An Unusual Birth

Go ahead and open your Bibles to Luke 2. If you don’t have a Bible with you, you are welcome to use the Bible in the back of the pew in front of you. In fact, if you don’t have one, you are welcome to take one home with you as a gift.

The passage we are reading this morning is on page 909.

While you are turning there, let’s have a moment of true confession: How many people here follow the British Royal Family?

You love all the intrigue with Meghan and Harry and Charles and William and the rest?

First, can I just remind you that we fought an entire war that made it where we don’t have to care about that anymore?

Second, then you may remember all the way back to 2013 when Prince George was born. Here is a picture of him shortly after he was born...

He is the child of Prince William and Kate Middleton and one day may become king, so all the world seemed to be in a tizzy when he was born.

In one article, they describe where he would be raised:

“The royal couple will raise their bundle of joy in apartment 1A of Kensington Palace, which has more than 20 rooms. It's also the same palace in which William grew up, noted for its ornate interior design and picturesque gardens.”[i]

Here’s a picture of them from 2016 in Kensington Palace with young Prince George. They were hosting then-President Obama and took some pictures of the prince being cute.

Look at the trappings in that room. It is said that the renovations to their 20-room apartment cost over $4.5 million.

That’s what you would expect for a future king, isn’t it?

A huge space, with the best furnishings, rubbing shoulders with the most powerful people in the world.

As we look at Christmas, though, we see something incredibly unusual.

Last week, we saw that God promised to send an unusual king to set right what we broke in the Garden of Eden.

This week, we turn to the account of his coming.

As we do, we will see that our unusual king arrived on earth in an extraordinarily humble way.

Before we talk about the humble circumstances of his birth and the humble way he was received, let’s define what humility is and isn’t.

Humility is not thinking less of yourself, constantly moping about how terrible you are as a human being. Instead, it is focusing on yourself less.

Humility isn’t about being a weak person who gets pushed around; it is about being strong enough to set aside your own wants, and even needs or rights to serve others.

In our family, we use the phrase “Jesus first, others next” to describe this kind of attitude. We lay down what we want and pursue first what God wants and then what is best for those around us, knowing that God will meet our needs along the way.

As we will see, if our king came to us in humility, then our lives should be marked with unusual humility as well.

Let’s look at verses 1-7 first and see the…of his birth:

1) Humble circumstances.

In the promises we looked at last week, we already saw that the king would be born in an unusual place: a small town outside Jerusalem called Bethlehem.

As we look at how God fulfilled that promise, though, we see that this birth was even more unusual.

The Roman emperor decided that he wanted to take a census, and in those days, you couldn’t just take it online or through the mail.

You had to go back to your ancestral hometown to be registered.

Joseph and Mary were living in Nazareth, which was 90 miles away.

We don’t know how long the trip took or how long they were in Bethlehem before she gave birth, but it seems that she was pretty far along in her pregnancy when they made the journey.

As Tim pointed out during our Cookies, Cocoa, and Carols celebration, there is no mention of a donkey in the Bible. It is possible that she had to walk some or all of the trip.

For us, that would be like walking from here to Lynchburg while you are 7-8 months pregnant!

Is that how you would expect to treat the mother of the king of the world?

It doesn’t get much better when they get to Bethlehem, does it?

The text tells us that there wasn’t even a good, private space available for Mary to give birth to Jesus when the time came.

Traditionally, we think Jesus was laid in a manger because there was no room for him in the inn, as it says in verse 7. For us, the picture in our head is that they tried to check into a hotel and there as a “No Vacancy” sign, so they basically got put into the parking garage with the animals since that was the only space they had available.

Some have suggested slightly different scenarios, though, given the culture and context of the day.

Some have said the inn would have been little more than a walled courtyard where all the travelers slept in the open. They would be protected from bandits and robbers, but there would have been no privacy for a woman in labor. If that’s the case, then putting them in the area with the animals was the best they could do to give her a private place to deliver this unusual king.

There is another possibility, though, given the word used for “inn”. If you noticed, the translation we are using translates it as “guest room.”

How many of you will be hosting family from out of town for Christmas? Try to picture it like this...

Bible scholars such as Craig Keener and others think it is more likely that Joseph and Mary would have been staying with family. That would have been expected culturally, and since it is Joseph’s ancestral hometown, there would have been aunts and uncles and cousins to stay with.

In the houses of poor or working class people, it wasn’t unheard of to have a small guest room in a portion of the house, or possibly even on the roof. It also wasn’t unheard of to have the animals living on one side of the house while you had a room or two in the rest of it.

Keep in mind that everyone was having to come back for the census, so the houses of Joseph’s family would have been packed with relatives in from out of town. The guest room was already taken, so when Mary delivers Jesus, she is out in the middle of the living room! Since she lays him in a manger, it is possible that this was one of those houses where the animals were on one end, so she basically uses a feeding trough as a Pack-n-Play.

So, next week, when your house is full of people, and everyone is having to take turns taking showers and you are tripping over air mattresses in the living room, imagine having your distant cousin’s wife (who got pregnant before they were married) give birth in the living room, and the only place to put the baby is in the dog bed in the corner.

Are any of those scenarios ones you would expect when you think of a king coming into the world?

Remember Prince George we talked about earlier? Was he born in a barn or in the corner of the living room?

Where are the attendants to tend to the royal mother? Where are the satin sheets for the baby’s crib and the delicate blankets and gowns?

They aren’t there. This baby is swaddled in the same kind of strips of linen that every average family swaddled their baby in.

The king of the world, the one who would save his people from their sins, wasn’t born in a palace or even into his own home. He was born in whatever place they could find.

Our unusual king was born in incredibly humble circumstances.

In Luke, we are reading all about the physical circumstances of his birth.

Don’t forget, though, that his humbling has a whole other component.

Keep in mind who this king is! He is God the Son, who humbled himself to take on human flesh:

Philippians 2:6–7 (CSB)

who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited.

Instead he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity....

There’s a lot to unpack in these verses, but the baby born in a borrowed place and laid in a feeding trough is the very God who created the world and sustains it!

He voluntarily laid aside the full expression of his glory and his right to use his divine power whenever he wanted, and he took on a physical body—the body of a baby who needed help to do anything. A body that would need to learn to crawl and then walk and then run. A body that could get tired and hurt. In fact, it was a body that could die.

What greater humility could we be called to display than what Jesus did in leaving heaven and coming to earth in such a humble way?

Our lives, then, should be marked by an unusual humility.

Things didn’t change much after Jesus was born, did they?

The humble circumstances he was born into continued as we see a...

2) Humble reception.

So maybe Jesus wasn’t born into the best circumstances. Surely, once people start finding out who the baby is, they are going to get excited and he will get the honor he deserves.

Who would you tell first?

We have already said Bethlehem isn’t the most influential place, but there would have at least been some leadership there. Maybe the village elders or something—shouldn’t they be the first ones you tell about this baby?

What about the Roman officials in town to oversee the census? Maybe they should be the first to know so they can spread the word through the entire empire?

Perhaps the leaders of the synagogue. They should be looking for the Messiah, so they will be thrilled to know he is here!

Who does God tell first? Look at verse 8...

Shepherds? Really?

Is that the best you could come up with?

These guys would smell bad. They were a kind of loner—they kept to themselves and worked all the time to protect their sheep, so they didn’t have a lot of time for friends. They didn’t get to pay as much attention to the ceremonial cleansing laws, so they may have been considered unclean.

In fact, there are some sources that indicate that they were shifty enough that a shepherd’s testimony wasn’t admissible in court because they weren’t known for being honest!

Yet these men are the first ones to hear about the baby who was born!

And man, did they ever hear about him. Pick up in verses 9-14...

Did you hear who this baby is? The Messiah! The promised king who is going to literally save the world!

The one who is coming to make everything right again! He’s here!

The army of heaven shows up, overflowing with praise.

This is the kind of reception we would expect, isn’t it?

But, in our estimation, they came to the wrong people!

In God’s plan, though, these people are exactly who he wanted to send the news to.

You see, this baby, the Messiah, would one day refer to himself as the Good Shepherd.

As we will look at in January when we get back to studying John,

John 10:11 CSB

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

The first people to welcome the Good Shepherd were the men who were doing what he would do. They were laying their own lives down for the sheep, and he would do the very same.

In the eyes of the world, these men may not of seemed like much. However, in the eyes of our God, they were the perfect welcoming party for this unusual king’s reception.

Look at how they responded in verses 15-20...

They went and worshiped the child and reported all that the angel had said.

Then, they went on their way rejoicing and telling others all they had seen and heard.

They were the first in a long line of people the world looks down on that the Messiah would reach.

In fact, Luke 14 records a parable Jesus used to show just how true this would be in his Kingdom. Read verses 16-24...

The master extended the invitation to the wealthy, but they made up excuses and wouldn’t come. He turned to the lame, sick, and the poor, and then to any who would come.

Maybe that’s why the angels didn’t appear to the Romans or the synagogue leaders or the elders of Bethlehem. Perhaps its because God knew they were too proud to come.

Instead, he sent the angels to the ones who would come, who would rejoice, who would celebrate, and who would tell others.

They were celebrating a baby who was already a king but had humbled himself and taken the form of a servant.

The angels words that day, although filled with joy, carried a heavy message—This king would save his people from their sins, but as any good shepherd would do, it would require him to lay down his own life:

Philippians 2:7–8 CSB

Instead he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. And when he had come as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death— even to death on a cross.

His humility, in fact his humiliation, would take him all the way to a cross, where he would lay down his life and die for everything you and I have ever done wrong.

However, this unusual king defeated death itself, rising from the grave and making the way available for you to find life through him.

This is the baby who was first celebrated by shepherds!

It was an unusually humble reception of a baby born in unusually humble circumstances.

However, that’s exactly what we would expect from our unusual king.

In light of our king’s unusual humility, there are three main questions we need to answer this morning:

Am I willing to humble myself and surrender my life to follow the one who humbled himself for me?

Are you willing to live humbly like he did, putting Jesus first and others next?

Are you willing to reach out to the humble like our king did?

This is our final service before we gather with our families and celebrate our unusual king.

May our week and our gatherings be marked by the unusual humility he displayed in his birth.

Let’s pray...

Endnote:

[i] http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/royal-baby-prince-william-kate-middleton-leave-hospital/story?id=19743280&page=2. Accessed 15 December 2021.