Born in Bethlehem, Called a Nazarene
Notes
Transcript
And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.
Joseph and Mary are obviously important characters in the Christmas narrative. We’re well aware of their roles.
Regarding Mary, the angel Gabriel visited her when she had as yet not known a man to inform her that she would be the mother of the Messiah. Luke 1:30–31 says,
And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS.
It’s hard to imagine what thoughts might have crossed her mind. But one thing is sure: she knew that she didn’t deserve this blessing any more than any other woman. But she willingly embraced it. She expressed her faith in these simple words: Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word (Luke 1:38). And later, when she arrived at her cousin Elisabeth’s, she expressed her faith more fully in what has come to be known as the Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55).
Joseph’s part was very different, though. When he found out that Mary was expecting, knowing that he had had no part in it, he naturally assumed that she had been unfaithful. Yet, being a good man, he chose to divorce her privately to spare her any further embarrassment. Matthew’s account says,
But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.
So, Joseph also embraced his role as Jesus’ stepfather. He did what he was told, protecting Mary and naming her Son Jesus.
From Nazareth
From Nazareth
This morning’s text picks up sometime between the angelic announcements and Jesus’ birth. Joseph and Mary traveled to Bethlehem as the census order of Caesar Augustus required them to do. They packed their bags, left the comfort of their homes, and went to register.
The first thing to note about this is where they came from: Nazareth. That’s where the angel Gabriel visited Mary and told her that she would give birth to the Messiah (Luke 1:26). It’s where Jesus’ family later settled after they returned from Egypt (Matt. 2:23). And when Jesus began his ministry, he also came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized by John in Jordan (Mark 1:9). It's obvious from all of this that Nazareth is the place Joseph and Mary and Jesus called home.
But this doesn’t sound right. We expect great leaders to hail from great places. Kings and Presidents come from Rome, London, Paris, New York and Jerusalem. They go to the best schools and universities. And when they don’t come from great places or graduate from the best schools, we take note. When President Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, more than one pundit commented on the fact that, if confirmed, she would be the only current justice who had not graduated from an Ivy League law school.
Although Nazareth may be noteworthy as Mary’s hometown and the place where Jesus grew up, it wasn’t a great place. Nathanael asked Philip, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? (John 1:46). He didn’t mean that Nazareth had an especially bad reputation like Chicago did in the days of Al Capone, but only that it had no reputation at all. It’s never once mentioned in the entire Old Testament. Neither Josephus nor any other historian referred to it. Having no claim to fame or importance, it was the least likely place for the Messiah to come from.
But for us it's important that Jesus did come from Nazareth. He had to be a Nazarene. Matthew mentioned this. When Joseph and Mary returned from Egypt, they settled again in Nazareth that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene (Matt 2.23).
But wait a minute. If Nazareth wasn’t even mentioned in the Old Testament or any other Jewish literature that were know of, how could the prophets have foretold that Messiah would be called a Nazarene? Commentators have offered numerous explanations for this, but one thing is clear: calling someone a Nazarene meant that he was the kind of person that most people wouldn’t pay much attention to. Why would they? No one expected a Nazarene to come from a wealthy or powerful family, or to have a stellar education, or to have a lot of worldly connections. And isn’t this exactly how people treated Jesus in the first century? And before he made himself known to us, isn’t this how we treated him? The prophet Isaiah wrote,
He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Jesus described himself in similar terms in Psalm 22. He said,
But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, He trusted on the LORD that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.
The fact that Jesus and his family came from Nazareth witnesses further to his humiliation. He made himself of no reputation to offer himself on the cross for our sins.
To the City of David
To the City of David
But Nazareth was only the starting point of Joseph and Mary’s journey. Their travels eventually took them to another community called Bethlehem.
Luke’s description of Bethlehem is very different from his description of Nazareth. In line with all that we just said, he barely mentioned Nazareth, except to say that it was located in Galilee. But he called Bethlehem the city of David — even before he identified it by name. The angel also called it the city of David in verse 11. And David’s name was also used to explain why Joseph and Mary had to go to Bethlehem for the census. It was because Joseph was of the house and lineage of David.
In regard to size and population, Bethlehem wasn’t any larger in the first century than Nazareth. In fact, there were so few people living there that when Herod sent his soldiers there to kill all the boys under the age of two, they probably found less than a dozen. But unlike Nazareth, it was a city of prominence. It’s where Jacob buried his beloved Rachel after she died giving birth to Benjamin. It’s also where Boaz lived. When he redeemed Ruth,
And all the people that were in the gate, and the elders, said, We are witnesses. The LORD make the woman that is come into thine house like Rachel and like Leah, which two did build the house of Israel: and do thou worthily in Ephratah, and be famous in Bethlehem:
David, bring a descendant of Boaz and Ruth was born, raised and anointed ruler over God’s people in Bethlehem. There his family held a yearly sacrificial feast (1 Sam. 20:6), and perhaps it was also there that they kept their family records. And finally, the prophet Micah predicted the Messiah would be born in this small town. Micah 5:2 says,
But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.
By the time Jesus was born, the fact that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem was common knowledge among the Jews. When Herod the Great asked the chief priests and scribes where he might find the newborn King, they immediately answered him and quoted Micah’s prophecy. There’s an even more interesting exchange in the seventh chapter of John’s gospel. When certain people started declaring that Jesus was the Prophet or the Christ, others who knew that he came from Galilee challenged them, saying,
Hath not the scripture said, That Christ cometh of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem, where David was?
The fact that Jesus was born in Bethlehem is important because it, along with the fact that he was a descendant of David, helped to identify him as the promised Messiah, who would sit on the throne of his father David.
Although Jesus was born in Bethlehem, he was only identified with Bethlehem in connection with his birth. Otherwise, he was a Nazarene, a person of no special importance, and even despised. No passage of the Bible makes this point more clear than John 19:19. John wrote,
And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. And the writing was, JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS.
This was a mockery. Imagine someone as unworthy as a Nazarene claiming to be the King of his people. How absurd! Who would believe such a thing?
Likewise, early Christians were called Nazarenes because of our affiliation with the crucified King. In Acts 24:5 the Jews said of Paul,
For we have found this man a pestilent fellow, and a mover of sedition among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes:
If you follow Jesus, you will also be called a Nazarene. I doubt that anyone will actually use that word nowadays, but they’ll find other words that basically mean the same thing — words like unenlightened, ignorant, blind, misogynist, hateful, and so on. Just remember that you can’t expect to be treated better than your Master. People might call you a Nazarene but you’re a child of the King!
With Child
With Child
And finally, one additional point in our text deserves a few words. Luke says that when Mary accompanied Joseph to Bethlehem for the taxation she was great with child.
The problem here is that our translation added the word great, which makes it sound like Mary was teetering on the edge of giving birth. Maybe the translators did this because verse 5 runs into verse 6 with only a period, giving the impression that Mary delivered soon after arriving in Bethlehem. Or maybe they did it because the previous chapter mentions that Mary made an earlier trip to Judea, which means that her trip to Bethlehem came later. But we don’t know how much later it would have been. The Greek says only that Mary was pregnant (ἐγκύῳ) without any hint as to how far along she was.
There are three things we can say about this:
First, regardless of where Mary was in her pregnancy, her trip to Bethlehem was probably unavoidable. The census records of Egypt confirm that women also had to register with their husbands. Verse 5 of our text says, Joseph went to Bethlehem to be registered with Mary his espoused wife.
Second, the trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem would not have been a comfortable trip for Mary at any point in her pregnancy. Although it was only ninety miles, there didn’t have an automobile to drive on nicely paved roads. There were no motels or restaurants along the way. It’s likely that she and Joseph had to walk the whole way because they were poor. On Christmas cards Mary is often pictured as riding a burro, but there’s nothing in the Bible to suggest that she did.
Third, while it appears that the Roman census was the occasion for Joseph and Mary traveling to Bethlehem, the census doesn’t seem to be their only reason for going. Think about it. If Mary was still fairly early in her pregnancy, why did she and Joseph stay in Bethlehem until Jesus was born? But even if she was further along, it’s interesting that she and Joseph settled there afterward. In the second chapter of Matthew, the wise men found the young child Jesus (vv. 8, 9, 11, 13, 14), who was probably between one and two years of age, not at the inn where he was born, but in a house (v. 11). So, why did they stay so long?
I think the answer takes us back to the one thing that Luke keeps focusing on, viz., David. Joseph and Mary, bring descendants of David, went back to the city of David. This wasn’t a sentimental journey, but a redemptive one. Just like others, Joseph knew the Old Testament scriptures that spoke of David’s Son and his birth in Bethlehem. He was aware of the schedule laid out in the book of Daniel. And he knew that Mary’s child was the promised Son because the angel of the Lord told him so (Matt. 1:20–23), and by this time Mary had also told him what the angel had said to her, viz.,
He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David:
The fact that Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem and stayed there isn’t incidental to our text, a nice part of the story that has no special significance; rather, it’s its purpose. It showed that Joseph believed God’s promises and acted on them. It declared to others that the Messiah had come and that God had placed his only begotten Son in the care of a poor carpenter.
From the beginning, the gospel is evangelical. It’s meant to be embraced and promoted. And this applies to us, too. Peter wrote,
But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light:
Today’s text says that Joseph and Mary traveled to Bethlehem to fulfill their obligation concerning Caesar’s census. Unfortunately, that’s as far as most people get. But Luke, by emphasizing the royal city, the royal family and the heir to the throne, wanted us to see something far more glorious than a travelogue. He told us about the coming of the Son of David, who would reign forever over the people of God. He’s the King of kings and the Lord of lords, the little baby who rules heaven and earth.
Over the last few weeks, my wife and I have been watching a Netflix series on the reign of Queen Elizabeth. In one episode, Elizabeth was eating a picnic lunch out in the middle of a horse pasture. It seemed so out of character for an English monarch, but we sometimes forget that kings and queens are real people.
And likewise, it’s hard to imagine the King of glory dwelling in human flesh and sleeping in a feeding trough. But he did it nonetheless. He did it for us. This is our King! He reigns in his church, sanctifying and cleansing his bride. And he reigns in the affairs of all mankind, so that not a single event ever takes place apart from his sovereign appointment. And he reigns over the universe in such a way that every atom shouts his glory and works together for our good. That’s more than we can imagine. Yet, it's all true and amazing and wonderful.
So, let us humble ourselves before this glorious King and sing the praises of the baby Jesus! Amen.