning as we begin.

PRAY

WHERE HE WAS BORN

 You may notice a similar theme throughout this series, that we go back to verses that we looked at during Advent.  These are verses that we probably most associate with December and the nativity scene, but just because we have done that traditionally, does not mean that we cannot look at the verses during other times in the year. 

 If I were to ask you where Jesus was born, I would guess you have an answer.  We have all probably heard it before, but Jesus was born in the city of Bethlehem.  For most of us, we do not normally think about where we were born.  But for Jesus, the city of his birth was very important.  Just like we have seen with different aspects of the Messiah, we had Old Testament prophecy that pointed to the birth city of Jesus Christ.

 Micah 5:2 says, “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days.”

Jesus, the Messiah, was born in Bethlehem just as was foretold in Micah. Don’t just take my word for it though, look at how Matthew records the birth of Jesus in his Gospel:

Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, 2 saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” 3 When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him; 4 and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. 5 They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet: 6  “ ‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’ ”

 A couple quick notes about this part in Matthew.  You may be saying, this isn’t the normal passage we go to when we talk about the birth of Christ.  You are right!  And you may say, why doesn’t this have all the stuff that Luke tells us?  The normal verses we read or hear at the Nativity play. This is a great reminder of the beautiful cohesion of the four Gospel accounts. 

Our four Gospels tell a unified story.  They tell the message of Jesus Christ and give us a picture of His life on earth, His ministry, and the price He paid for our sins.  Many that are outside of the Church like to jump to the differences in the accounts, like how Luke and Matthew handled the birth of Jesus slightly differently, as a reason to not believe the Gospels.  We must remember a few key things with the Gospels.

 First, the Gospel accounts are written to a specific audience.  While they are all telling the same story, they are communicating those stories to different groups.  Second, these are 4 accounts written from the perspective of different people witnessing the same events.  I have used this analogy many times, but if we were to go to an intersection and all stand on different corners and witness an accident in the middle of that intersection, we would have different perspectives of that accident. Did we all witness the same event? Yes.  But my vantage point allowed me to see something that the other corners maybe could not and vice versa.  That same idea is applied to the Gospels.  The differences we find do not mean that they cannot be trusted, but should give us evidence that they can be trusted.  I would be more worried about the authenticity of the Gospels if each one was a carbon copy of the other.

 Now, back to the passage from Matthew.  We see the fulfillment of the prophesy in Micah, that the savior would be born in Bethlehem, and Matthew even makes sure to include the passage in his recording.  I also find it interesting that Herod, the king of the Jews, was not aware of the birthplace of the savior.  He had to ask the priests and scribes to tell him where this would be. 

This may be because of how small Bethlehem was.  It was a tiny town.  When the land is divided amongst the tribes of Israel in the book of Joshua, Bethlehem is so small it isn’t even listed as a town.  We would say it was insignificant, but God had big plans for this small town.  It was even in its name, Bethlehem means house of bread, and from this house the bread of life would be born and come into our world. 

Where Jesus was born is probably one of the easier questions to answer.  The Bible gives us both Old Testament prophecy and clear New Testament fulfillment of that prophecy.  The Bible is clear and speaks clearly to the birthplace of Jesus Christ.  The King of Kings and Lord of Lords born in a humble stable, placed in a feeding trough for animals, in a small town in Israel. 

WHEN HE WAS BORN

The ‘when’ of the birth of Jesus is a more difficult answer to give.   While we are given some clues to the time of the birth of Jesus, things like the fact a Roman census was being taken, Herod was king, and the shepherds were out in the fields tending the sheep, and we can calculate the time based on when John the Baptist was born, there is not a verse in the Bible that says the exact date of the birth of Jesus. 

 Traditionally, the church celebrates the birth of Jesus in December each year.  While this is tradition, I do not believe that Jesus would have been born on the 25th of December.  Enough of the clues given to His birth would not make December the birth month. Now there is more than enough information out there to try and place a rough date to the birth of Jesus, and a lot of people with the time to do the calculations and math have done that. 

 I do not want us to get so wrapped up in the time of the birth of Jesus to miss the real point here.  It is important for us to understand, that where God has not given us that information, it is not for us to get wrapped up in trying to figure it out.  The point of the birth is not to celebrate a specific day, but to celebrate the fact that God sent His son to us.  That God put on flesh and came to earth.  That in our sin the Creator of the universe came down to earth to make a way, to be the payment, to give life to us who were lost in our sin.

This is where our passage in Galatians comes in.  We read it at the start but just as a reminder Galatians 4:1-5 says this:

I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything, 2 but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. 3 In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. 4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

 Verse 4 is the key verse to our discussion today.  “But when the fullness of time had come,”.  If we want to give an answer to when Jesus was born, it was exactly at the time that God intended.  It was exactly at the time that God knew His son would need to be on earth.  I mean if you think about it, had He been born just a few decades or centuries earlier, His life may not have been recorded in the detail that we have it.  The Temple was destroyed in the year 70 by the Romans.  If Jesus was born only a few decades later the Temple would not have been standing and the nation of Israel would have been in turmoil.

 Jesus is born at the exact right moment to fulfill what must be done by the savior.  At just the right time, a census is called and Mary and Joseph travel to Bethlehem.  At just the right time the Romans are in control of the known world.  There is a period of time called the Pax Romana, the peace of the Roman world, a kind of golden age, that results in common languages and quality road systems being built.  All these things come together at just the right time to result in the savior being born at preciously the correct time that God had ordained.  He did not suddenly wake up one day and decide that it was time for Jesus to be born.  It was at a time that was perfectly ordained, perfectly timed, perfectly fit in the plan God had for this world, for His son, and for you and I.

 We are the children that are mentioned in this passage.  People enslaved to the elementary principles of this world.  We were stuck in the rut of seeking religious ritual that we hoped would provide salvation but it does not.  We needed a savior.  We needed the fulfillment of the promises given by God that a redeemer would come to save us.  One would come to pay the price of our sin.  One would come to offer salvation. 

We are taking the time to go through this series to build up our foundation.  To build up our faith and remind us of the amazing grace we have been given through Christ.  To reinforce our knowledge of Jesus.  To remind us of what our faith is built on.  And to remind us of the importance of Jesus Christ.

 With the question of When and Where Jesus was born and did His ministry, it is important that we see this all took place in the fulfillment of what God had planned.  This was the plan of God since Genesis 3, that the savior would be born, live, and die at exactly the right time that God had planned.  That Jesus would be born in Bethlehem, and He would die on a cross on a hill in Jerusalem.  His life on earth was for a purpose.  He was here to fulfill the need we had for a savior and to die for the sins of mankind. To offer salvation to the world.  And for us to have a path back to God.

Paul says here that Jesus was born of a woman, under the law to redeem those born under the law.  To adopt us as sons and daughters of God.  God did not give us exact details to the day of Jesus’ birth because the purpose was not that we would come together to celebrate a specific day, but that we could come together to see the importance that God came to earth.  That we would celebrate the birth of Jesus because we know it points us to the fact that Jesus would die.  We have the incarnation because we know it leads to the resurrection. 

The when matters because Jesus came to earth at the right time to die for you and for me.  He came to earth to provide salvation.  He came to earth to die for our sins.  He came to die for your sins.  He comes to provide salvation.  He was born at exactly the right time so that He could die and pay the price for your sins. 

            Do you know Him as your savior?