"In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world..." so opens the most famous passage in all of Scripture, telling the greatest of all stories. Octavian became the first Caesar to be called "Augustus" [meaning 'holy' or 'revered' which up to that point in time had been a term reserved exclusively for the gods] when the Roman Senate voted to bestow that title upon him. I think this is a point not lost on Luke who wanted us to see, that despite the world having at its helm a self-proclaimed and widely accepted god and savior, that on this day came one who would become the true Savior of the world. The contrast between the two could not have been greater.
Rome and Augustus had bludgeoned every foe into submission. "Peace" would reign throughout the Roman Empire for forty years but it was a dark peace -- a Hitlerian peace -- and no man, woman or child could speak against it without fearfully looking over their shoulder for certain retribution. Caesar Augustus' mighty arm stretched out all the way to a tiny village at the far end of the Mediterranean, and thus it came to pass that a village carpenter and his expectant teenage bride were forced to travel to his hometown to be registered for taxation. It was a miserable eighty mile journey made only more miserable by the fact that Mary was now full-term and would likely deliver her first child away from the modest comforts of home and family. Now on a long, dusty road in the cold of winter, she and Joseph trekked southward to Bethlehem. Seen through everyday logic, Joseph and Mary were insignificant nobodies from a nothing town. They were routine peasants, poor, uneducated, of no account. But Mary understood who she was and she knew who God was. Early into her pregnancy during her reunion with Elizabeth, she sang her great Magnificat, beginning with the words, "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, and my spirit exalts in God my Savior, for He has looked with mercy on my lowliness" [1:46-48] and later concludes her song by saying of her Son, "He has performed mighty deeds with His arm; He has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble" [vv. 51-52]. Joseph and Mary epitomize the mystery of grace -- the King of all Kings does not come to the proud and powerful but to the poor and powerless. As it is so often in life, things were not as they seemed to the world around them, because Mary and Joseph were the adoptive father and birth mother to the one true King, the Son of Man, the Ancient of Days. As the Virgin traveled those eighty difficult miles, her steady beating heart, hidden from the world, kept time with the rapidly thumping heart of God within her. For the baby Mary carried was not a Caesar, a man who would become a god, but a far greater wonder -- the one true God, who had become a man!
We are all familiar with the haunting simplicity of Luke's record of His birth: "While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son" [vv. 6-7a]. In Bethlehem the accommodations for travelers were primitive even in the best of circumstances. The near-eastern "inn" was the crudest of arrangements, typically a series of stalls built inside an enclosure and opening into a common yard where the animals were kept. All the innkeeper provided was fodder for the animals and a fire to cook on. And on that cold day, when Mary and Joseph arrived, nothing was available, not even one of those crude stalls. And despite the obvious urgency, no one would make room for them. So it was likely in the common courtyard, where the very animals were tethered, that Mary gave birth to Jesus, with only Joseph attending her. Joseph probably wept as much as Mary did! Seeing his betrothed in such pain, the stinking barnyard, their poverty, the indifference of those around them, the absolute humiliation of it all, the sense of overwhelming helplessness, and the utter shame of not being able to better provide for young Mary on the night of her travail -- all that would make a man either curse, or cry, or both!
Kent Hughes comments on the scene saying if we were to imagine that Jesus was born in a freshly swept, county fair like stable, that we would miss the whole point. It was absolutely wretched ... scandalous even! There was sweat, pain and blood as well as the cries of Mary reaching up to the heavens for help. The earth was cold and hard. The smell of birth mixed with the stench of manure and acrid straw made a contemptible bouquet. Trembling carpenter's hands, clumsy with fear, grasped God's Son slippery with blood -- the baby's arms and legs waving helplessly as if falling through space -- his face grimacing as he gasped in the cold and his cry piercing the night.
It was clearly a leap down! As if the Son of God rose from His splendor, stood poised at the very rim of the universe and then dove headlong through the Milky Way all the way to Earth and into a huddle of livestock. Nothing could be lower. Luke finishes his picture in v. 7: "She wrapped Him in cloths and placed Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn." Mary counted His fingers and toes, wiped Him clean as best she could in the dim firelight, and then wrapped Him in strips of cloth, all without the help of anyone other than Joseph. And then she laid Him in a feeding trough. No child born into the world that day seemed to have lower prospects. The Son of God was born into the world that day, not as a prince but as a pauper. We must never forget that it is here that Christianity began, and where it always begins ... with an overwhelming sense of need, a graced sense of one's own insufficiency. Christ, Himself, setting the example, comes to the needy. He is born only in those who are "poor in spirit."
Many have wondered over the centuries about the absolute wonder that is the Incarnation. St. Augustine said of the infant Jesus: "Unspeakably wise, He is wisely speechless!" Lancelot Andrewes, who crafted much of the Old Testament in the King James Version, preaching before King James on Christmas Day in 1608, picked up on Augustine's idea and described Christ in the manger as: "the word without a word." He is in His person the Word of God! This is the One who asked Job, "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the world? Tell me, if you understand ... when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness" [Job 38: 4, 9] now Himself lay wrapped in swaddling clothes. The wonder of the Incarnation! The omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God became a baby!
Hughes described the Incarnation as "the great historic doctrine of the church [where] the Son of God became a real man--not just someone who only appeared to be a man. When He was born, God the Son placed the exercise of His all-powerfulness and all-presence and all-knowingness under the direction of God the Father. He did not give up those attributes, but He submitted their exercise in His life to the Father's discretion. Though He was sinless, He had a real human body, mind, and emotions -- complete with their inherent human weaknesses." He did not feign babyhood ... He was an actual human baby. I am convinced this mystery is beyond any earthly analogy or understanding. Truly human, the Son subjected Himself to His own creation and its physical laws, to life's ups and downs, its highs and lows. He would experience the development of human reason and language as we all do. He would be taught the things He didn't know. He would walk like a baby before He walked like a man. He thought and talked like a baby before He thought and talked like a man. He suffered the pains of growing up just as we all do. The only difference was that as Jesus learned, grew, and matured, He did so sinlessly and perfectly. But as Harold Best remarked "this does not mean that He was an instant learner." He learned carpentry from His earthly father, Joseph. He really did all these things. It really did happen like this. Paul was right when he wrote: "Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great: He appeared in a body ..." [1Tim. 3:16]. The implications of this reality are absolutely breathtaking, not just at Christmastime but also throughout the entire year and, in fact, throughout the entirety of our lives.
The story moves quickly along as Christ's birth was announced to the shepherds who were the first to hear. "And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks by night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified" [vv. 8-9]. That the message came first to shepherds, and not to the high and mighty, again reminds us that God comes to the needy, to the poor in spirit. Shepherds were despised by the upper class, the respectable people of that day. The only people lower in the social pecking order in that day were lepers. Scholars speculate that the only reason the flocks were even kept so close into town was that these men were keeping the sacrificial animals for the temple. Again the take home message is that God comes to those who sense their need. He does not come to the self-sufficient. Remember the words of the Apostle Paul, "Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things -- and the things that are not -- to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before Him" [1Cor. 1:26-29].
The words of the angel, spoken not only for the shepherds but for all of us, were wonderful, for they promised a Savior: "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; He is Christ the Lord" [vv. 10-11]. It is exactly because of Christ's incarnation and His perfect identification with humanity -- His taking on our nature, though sinlessly -- that He could, in fact, save us. He became "perfect" in regard to temptation by suffering temptation as a real man and putting the tempter to flight [Heb. 5:8-9; Matt. 4:1-11]. As a real man, He became a perfect surrogate for us so that He could take our sins upon Himself, become "sin for us" [2Cor. 5:21], and die an atoning death for us. As Peter explained, "He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness" [1Pet. 2:24]. Whatever our situation, He can deliver us. The angel said that the "good news" was "for all the people." Whoever you are, he can deliver you, help you, save you. "Because Jesus lives forever ... He is able to save completely those who come to God through Him, because He always lives to intercede for them" [Heb. 7:24-25].
After the angel's marvelous words something truly spectacular occurred: "Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom His favor rests'" [vv. 13-14]. A heavenly flash and suddenly the bewildered shepherds were surrounded by angels! "A great company" is literally "a multitude" ... not 50, not 500, not even 5000 ... but beyond count. Likely every one of God's angels was there, because this was the most amazing thing to have ever happened in the entire universe. The heavenly host likely stretched from horizon to horizon obscuring the winter constellations. Imagine the radiated golds, pinks, crimson reds, electric blues, ultraviolets ... perhaps some were even sparkling. And when they lifted their voices to God, it was in cosmic surround-sound. They were announcing the long-awaited "Sunrise from on high" [1:78] -- literally star music! Job tells us that at the creation of the world, "the morning stars [angels] sang together and all the angels shouted for joy" [38:7]. Now the angels again joined voices at the greatest creation of all -- the birth of the God-man -- the perfect sympathizer and Savior. How we all would liked to have been there!!! But we on earth have the best part, because it is we who receive God's grace! He became man and not an angel. He redeemed us, not the angels. We should even more praise Him for all eternity!
Has God worked in your heart? Are you the object of His good pleasure? It is not enough to hear about Jesus. It is not enough to peek into the manger and say, "Oh, how nice. What a lovely scene. It gives me such good feelings." The truth is, that even if Christ were born a thousand times in Bethlehem but never in your heart, you would be eternally lost. Religious sentiment, even at Christmastime, without the living Christ in our souls is the yellow brick road to eternal darkness. The point of the Christmas story is that the Savior of the world is not a Caesar, nor will it ever be any great world leader. Jesus is the Savior, the very Son of God who came to earth veiled in Mary's flesh, born in human flesh, lived and died in that flesh, was resurrected in that flesh and now lives in the same but glorified flesh at the right hand of the Father. That baby, God's Son, demands our complete allegiance. He really did come into the world, and because of this, He really can come into your heart! Your present and your eternal future will never be the same!
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