I can speak
from personal experience that nothing will make a person stop and think about
the priorities in their lives like being sick. Well God has seen to it that
I’ve had that opportunity this past year. Between hospital stays and long hours
undergoing treatments, I’ve had time to think long and hard about the people
and things in my life that are important to me and whether or not I have made
room in my life for them—the God I love so much who has always been so very
close to me, my wife who has cried too many times over the last year watching
me struggle, and my girls who have been so frightened because they know too
much about medicine. You know what I realized? Making room for the people who
are most important in our lives is an everyday exercise because the minute we
stop making room for those people, the world around us begins to creep in and
clutter our lives leaving no room for anything or anyone else. So this
Christmas I will again be making room in my life to enjoy the Christmas season
with my wife, Laura, and with my daughters, Meagan and Elizabeth, who will both
be home for Christmas this year. However, most importantly, I will listen for
God knocking and make room in my life to celebrate the wonder and joy of God’s
gift to humanity—the gift of Himself in the person of Jesus Christ. This will
be my final lesson for 2016. Look for my next lesson on January 25, 2017 ( I
will be in class from 1/9/17-1/13/17). As always, you have access to over 260
other past lessons on the website in case you’ve fallen behind in your reading.
Growing up,
we never read the Bible in our house. Actually, I’m pretty sure we never even
had a Bible in our house. We went to church and we prayed formulaic prayers by
memory but we never read the Bible. Even though I believed in Jesus Christ, I
knew very little about Him or anything else contained in the Bible for that
matter. I didn’t actually start reading the Bible until my early twenties. One
of my best memories was Christmas dinner around the table of my in-laws. They
weren’t serious Bible readers either but they had Bibles in their home and at
Christmas, my father-in-law, or Papa as my girls call him, always read the
Christmas story from Luke’s gospel. Later, when my girls were a little older,
he asked them to read the story. Of all the traditions from either of our
families, I like that one best. With all the rushing around, last-minute
present wrapping, and the Christmas dinner food preparations, everyone stopped
and made room for Jesus. I’ve been thinking about that this year again as we
approach the Christmas season. I’ve been thinking specifically about the idea
of taking time for Jesus; specifically welcoming Jesus into these days before
Christmas; making room for Jesus during Christmas. It seems a little redundant
I know considering it’s “Christ”mas. It’s not that crazy though if you think
about it—There’s no room for Jesus in most of our schools thanks to atheists.
There’s no room for Jesus at work in the name of fairness to all. There’s no room
for Jesus in the market place where money alone is god. There’s no room for
Jesus at home where self-fulfillment and the acquisition of more and more
“stuff” rules. There’s no room for Jesus in some of our churches where
entertainment, popular programs and feel-good spirituality rule supreme.
Finally, there’s no room for Jesus in the hearts of many people whose sinful,
self-prioritizing lives are their god. For too many of us, Christmas is, or at
least has been, a time when there’s no room for many of the things that there
should always be room for. For too many of us, we walk into this Christmas
season with a giant neon sign hanging around our necks that reads NO VACANCY! The circumstances
surrounding the advent of Jesus Christ are the perfect metaphor for our lives
in so many ways. With the exception of an angelic visitation announcing the
arrival of Jesus to a few backwoods shepherds grazing their sheep, Jesus came
to us without any fanfare, pomp or circumstance. Instead, He came to a world
that welcomed Him with a great big NO
VACANCY! Literally! But, thankfully, He came anyway and the way Jesus came
says everything about the depth of God’s desire to be in relationship with us.
Subject Text
Luke 2:1-7
1In those days Caesar
Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the
entire Roman world. 2(This was the first census that
took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3And
everyone went to his own town to register. 4So Joseph also went up
from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the
town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5He
went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6While they were there, the
time came for the baby to be born, 7and she gave birth to her
firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because
there was no room for them in the inn.
Context
We tend to forget
about a few very important events that began more than a year before our Subject Text. Luke tells us in chapter
one that an angel visited a man named Zechariah and told him that his wife,
Elizabeth, would become pregnant and give birth to a son who was destined to be
God’s servant in the same way that the beloved Old Testament prophet Elijah
served God—specifically, to turn the people’s hearts back to God. Elizabeth
would eventually give birth to John the Baptist who would, indeed, preach
repentance of sins in order to clear the path for relationship with God, and
that path led straight to Jesus who John introduced to the people and who
baptized Jesus at the inauguration of Jesus’ earthly ministry.
Six months
after an angel visited Zechariah with divine news, an angel visited a young
virgin girl named Mary with news that she would become pregnant and give birth
to a son. But not just any son mind you, Mary would give birth to the Son of
the Most High. Let that sink in for just a moment. We take so many things about
the Bible for granted because we know them so well and they’ve become so
familiar that they’ve lost some of their intended wonder and gravity. The angel
didn’t just tell Mary that Jesus was going to be a king, the angel was telling
her that Jesus would be THE King; the long-awaited Messiah. We jump to that
conclusion right away because we know the entire story of Jesus. But Mary
didn’t know that! Mary had to put the pieces of the angel’s proclamation
together. Let me give you the key parts of the angel’s pronouncement that Mary
was left to piece together:
·
Jesus’ name is derived from the Hebrew name
Joshua and means “the Lord saves,” and
·
Jesus would be called “Son of the Most High,”
and
·
Jesus would be the final King to sit on the
“throne of his father David,” and
·
Jesus would be Israel’s (and the world’s)
eternal King “forever,” and
·
Jesus would establish a kingdom that “will never
end.”
Believers read all these things in
Luke 1:31-33 in the context of the rest of the gospel of Jesus Christ and
already know that He is the Savior of the world. But Mary didn’t have the
context. She was a young, Jewish teenage girl who lived in the context of the
Old Testament expectation of the Messiah. Imagine being a devout Jew whose
country was occupied and ruled by Rome, a Gentile nation. Then suddenly an
angel appears to tell you that you will give birth to Israel’s Messiah. Mary’s
head had to be spinning. As unbelievable as all that news must have been, at what
point do you suppose it dawned on her that she was a virgin AND she wasn’t
married? For many people in our culture, being a virgin, even as a teenager,
means there’s something wrong with you and becoming pregnant outside of
marriage is no big deal. But in Mary’s culture, being a virgin until after
marriage was non-negotiable. In fact, being sexually active outside of the
marriage covenant meant, at best becoming an outcast, and at worst, being put
to death. The angel told Mary that the Holy Spirit would miraculously plant the
seed of God within her when she wondered how an unmarried virgin could become
pregnant. No big deal, right? Well put yourself in Mary’s shoes and play that
through your mind and then tell me how you would explain that. You know, something
like this: “Mom, Dad, I have some exciting news! An angel visited me and told
me that I would become pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit and give
birth to the Savior of the world! Isn’t that exciting?” Don’t kid yourself,
Mary was in trouble and I’m pretty sure she knew it. However, God knew exactly
the challenges that Mary would face in her community so He convinced her future
husband, Joseph, not to refuse taking Mary as his wife even though she was
pregnant and he wasn’t the father. Joseph’s humility to be obedient to God even
though he knew what people would think of him for marrying a girl who was
pregnant with someone else’s child, set the stage for the Old Testament
fulfillment that prophesied the ancestral lineage and the geographical
birthplace for the divine Messiah which brings us right to our Subject Text.
Text Analysis
1In those days Caesar
Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman
world. 2(This was the first census that took place while Quirinius
was governor of Syria.) 3And everyone went to his own town to
register.
Sometimes
it can be difficult to place the biblical text into its proper place in
history. However, Luke, a physician who was not one of Jesus’ twelve disciples,
gives us a very specific point in time for the temporal context of the gospel
of Jesus Christ in vv. 1-2. Luke
tells us that the events of our Subject
Text occur during the Roman rule of
Caesar Augustus who presided over the whole empire with Quirinius as the
governor of the Roman province of Syria. The text says that Augustus order a
census to be taken of the entire Roman empire. And what was the purpose of the
census? In order to determine the appropriate taxation to be assessed and
collected from each region within the Roman empire as well as keeping tabs on
population distribution so as to determine the military presence necessary in
each of the various provinces. No doubt, larger populations probably
necessitated a larger military presence as a reminder that opposition and
unrest wouldn’t be tolerated. In order to tabulate an accurate census, everyone
within the geographical empire was required to return to their own hometown
according to v. 3 to register for
the census. This was no small matter considering the geographical extent of the
empire as illustrated by this map of the empire (Roman empire in orange):
We know
Caesar Augustus because of the biblical narrative but apart from that
narrative, people may not be familiar with Augustus. But if I mentioned Marc
Antony and Cleopatra, you’d probably recognize those very familiar names from
Roman history. Well at that time, Augustus was known as Octavian. Let me
explain how Roman history unfolds into biblical history: In 31 B.C., “Marc
Antony, painted as the betrayer of Rome who sought to establish a monarchical
rule over the Mediterranean with his illicit lover, Cleopatra of Egypt, was
defeated at the battle of Actium by Octavian and his forces…In gratitude and in
the hope that complete allegiance to Octavian would forestall any future civil
wars and the incredible loss of property, security and life which accompanied
them, the Senate and people of Rome gave Octavian the imperium, the right to
command the legions of the empire and made him perpetual consul…He was given the
title Augustus, which denoted him as ‘pious’ and as ‘worthy of reverence,’ and
named him Pontifex Maximus, the high
priest of the official religious life of the Greco-Roman world…The provinces
were glad to accept Augustus’s imperium. He brought security and stability to
their agrarian and urban lives—for many, for the first time in their lives!
What the Mediterranean needed and wanted was a strong ruler and a clear line of
succession. Poets lauded Augustus as the bringer of salvation and good news.
(Luke will use the same terms to speak of the significance of Jesus’ birth.)”[1]
4So Joseph also went up from the
town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because
he belonged to the house and line of David. 5He went there to
register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a
child.
Think about
the prophetic significance of what happens in vv. 4-5. Approximately 700 years before the events of our Subject Text, God revealed through the
prophet Micah: “But you Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the
clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler of Israel,
whose origins are from old, from ancient times (Micah 5:2).” The Messiah was
prophesied to come from the line of David and was going to be born in
Bethlehem. And then without any warning, world events that don’t appear to be
related in any way whatsoever to biblical events begin to unfold precisely the
way they were predicted hundreds of years before. If we read past this quickly
we miss exactly what these events mean in the grand scheme of our faith.
Unbelievers disparage the faith of Christians as believing in myths and
fairytales because we can’t present concrete evidence that Jesus is divine and
must, at some point, take it on faith that Jesus is who He says He is and did
what He said He did with respect to our salvation. And that is true to a large
extent. However, that doesn’t mean the Christian faith isn’t based on concrete
historical evidence that supports that faith. All the characters in our Subject Text are real historical
figures that are represented in both biblical and extra-biblical texts. All the
biblical characters that wrote about the Messiah hundreds and even thousands of
years before our Subject Text were
also figures represented in both biblical and extra-biblical text. Did you know
that there are more than 300 prophesies about the Messiah going all the way
back to the first chapters of Genesis? We have a handful of them in the first
two chapters of Luke’s gospel. Do you want to know the probability of Jesus
being the fulfillment of all those prophecies? Well just to give you an idea of
how certain you can be that Jesus is the Messiah, the probability of Jesus fulfilling
just eight of the Old Testament prophecies would be 1 x 1028. Maybe
that doesn’t paint the picture clearly enough for you. Here’s what the
probability figure looks like: 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000!
That’s the fulfillment of just eight prophecies and two of them are right here
in our Subject Text! Yes it still
requires faith to believe that Jesus is who He says He is and did what He said
He did but it doesn’t take blind faith. Verses
4-5 demonstrate to us that God was always in complete control of all the
events of history even though He appeared to be uninvolved for hundreds of
years. “From the universal, we now move to the particular. To this point, it
would appear that Augustus is sovereign over the whole world; he issues a
decree and the whole populace travels here and there in order to participate in
the Empire’s tax burden. Now, however, we learn not only how the census related
to the unfolding of the angel’s words, but also that a still higher purpose is
at work than that of the emperor…this is the first time in the Lukan account of
Jesus’ birth that Joseph does
anything, though even here he is introduced to us primarily in his relationship
with Mary and his inherited status as a Davidide. Both the description of his
journey as a ‘going up’ and the
designation of his destination as ‘the city of David’ invite the reader to
speculate that he is traveling to Jerusalem. Luke upsets such expectations by
identifying Joseph’s destination and identifying the city of David as
Bethlehem. In this narrative aside, Luke intrudes briefly to render explicit
that Joseph is fulfilling the Scriptures and, thus, fulfilling God’s own
purpose…As often in biblical narrative, then, we find here a conjunction of
intentions. On one level, Joseph’s journey is the consequence of the almighty
decree of Augustus. On another, even the universal rule of Augustus is
conceived as subordinate to another purpose, the aim of God. One may call this
ironic, as if Rome is made unwittingly to serve a still greater Sovereign. But
it is also prophetic, for it reveals the provisional nature of even Roman
rule.”[2]
6While they were there, the time
came for the baby to be born, 7and she gave birth to her firstborn,
a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was
no room for them in the inn.
Travellers
during the time of our Subject Text
could usually cover about 20 miles a day if they were healthy and didn’t run into
trouble along the way. Considering Mary was probably nine months or close to
nine months pregnant at the time, it probably took them a week to make the
journey. After traveling the 80 or so miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem, Mary
and Joseph finally arrive in the city according to vv. 6-7. Unfortunately, so did all the other people who originated
from the town of Bethlehem. It seems clear that neither Joseph nor Mary had any
relatives or acquaintances in town because they sought public accommodations
when they arrived. And to make matters worse, Mary went into labor. Imagine
this scene now—the small city is overrun with countless visitors from who knows
where in the Roman Empire. Private homes are filled with visitors (relatives
and/or acquaintances) and public accommodations are filled with everyone else.
Joseph and Mary are on the outside looking in with “no room at the Inn” and
Mary was in a bad way. I’ve been through the birth of two children and I’ve
tried to put myself in Joseph shoes. Let me try and explain, in one word, what
I would be experiencing at that moment: Panic! So the only thing left for
Joseph to do was improvise. So he found and prepared a place for Mary in a
stable. A stable! Joseph fixed up a place for her to give birth to the Savior
of the world in a dirty barn among the animals. And it gets worse. The text
says that after Mary gave birth, she wrapped Jesus in some cloth and “laid him
in a manger.” Do you know what that is? You know that little manger scene you
have in your children’s books or that cute little manger scene some of you have
set up under your Christmas tree? Yeah, it’s nothing like that. A manger is a
feeding trough for livestock; donkeys, horses, cows, pigs, etc. The stable was
filthy, disgusting, and smelled of dirty animals and their waste. But this is
where we find the Son of God, the Savior of the world, the “Wonderful
Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace (Isa 9:6).” “The
promised king came to his people but did not have enough power to secure a
resting place for his birth. The descendants of David descended to a stable to
find a place to lay the head of the King of kings. This is how God used earth’s
lowest to bring salvation from heaven’s highest.”[3]
Application
The events
surrounding the birth of Jesus are a perfect metaphor for so many of our lives.
Jesus, yet unborn, arrives in Bethlehem but there is “no room at the Inn.” God
came knocking but there was NO VACANCY.
No one seemed to care that Mary was pregnant and was about to give birth to the
long-awaited Messiah, but no one in the city had room for Him or seemed to
care. But there were some, there are always some, who would make room for Him;
who did care. But they weren’t leaders or officials or really very important
people for that matter from the world’s perspective. Instead, they were lowly
shepherds who got a message from an angel that if they took the time and
believed, they would find the One they had been waiting for lying in a manger
in the city. Here’s how it happened:
Luke
2:8-15
8And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby,
keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9An angel of
the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and
they were terrified. 10But the angel said to them, “Do not be
afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all
the people. 11Today in the town of David a Savior has
been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.
12This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby
wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” 13Suddenly a great company
of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, 14“Glory
to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his
favor rests.” 15When the angels had left them and gone into heaven,
the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing
that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”
Notice
something about this part of the biblical text? The angel came to the lowest
class of people. It was an agrarian culture but shepherds weren’t part of the
prominent social class. They were poor, dirty, smelly and usually not highly
thought of. Notice something else about the text? When God’s messenger came to
them and told them about the coming of the Messiah, they went to Bethlehem to
see. So what, you might be asking. Well what about the animals they where
charged with shepherding. It is unlikely that they herded their animals into
the city with them. Instead, it is more likely that they left the animals and
went to the city without them. Imagine that, there was something more important
than the animals that were given to their charge. As important as their duties
were, they made room in their lives for the Savior. There was no room for the
Savior in the city of David but there was room for the Savior among the filthy
beasts and the lowliest of people. The shepherds demonstrate the attitude so
often missing in our present culture. When Jesus knocks on the door to our
work, we proclaim that there is NO
VACANCY in our work for Jesus. When Jesus knocks on the door to our public
schools, we proclaim that there is NO
VACANCY in our public schools for Jesus. When Jesus knocks on the door of
our relationships, we proclaim that there is NO VACANCY in our relationships for Jesus. When Jesus knocks on the
door to our finances, we proclaim that there is NO VACANCY in our finances for Jesus. When Jesus knocks on the door
of our churches, sadly there are some churches that proclaim there is NO VACANCY there for Jesus. It is true
that Jesus knocks on the door of all areas of our lives and our culture and we
are given the choice of letting Him in or telling Him that there is NO VACANCY for Him. But during this
Christmas season, I want you to consider something else; something that is
necessary before you are able to answer Jesus’ knock in any of these other
areas of life. During this Christmas season, take a moment and quiet yourself
amidst the noise and rush that is knocking on your life and listen very
carefully for a different knock. This Christmas, listen for Jesus knocking on
the door to your heart. It doesn’t matter if you’re young or old, man or woman,
rich or poor, Jesus is knocking. Jesus knocks at the hearts of all humanity.
You need not fear that you are unworthy or unclean, remember that Jesus wasn’t
born in the comfort of an imperial city surround by royalty. He was born in a
small, back-woods town, into the filth of a stable where he slept in a feeding
trough surrounded by dirty animals in the company of smelly shepherds. So
during this Christmas season, listen for Jesus knocking on the door to your
heart and consider very carefully if you will let Him in or if you will
proclaim that this Christmas, there is NO
VACANCY for Jesus in your heart.
[1]
David A. deSilva, An Introduction to the New Testament: Contexts, Methods &
Ministry Formation, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), pp. 57-58.
[2]
Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke—The
New International Commentary of the New Testament, (Grand Rapids, MI: William B.
Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1997), pp. 126-127.
[3]
Trent C. Butler, Luke—Holman New
Testament Commentary, (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2000), p. 29.
(Audio version; Music: "My King Was Born Today" by: WorshipMob and "Mary, Did You Know?" by: Pentatonix)
