Well, this morning we get to talk about one of the most familiar stories in the entire Bible.
A story that's known not just by Christians all over the world, but by tens of millions
of non-Christians as well. Now, most unbelievers don't think of the Incarnation story as actually true.
For them, it is something of a quaint little fable or a myth, something to feel good about every
time the Christmas season rolls around. But I'm here to tell you this morning that Luke,
the biblical author, has not left us the option to see it that way. You might recall the purpose
statement of his gospel, which he talks about in Luke chapter 1. He claims to have undertaken,
we're going to get it, claims to have undertaken the task of compiling an account of the things that
God accomplished among the followers of Christ in his day. Details handed down to them by those who
were eyewitnesses of the events. And he claims to have investigated these things carefully,
so that his audience might know the exact truth he says, the exact truth about what they had been
taught. So when you read the beginning of Luke's gospel, what you see is a man who is committed
to the historical method, not someone looking to fabricate a quaint little legend. Now, this
morning we sit here together as a group of people who not only believe that the Christmas story is
factual history, we also believe that as Luke was writing, he was being carried along by the spirit
of God. And so every word comes from the Lord himself. And that means every single detail
of this story is important to us. And yet, because the Christmas story has become so familiar to us
over the years, right? All of the cartoons and the Christmas cards, all these things that we hear
and read, because it's so familiar, it's possible even for us to miss some of the very important
and deep truths that sit just below the surface of Luke's narrative. So I want to present to you
this morning four words, four big ideas for you to watch for as we walk through this story. And
here they are sovereign, ordinary, trust, and lowly. And we'll come back to these multiple times
throughout the message. Now, years ago, I remember Dr. MacArthur talking about how Matthew and Luke
give us three important settings in the story of the incarnation. First of all, they give us a world
setting represented by Rome and by Caesar Augustus pointing us towards the fact that Jesus is the
Savior for all of mankind across the entire world. Second, a national setting represented by Herod
the Great and pointing to Christ as Israel's Messiah. And then third, the personal setting
represented by Joseph and Mary, pointing us to the mind-boggling truth that Jesus is the redeemer
of individuals who put their faith in Him alone and follow after Him as Lord. Now, last Sunday,
we laid the context for the first of those three settings. We looked at the lives of Caesar Augustus
and Herod the Great and the roles that each one of them played in God's eternal plan. And we talked
about how they were the heavyweights of that day. Well, this morning, we're going to look at the very
different set of characters, the nobodies of the story, the so-called nobodies, by waiting into
the lives of Joseph and Mary. So grab your Bibles. Let's go to Luke chapter two. Luke chapter two
will also be in Luke chapter one. So you can hover around there. But if you have an actual Bible,
I know some of you guys have actual Bibles. What are these things called? Ribbons?
Markers? Okay, you can put that maybe in Matthew chapter one as well, because we'll be in Matthew
one. You heard the call to worship this morning from Matthew one. We're going to be in all of these
places. So the first idea I want to explore this morning is that one of sovereignty. To ask some
questions of the Christmas story that perhaps you've never considered before. Beginning with this one.
You ready? If God is sovereign over all things, why did the incarnation story play out as it did?
As Matthew and Luke describe. Why? Now, I realized last week we looked at seven practical reasons
why it was, from God's perspective, the exact right time to send forth his Son. But surely,
even last week, we saw that Jesus was coming into a world of conflict, a world of trouble,
a world of turmoil and violence and suffering. So I'll ask the question again. Why would God
sovereignly orchestrate it this way? Think about this. A pagan emperor who could not care less
about Judaism, issues a decree from 1400 miles away, compelling a young couple who are expecting
their first child to leave their home and travel a long distance to register their name so that
they can be taxed by this oppressive government. And while they're there, this young pregnant
woman goes into labor and because there's no proper facilities available to them, she is forced to
give birth in this dirty, disgusting environment. Really, Lord? That's how you drew it up.
Honestly, up to that point, from a human perspective, the reader would have to say,
this is a mess. This is a disaster. And even more so when you consider the identity of the child
being born. And yet, this is how the sovereign God of the universe ordained it to happen.
Couldn't the delivery at least waited until the registration was done and Mary had returned
to Nazareth, where she could be with family, where she could be in her own home, where others
could help her with the birth and then celebrate with her? Come on, Lord. At the very least,
Lord, couldn't you have given her an available room to give birth in a clean environment?
And the questions don't stop there. When God chooses to announce the birth of His one and only Son,
He sends His greatest choir, the angels, to go announce it to shepherds. Shepherds, a bunch of
blue collar guys working out in the fields, poor, uneducated, simple folk. But again, we affirm
that this was God's sovereign plan. But why? Why not send the angels to the high priest
in Jerusalem? Why not have the angels go to the Sanhedrin and announce Israel's Messiah has arrived?
Or why not have the angelic choir just light up the temple courts with the glorious
news that He is here? It's puzzling to us, isn't it? Because this is not the way anyone in this
room would have drawn it up. Now we'll come back later to see if we can answer some of those
questions. But for now, understand this first word, sovereign. This is exactly how God designed
it to go down. Okay, let's look at the text in Luke chapter 2. And as we do that, I want you to
notice first of all how simple and short Luke's narrative is. Think about this. This is the most
impactful event in all of human history, and Luke gives it 20 verses, like less than half of a page
in a standard-sized Bible. Now, if you think about this historically, in the ancient world,
biographers would often embellish stories to make the heroes of those stories seem bigger than life
as glorious as possible. That is a very common thing. You see it in Assyrian records, in the
annals of Babylon and Persia and Greece and Rome, but you don't see it with Luke, right?
Although there are certainly supernatural aspects to his account, the account is not embellished.
It's not overly complicated. He simply states as facts what he discovered in the investigation
of this event. The eyewitness testimony that he gathered. And yes, if you're in case you're wondering,
it is possible that Luke went and interviewed Mary in her later years, or at least had a source
within the family of Joseph and Mary to talk to. It's possible that he was able to locate
and speak with families of the shepherds that saw those events that night. And this is something
that we have to factor in. When you consider the historicity of an account like this, the
ability of ancient people to pass along stories by oral transmission, especially Bedouin communities,
the type that would have been connected to these shepherds. They don't write things down, but they
are absolute experts at relaying the details of a story by oral transmission. In fact, you might be
surprised to learn how most archaeological digs in the Holy Land get started. If you've ever asked the
question, well, how do these guys know where to dig? It's usually because of a story that gets told
in a particular place by a people group that have lived there for thousands of years. And they will
tell Westerners like us, you should dig here. Because this is where it happened. It's been passed
down for thousands of years. I learned it as a child. And guess what? When they start digging,
what do they find? More often than not, they're correct. So this is important to understand
in the historicity of this account that Luke would have done this investigative work. Okay,
let's dig into the text now in Luke 2. And as we do this, guys, let's strive to do what we always
try to do here at Oak Hill. And that is to try to slip on the sandals of the biblical characters and
to walk in their shoes. To try to understand, don't read it just on a flat page, understand what they
were going through, what they were thinking and feeling, and even more so with this particular
story. Look at verse 1. Now in those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that a
census be taken of all the inhabited earth. And by that, Luke means by the entire world that Rome
rules over. This was the first census taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria, and everyone
was on his way to register for the census each through his own city. And Joseph also went up
from Galilee from the city of Nazareth. So I mentioned this last week, Luke is so good to
history nerds like me. To set the story in the context of this very famous man of whom much has
been written, Caesar Augustus, and then to shrink it down even more and set the context during the
governorship of this lesser known man named Quirinius. Now this is a man who even secular historians
agree, served two terms as governor of Syria during his lifetime, and you'll see in here of often
missed nuance in verse 2. It says this is the first census taken under Quirinius. Now that's
important because there is a more famous and well documented census that took place in the year
6. In fact, Luke himself mentions it in Acts chapter 5, under Quirinius. But if that were the
census in view, then the timeline here doesn't fit. So Luke doing the job of a good historian says
no, I'm not talking about that second census. I'm talking about the first one. And by the way,
just as an aside, the early church father Justin Marder who lived in Rome in the second century,
in his day, he wrote a famous work called his Apology. And in that work, he says in the second
century, the very census that Luke is referring to in our text, he says, if you want to look it up,
it's in the archives here in Rome, you can actually see it. It's a very real thing. And so Joseph
now has to leave his home, right, leave his village of Nazareth, which by the way, in that day
Nazareth, if you've been there, you see it's a pretty built up city today. Back then, it wasn't
much of a town at all. Most historians have looked at it and said probably less than 100 people
in Nazareth, right, a single synagogue, one marketplace. Most of the people would have been
farmers, but then you had some skilled laborers as well, probably a potter and a weaver and a
dire and a blacksmith, and of course a carpenter, right. But these were the days of Roman
occupation and Roman taxation. Keep in mind, at the time of the incarnation story here,
Rome has controlled Israel militarily for almost 60 years now. So they've been living under this
oppressive shadow. And the Jewish residents, whether you lived in Galilee or Judea, they
resented having to put up with this, this Gentile presence in their land. And then to add salt to
the wound, this Gentile government was extracting taxes from them and not for their benefit. They
didn't get any benefit from paying taxes. Those taxes went back to Rome to offset the costs of the
Roman troops that they resented in the first place. So it's a bad situation. But this decree comes
down in imperial edict straight out of Rome. But try to imagine now how Joseph, in his situation
must have resented this intrusion into his life. I have to stop working now. I have to pack
everything up. I have to make this long grueling journey down to Judea with my wife and for what?
So that I can pay taxes to Rome. Imagine the resentment you would feel. But he had no choice in
the matter. As frustrating as this must have been, Luke is going to show us that God was at
work in each one of these details. But could Joseph have seen it at that moment? No, of course not.
God had sovereignly ordained this entire process. He was working from Augustus to Joseph and from
this vast city of Rome to this little town of Nazareth. And yes, he's working in the timing too
of Mary's pregnancy. Let's go back to verse four. Joseph went up from Galilee, from the city of
Nazareth, to Judea in the south, right, 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,
engaged to him, but with child. Okay, so let's talk about this Mary. Got some images I'm going to use
today. Just you know how I love this, right? To give you something to look at, to sort of picture.
This is from the movie, The Nativity. And I think they did it. Probably the best job I've seen at
casting actual Middle Eastern people in one of these holiday movies. So this is, I think, a good picture
of what Mary might have looked like. By the way, her name in Hebrew, not Mary, would have been Maryam,
right? It's important to know that. Hebrew culture, Hebrew name. But in terms of marriage, she would
have been very, very young by our standards today. Certainly a teenager. And we know this because
archaeologists have dug up marriage records from this culture and in this time. And they will tell you
that most women at this time were married between the ages of 13 and 17. That was standard practice.
And it was strongly encouraged by the rabbis of the day for practical reasons. Why? Well, because
lifespans were short. Right? People didn't expect to live to be 90 like we do today. Lifespans were short,
kids were valuable, and there was no, air quotes, workplace for a woman to go out and build a career
other than in the fields and in the home. And so there would be no reason for a young woman to wait
to get married and to start having children. And what of Joseph? Well, he is probably older than his
bride. That was pretty normal in that day because before he gets married, he wants to establish his trade
to build an income so that he'll be acceptable to his bride's parents. But still, most historians will
tell you he was probably either late teenager or very early 20s. So this is a very young couple.
Now, you may have heard the old saying, you marry the entire family when you get married, right?
You marry into your in-laws. And that was even more true back than it is in our culture today.
In first century marriages, it was a transactional union between families. The kids didn't get to pick
their spouses. They were arranged by the parents. And the parents didn't often, if you were in Nazareth,
they didn't go, well, let's go look in Judea for a bride for you. No. You looked within your own tribe,
in your own region, so it was a very limited pool, and it was all very tight knit. Now, the language
that you'll find in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, it can be confusing about the marital status
of Joseph and Mary. You see a whole bunch of words. Sometimes it says they were engaged.
Sometimes the old word betrothed, sometimes pledged. And then other places it calls them husband and wife.
But don't you be confused. They're all describing the same union. So let me explain what the normal process
for a proposal would look like. It starts with the groom's family. They would submit a contract to the
proposed bride's family. Sometimes it was written, sometimes it was oral, but it was binding. It was a
contract and they offered a bride price. I guess today we call that a dowry, right? But they offered
a bride price with it. And if the bride's family looked at that and looked at the young man, looked at
the price and said, okay, then that couple was immediately engaged and it was binding. That contract was
absolutely binding. No backing out. And according to the Mishnah, the engagement would then last up to a year.
They'd be engaged for up to a year and oftentimes the bride would continue to live in her father's home
and they would have very limited contact. It was a period of testing, a period of commitment. But this is
important under Jewish law. Even during that engagement period, they were considered to be married
because there was no backing out. It was a done deal. They were considered to be married. What that tells us is
that when Joseph and Mary go off to Bethlehem in the eyes of Jewish custom and law, they were husband and wife,
even though they had not yet had the traditional wedding ceremony and the party that goes with it, and they
had not yet gone into their own tent and consummated their relationship. They were still considered husband
and wife. And we know this didn't happen because Matthew tells us in chapter one of his gospel, it says that
Joseph kept Mary a virgin until she gave birth to Jesus in Bethlehem. He kept her a virgin. And obviously
that was important for the fulfillment of prophecy, right? Going back to Isaiah 714, which says,
A virgin will be with child and bear a son and shall call his name what? Emmanuel, which means God with us.
And that truth, friends, listen now, that truth, the virginity of Mary and the conception of the Christ child
by a supernatural overshadowing of God's spirit is an absolute cornerstone of Christian belief that is not
optional for us to believe. That is an essential doctrine of the Christian faith. And it's been affirmed
over and over again in creedal church history. The Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Calcedonian
Creed, and others. It is absolutely essential for this reason, because the virgin birth is connected to a number
of other essential doctrines that have to be believed in order for any of us to call ourselves a historic
Christ follower. I'm talking about the deity of Christ. I'm talking about the full humanity of Christ.
I'm talking about the impeccability of Christ. And at bottom line, the doctrine of miracles itself, which
recognizes this essential truth that God, God is not subject to materialism or naturalism, that nothing
is impossible with God. He does as he pleases. Amen? So we don't get to pick and choose on that. The virgin
birth is an essential doctrine. Now let me give you another doctrinal aside. Matthew 1.25 says, only this, that
Joseph kept her a virgin until when? Until she gave birth to a son. Not after that. And certainly not
perpetually, as the Roman Catholic Church falsely teaches. Biblically, it would have been against nature
and Scripture for Joseph and Mary not to have consummated their marriage after the birth of Christ. And of
course the Gospels refer to Jesus as having brothers and sisters, which the Roman Catholic Church to this
day still denies claiming one of two things. Either A, the words don't actually mean brothers and sisters,
even though it does in the Greek. They would say, no, what they meant was cousins, or claiming that Jesus's
brothers and sisters were from a previous marriage of Joseph. So they'll say Joseph, when he married Mary,
must have been much, much older. He had a previous marriage and a whole bunch of kids, and those are the
brothers and sisters. Is any of that scriptural? Absolutely not. That is just nothing but made up, man-made
tradition, not in the Bible whatsoever. That just so that you understand when you hear Roman Catholics
talk about that issue. Okay, back to our story. Now obviously, questions arise when a teenage virgin walks into
her village and she's showing. She's pregnant. But as we know, during the engagement period, God sent an angel,
Gabriel, his great messenger angel, to visit Mary and to tell her about this impending pregnancy. So as the song
goes, I'll ask the question, what did Mary know? That was for Grant. I'm not going to sing it. I thought about
singing it, but I'm like, you'll kill me. Please don't. What did Mary know? Go back to Luke 1 and go to verse
28. So this angel, Gabriel, says to her in verse 28, greetings, favored one. The Lord is with you. And he
goes on to say, do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And dropped down to verse 31.
Behold, he says, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son and you shall name him Jesus or in Hebrew, Yeshua.
Now listen then to the five things that the angel tells Mary about who this child will be. Verse 32, he will be
great. He will be called the son of the most high. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father, David,
and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever and his kingdom will have no end. Oh, that's all. But that's
what Mary knew in that moment. But honestly, now step back, ask the question, how could she have processed that?
Even as a devout Jewish young lady, how could she have processed through that? I mean, she's already, excuse me,
I'm going to be pregnant. I mean, she probably hadn't even gotten past that before she started dealing with all these
titles that her child is going to have. Wait, the heir of the Davidic kingdom, of an eternal kingdom?
Honestly, it's beyond what we can imagine. What was going through her mind at this point. And then Gabriel goes on to
explain to the extent that she could understand how, as a virgin, this is going to happen. Verse 37, first of all,
he says, nothing will be impossible with God. And then comes this, the issue of trust that I mentioned earlier.
Mary's response in verse 38 is astounding, isn't it? Mary said, behold, the bond slave of the Lord, I am your servant, Lord.
May it be done to me according to your word. That is an astounding response. Now you may say, well, hold on, Jeff,
why is that response so great? I mean, she did get an angel announcing it to her that she's going to have an awesome kid.
What's so great about that? We only say that because we know the end of the story. But put yourself in her sandals in that moment.
Think about all the complications that could arise from the news that she just got. Not the least of which is this.
Who on earth is going to believe that this child was conceived by the Holy Spirit? Who's going to believe me when I go back?
When I show up pregnant, by the way, I'm probably going to lose my husband. Oh, and they may stone me to death for fornication.
Oh, okay. What this does is it helps us understand how the level of trust that Mary shows here.
And then there's the long term ramifications of the child. What do all those titles mean for me as his mother?
Do I get a list of new responsibilities? Like, what am I supposed to do? All these questions she must have had.
But there's no way Mary could possibly know. And yet still, with very little information, she wholeheartedly puts herself in the hands of the Lord
in that moment and trusts Him. It is astounding. Listen, we all know how the Roman Catholic Church likes to deify Mary.
And we don't want to do that. But we also should acknowledge who she is and the incredible faith that she has.
The great woman that she is. It's okay to say that as Protestants without crossing that line. She's very, very special.
Now, we know from Luke one that Mary then went to visit her relative Elizabeth during that engagement period to Joseph.
It tells us that she stayed with Elizabeth for three months. In fact, Luke uses a very, again, little details.
He says she arose and went in a hurry to go see Elizabeth, right? Well, yeah. Wouldn't you want to get out of town?
Again, who in Nazareth was going to believe her story once she starts to show? So she got up and she left. I mean, imagine this.
Easier for young ladies to think about this. What are my parents going to think? What about, what about Joseph's parents?
What about our friends in the village? Can you imagine the gossip? But then imagine three months pass.
And here comes Mary back to Nazareth. Put yourself in Joseph's sandals, the shock when he sees that belly.
Wow. Doesn't take an expert in biology to know that no woman in the history of mankind has ever gotten pregnant by herself.
Joseph knew Mary to be a godly young woman. I mean, you can imagine the wheel spinning like, how is it possible that you were with another man?
Imagine this. That story would be devastating today, but in that culture even more so.
And so the first thought would be, well, the marriage contract, it's gone. It is unavoidable. It is canceled. It is out the window. This marriage is over.
But then Matthew gives us this amazing insight into Joseph's character. Here's what he writes in Matthew 1.19.
It says, Joseph, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace Mary, planned to send her away secretly.
Look, this guy had every right to be furious. And he could have made this whole situation about himself, about his reputation,
and to take sort of public vengeance on Mary so as to save himself, to vindicate himself. But he does the opposite.
He shows compassion and he shows kindness and he shows a protective heart over Mary, which are really, by the way, really good signs for a future husband
to have those character traits. And he says, you know what? I'll handle this quietly and discreetly. Pretty cool, huh?
But then his decision to do that gets interrupted by a divine message that is going to change the course of his life.
Matthew continues in chapter 1, verse 20, but when he considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream
saying, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife for the child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.
Phew! Wow, that's good news. She wasn't with another man? I mean, again, imagine processing that.
And then we see more trust come out. Just as Mary trusted, here comes Joseph, verse 24, and Joseph awoke from asleep and did as the angel of the Lord
commanded him and took Mary as his wife. So listen, when we talk about the Christmas story, Mary gets center stage and rightfully so,
but we should not completely miss this good man standing by her side. He really is.
Joseph seems to be a man of remarkable faith and integrity and humility.
And I know we're not given details in Scripture, but this was the man who, in a physical sense, raised Jesus and taught him a trade.
It became his father, and that is undeniably important.
Okay, back to Luke 2. Let's talk about Bethlehem.
Bethlehem, say it. Bethlehem.
You know what it means, a map. Okay, good.
So, just so that you can picture this, I know some of you guys know this map well.
Israel, find the two bodies of water, Sea of Galilee in the North, Dead Sea in the South.
Blue dot, find is Jerusalem. Let that get your bearings.
Look how close Bethlehem, the red dot, is to Jerusalem. Very important.
It's only about five or six miles out. And the pink dot is Nazareth, up in Galilee.
So that's the distance these two are going to travel in order to get to Bethlehem.
Now, at the time of the incarnation, Bethlehem's best days were in the past.
They're pretty glorious days, though. Bethlehem, remember, is the town of Ruth and Boaz.
And it's the place where Jacob's first love, Rachel, where she died and was buried.
In fact, even today, if you go to Bethlehem, the tour guide can show you Rachel's tomb. Still there.
But most importantly, a thousand years before this, Bethlehem had been the home of a man named Jesse.
And Jesse had eight sons, the youngest of which was named David.
Jesse the Bethelmite and his son, David.
The same David who would become Israel's greatest king and the recipient of this great covenant promise from Yahweh
that says, Your house, David, and Your kingdom shall endure before me forever.
Your throne shall be established forever.
So the house of David becomes the only legitimate ancestral line of Israel's Messiah.
And then comes the prophecy of Micah, about 200 years later, in the eighth century BC.
And Micah says, From Bethlehem, will come a great ruler who has eternal beginnings.
That's interesting. And yet Micah also says this about Bethlehem.
It's too little. It's too obscure to even be listed among the clans of Judah.
We'll look more closely at that in a week four.
Today we say, Oh, little town of Bethlehem.
You can always picture it in your mind's eye, right?
Nothing great about it except this, that in the fullness of time, God chose that very small, ordinary little town
as the birthplace of the one that he sent forth from eternity past.
That's kind of a big deal.
And that's where Mary and Joseph are now headed, looking something like that, to Bethlehem.
Remember, as they leave, he is frustrated by Roman taxation.
She is now approaching full term in her pregnancy.
And now they have this difficult journey ahead of them, somewhere around 80 miles of walking,
80 miles of travel on foot and by donkey.
What are they carrying with them?
All their food, their water, their supplies, their bedding, a whole bunch of things.
And having to deal with all the difficult terrain of Samaria and Judea, they're sleeping outside.
If it's wintertime, it's cold in Israel, exposed to the elements, facing hazards, wild animals.
Yeah, wild animals, desert robbers.
But what's interesting again, if you look at the story in Luke 2, Luke doesn't dwell on the difficulty.
It's very short.
Why?
Well, because as hard as it sounds to us, that kind of journey in the first century wasn't unusual.
People did it all the time.
Several times a year, every time they went from Galilee to Jerusalem for a festival,
they took this journey.
Now, obviously it was harder than usual because Mary was pregnant,
but Luke assumes that his readers understand this hardship.
I tried to think about what this would mean for us today.
It'd be like if I came to you and said, you know what, I got to drive myself and my family to downtown LA.
And you'd all go, ah, that's a terrible drive.
We all would do that, right?
Because we understand, and Luke's audience understood this.
We had, ah, the traffic and all the switches on the freeways to get there,
but we would not drone on and on and on about the great hardship you're going through.
And the same thing is true of the audience in this day.
And besides, we can be honest, Mary and Joseph were just a bit tougher than we are today.
They had to be.
We are a pampered people.
They lived hard lives.
They woke up early.
They did hard physical work, long days, never ending chores.
They faced daily challenges just to survive.
We're like, oh, my internet's slow.
So they would have been familiar with this hardship.
They would not have been intimidated by this journey.
That's what I guess what I'm saying.
Not as much as we might think.
But of course, as they get there, now everything's about to get complicated, right?
They get to Bethlehem and it is super crowded.
Probably because of the census.
There's more than just them going there to register.
And so Luke writes very simply, look at Luke 2, verse 6.
While they were there, the days were completed for her to give birth.
And at the end of verse 7, he tells us that they had to put into action the sort of emergency plan
because there was no room for them in the inn.
Okay, let's talk about the inn.
If you've ever pictured in your mind a motel 6, wipe that away.
There were no motels in 1st century Bethlehem, right?
Yeah.
I remember growing up literally with that picture in my mind, like, oh, I've been to motels.
Not the picture.
The word for inn in the Greek actually in a general sense just means a place of lodging.
That's it.
That's all we get.
I think the best way for us to think about this overcrowded place is this was some type of public shelter
that you could pull up to and get a room.
Maybe you might even think of it in terms of like a campground.
But they get there and there's just no place.
Oh, by the way, there's no mean, nasty innkeeper in the story.
We put that in every nativity story and every play that we do, but there is no nasty innkeeper here.
By the way, there's also no mention of a stable or a cave or anything else.
We just don't have a lot of details.
But here's what makes sense to my mind.
And I could be off, but I'm just going to tell you what I think.
Today, if you pull up to a shelter for a stay, there's going to be a parking lot there for you to park your car so that you can go into the shelter.
I think this was something similar in Bethlehem that night.
Somewhere near this public lodging, there was a place to house the animal or animals that you brought with you.
Doesn't that kind of make sense?
There's a parking lot for your car today back then.
You could stay in this public shelter if there was room and you know what?
Put your animals over here, whether it's a stable or a cave, whatever, park your animals over here.
But because there's no room, Mary and Joseph just, the time's come.
We have to make an emergency plan here and they're like, well, that's where we're going.
They keep the animals.
I think that makes the most sense.
Whatever structure they could get into at that point.
And the only reason we know that they're with the animals is because of the term manger in verse 12, which means a feeding trough.
So it's likely they said, no room here.
We're out of time.
Let's go hang out with the animals.
They use their own bedding that they brought along with them on the trip from Nazareth.
And then they just tried to carve out a place in that, whatever it was, and to stay away from the animals and to try to stay warm.
That seems like a reasonable choice on Joseph's part.
We just have to make do at this point.
Now, again, let's be honest.
If you're Joseph or Mary, would you not be shaking your fist to God at this point?
Just a little bit.
Lord, can we catch a break here?
You told us we were favored, but then we have to go down to this place we don't want to be in.
For a reason we don't want to be here for.
You tell us we're favored, you tell us this is going to be your son.
We respond in faith.
Why can't we just get a decent room?
Would it not be hard to struggle to see the hand of God in this if you were Mary or Joseph?
I think it would.
No comfort, no warmth, no privacy, no family around, no meds, no midwife,
no delivery nurse, just a couple teenagers doing their best to bring divine life into the world.
That's the picture we get.
Amazing.
And then Luke gives us this very short statement, and for you ladies who are moms and you had to endure 20, 24 hours worth of labor,
I'm sure this isn't very satisfying for you, but in verse seven it just says, and she gave birth.
She gave birth to her firstborn son, and she wrapped him in cloth and laid him in a manger.
That's it.
Not complicated according to Luke, just the facts, ma'am.
In the fullness of time, at just the right moment in God's eternal plan, God sent forth his son into the world.
The second person of the triune Godhead broke into time and took up actual physical space,
conceived in the womb of an ordinary Jewish teenager by a mysterious overshadowing of the Holy Spirit.
And in this prophesied little town of Bethlehem, the savior of the world is born of a woman, just like any other human baby.
Amazing.
There were no royal robes for him to wear, no fancy clothes.
He did not come out with one of those little halos over his head that you see in all the paintings.
The God of immensity and omnipresence confined himself in a concentrated way in a body less than 10 pounds in weight and less than two feet in length.
Think about that.
And then there's Mary, young Mary, giving birth to the hope of the ages.
Exhausted and trembling in the cold, and you can picture just kissing and caressing her firstborn son.
And right there by her side, her beloved Joseph, a teenage husband who just, you know, just a few weeks ago was talking about divorcing a few months ago, divorcing this woman, ending this whole thing.
Talking about a whirlwind story, and Luke just says, these are the facts.
I did the interviews. I talked to the right people. This is how it took place.
And so all they have for the Son of God now are some strips of cloth.
And they wrap them up as snugly as they cancel. He'll stay warm.
And then they look around. They're like, we got to put them down for a moment.
Well, there's a feeding trough that the donkeys just used.
We'll put them there.
And then imagine, step into their sandals.
They sat back and they looked at this child and they thought about what the angel had said.
What were they thinking in that moment?
It's amazing. What a story.
What a story we have that God orchestrated in his sovereignty.
So I just have a few moments left, but let me try to make some observations.
By the way, I didn't get to the shepherds like I wanted to this morning.
We'll deal with them next week. I promise because they're very important.
So come back.
But let's return to these four words that I started with.
Sovereign, ordinary, and trust. Let's take those first three.
First God's sovereign plan in every part of the incarnation story.
Even the difficult details that none of us would have ever drawn up.
Even all the uncomfortable things God was sovereignly in charge of.
He had a purpose in that.
Do we believe that that's true?
And if we believe that that's true, do you believe that that's true in your life as well?
That God is intimately involved in the details?
Or have you begun to think, well, God isn't paying attention to me.
I don't matter.
No, God is at work in all the details of your life right now.
We just need to slow down long enough to see it and affirm it and believe it.
Do you not know that He's working in your life?
If you're a believer, He's working in your life right now to conform you to the image of His Son.
Second thing, the way the Lord uses ordinary people to accomplish His will,
you could not get more ordinary than Joseph and Mary in that day.
Simple, common, blue-collar, whatever you want to call Him.
But then add these character traits to those two as well.
Humble, righteous, kind, compassionate, obedient, faithful.
That's what God seeks among His children.
If you've ever felt insignificant in a world of billions of people
where all the news is always about people in positions of power,
consider the Christmas story, come back to it over and over again,
how God turns the mind of an emperor
and wields the power of an empire for the good of His ordinary children.
Think about that.
It's been said many times He is a big God for little people.
So never doubt His concern for you, His care for you,
if you are an adopted son or daughter of the Most High and a co-heir with Christ.
He cares for you greatly.
The third idea is trust.
Joseph and Mary trusted what God had revealed to them about His plan.
No matter how wild and fantastic it sounded, and it would have, come on, be honest.
That would have sounded wild to you, but they trusted.
And they said, what?
Okay, Lord, I'm Your servant.
Whatever comes next is from You, I want it.
And you may say again, yeah, but Jeff, I don't get angelic announcements in my life.
I trust God that much if an angel came to me.
Granted, you're not probably not going to get an angel in your lifetime.
But can I tell you something?
Right now in your lap is God's written revelation to you.
Start there.
You want an announcement from God?
Start with the Bible in your lap right now.
Read it.
Trust it.
Obey it.
And you'll be like Mary and Joseph.
Amen.
Last thing I want to share with you is that word lowly.
And when we talk about lowly, it pertains to the true hero in this story, and that's Christ Himself.
I started this morning by asking, if God had sovereigned over all things, why did the Incarnation story play out like this?
Because it could have gone otherwise.
I mean, God could have done anything He wanted to, right?
Many ways it could have gone differently.
But the question isn't what God could have done, but what He willed to do.
And here's what you need to know.
It was God's will that though Christ was eternally rich, yet for our sakes He became poor, and He became lowly.
He was eternally rich, but He became poor for us.
I can't find the source of this quote, but it's a great quote.
When God came down to the earth, He came all the way down.
He came to a pair of teenagers in Nazareth, right?
If you're young here this morning, you're like, ah, you know, wait, I'll get serious about this one in my 30s and 40s.
He came to a pair of teenagers.
He came to this obscure town, first in Nazareth and then in Bethlehem.
Came to a smelly place where animals were housed and fed.
He came into a situation without comfort or ease.
And in all of those things and more, we see the shadow of something far more difficult coming down the road for Christ.
He was in the world, but the world did not know Him.
He came to his own, but those who were his own did not receive Him.
It starts in Bethlehem, but it ends at the cross, doesn't it?
He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
He came all the way down to be despised by the very people He made.
Foxes have holes, He said, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.
No room in the inn, ever for Jesus.
Although He existed in the form of God, He did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped onto, but He emptied Himself.
He made Himself of no reputation, taking on the form of a bond servant and being made in the likeness of men.
Again, the story, the incarnation, is the story of the Son of God's humiliation for our sake.
But sometimes when we hear that, we're like, ah, I don't like that word humiliation too much.
Listen, in doing that, understand He desired to identify with us.
He chose to do it.
His own volition, God the Son, desired to identify with us to walk as a man in this fallen world,
to feel the weight of temptation, to understand human suffering, to laugh like we do, to cry like we do,
to rejoice and to grieve through the events of life as a human being.
That's how much He loved you.
He wanted that.
He was willing to do that.
And ultimately, He came so low that He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
To stand in our place as a substitute for sinners so that He might bring many sons and daughters like us to glory forevermore.
What a mystery this story is, you guys.
And what love Jesus shows.
The hope of the ages, born of a virgin, come to take our sins upon Himself and to set us free for all eternity.
Let's bow our heads and continue to worship Him.
And I mean that.
Let's worship Him in prayer together.
Lord, we are so humbled by what You endured for us.
Lord, this story is so remarkable.
I pray God that we would never ever read it casually without looking below the surface and seeing the beauty of Your sovereignty.
To see how You use ordinary people.
To see how they responded in trust.
But most of all, Lord, to see how lowly You chose to become in order to set us free.
It is a remarkable story, God.
And it brings us to a place of incredible worship.
And Lord, that's what we want to do in the time that we have left this morning to sing Your praises.
Not to check our minds out and be thinking about lunch or anything else today, but to lift our eyes and to see You, Jesus.
The one who took on flesh for our sake.
God, seal these truths in our hearts.
Help us to understand them on a deeper and deeper level.
Continue, God, to grow us.
Get form us to the image of Your Son.
Thank you for our time together this morning.
Thank you for the privilege we have of worshiping You together.
Help us do that well now.
In the name of that one who was born in Bethlehem, we pray.
Amen.