The Truth About the Baby in the Manger

Introduction

Around this time of year, several years ago, it was holiday season. I was having a Bible study with a lady. As we wrapped up our last study before the Christmas holiday, I started out the door and she said, Hang on a minute, I have a gift for you that I want to share with you before you go. So she ran back in the other room and she came out carrying this puffy fabric Christmas tree. I didn’t know what it was. But I knew at the moment that I was supposed to be gracious, and so I smiled and said thank you and got in the car and put that thing in the passenger seat and started home. And I just looked at it every once in a while, thinking, what is this beyond sort of a puffy fabric Christmas tree?

And so I brought it to the house and I showed it to my wife, and she kind of frowned at me because of my confusion. She said, come on, David, it’s a Christmas card holder. And she went and got some of our Christmas cards, and she began to put them in the slots and voila, a Christmas card. Did y’all know that? I didn’t either. We get some of those around this time of year, Christmas cards. Do you have some at your house? Some of the Christmas cards we get are religiously themed. Do you get some of those too? It is because for much of the religious world, this is the most important time of the year. In fact, perhaps with only the exception of Easter Sunday, do churches experience larger crowds than around this time of year.

In fact, most churches, most churches accommodate those larger crowds by having some kind of special Christmas observances around this time of year. Perhaps, for example, they’ll do some kind of a nativity play around the birth story of Jesus, and children will act out the roles of Mary and Joseph coming. You know how the story goes, all right? Coming into the little village of Bethlehem late one night, and Mary’s not only big and pregnant, I’m not going to should have said that way. But she’s in the throes of labor that very night as they’re riding into town and her sitting on that donkey, and they go to the local hotel and they’re trying to find a place to stay, but it’s all filled up, and this wicked, evil innkeeper turns them away, and they’re stuck hunting around and wind up in a barn where the Son of God is born.

In a bar. And they lay him in a feeding trough for animals. And then things begin to happen. Shepherds show up, king shows up, angels hover overhead, mysterious glowing lights shine over their heads, and you begin to get the sense that something really important is taking place. And then some poor young man’s going to be assigned the task of reading the words of the angels over in Luke chapter 2 and verse 10. He’ll have to memorize this and recite it without messing it up. Luke 2, verse 10, do not be afraid. Behold, I bring you good news of great joy for which all which is for all people. For today in the city of David, there has been born for you a Savior who is Christ the Lord.

This will be the sign for you. We will find a baby wrapped in claws lying in a manger. This scene, the nativity scene, it is the icon for the holiday, isn’t it? It is also the subject of Christmas cards.

Tiny little stable, star hovering overhead, all the important visitors, presents, shepherds, kings, angels, and even the animals kind of look on in amazement as if even they get it. We see the nativity scene everywhere this time of year, from the stages of church building to little plastic light upsets in people’s front yard. Everybody knows the nativity and what it stands for. What most people don’t realize is that the story that gets told around this year, around the nativity scene, is largely fiction. Most of what is said in the Christmas story is either stuff we don’t really know is true, some of it is stuff that we know isn’t true. Over time, the story has come to be embellished, and it’s grown into something that is really quite different than what you and I would read about in the Gospels.

And so I thought I’d talk about that for a little while today, at the risk of y’all going away thinking I’m a spiritual Scrooge taking on the Christmas story on Christmas morning. And I want you to understand that I don’t have any interest in just kind of getting up here and blasting what people are doing or saying in other churches today. I think it is important that we be able to separate the fact from the fiction, and to know actually what the Bible really does tell us about the birth of Jesus and what the Holy Spirit does preserve about those amazing events and this amazing birth. Because, ladies and gentlemen, I think, I think there’s something really important in the real story. So can we do that today?

1. Separating Fact From Fiction

Get down to the real story to help us do that. Let’s start by separating some fact from fiction and identify some of the myths that we associate with the baby in the manger. Can I put three up there real quick? When I told the story a minute ago, we talked about Mary Joseph coming into Bethlehem at night, and she’s riding the donkey and she’s in labor. None of that is stuff we know to be true. We don’t know what time of day that they arrive, and we don’t know how they were traveling, whether a donkey was involved or not, and we’re reasonably certain that she wasn’t in labor upon her arrival. How do we know that? Well, let’s look at the text. Got your Bible? Let’s go to Luke chapter 2.

And so a biblical foundation for the story. I’m going to begin in Luke 2 and verse 1. Luke writes, Now in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth. This was the first census taken while Crinius was governor of Syria. And everyone was on his way to register for the census, each to his own city. Joseph also went up from Galilee from the city of Nazareth to Judea 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 and was with child. While they were there, the days were completed for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son, and she wrapped him in clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the end.

Well, you see some pieces of the story, and you see that some other pieces are missing, right? Again, we don’t know when they arrived or what they wrote on, and Mary certainly isn’t in labor because if you look at verse 6, it says, while they were there. This is after their arrival, a few hours, a few days, a few weeks. Well, honestly, I don’t know. The text doesn’t tell us anything about that. Only that while they had come to Bethlehem, she went into labor. We do know that there was no room for them at the inn. But you’ll notice there’s nothing about an evil innkeeper. Did you see him there? Now, see, he’s not in the story either. In fact, the truth is, not only is the innkeeper not there, but we really have to pause and take another look at the end.

Because there are some scholars who say that Bethlehem only having what, about 300 people? You know, Tony started asking me questions in class. I thought it’d be fun to ask him questions this morning. Some scholars think that Bethlehem would have been way too small to have any kind of formal accommodation for travelers. And so the idea of there being sort of a motel six in Bethlehem, there’s some question about that. But it does talk about an end, right? Here in Luke chapter 2. But if you follow that word through the New Testament, it does, it does create some confusion because in some places the word in is used for sort of a formal lodging for travelers, but in other places it’s used for just used to refer to somebody’s guest room.

So evidently it has a much broader meaning than it does to us. And the question is, well, what does it mean here? And I don’t know. Because there isn’t enough information supplied to us in the text to figure out what these accommodations looked like. And so it may very well be that Mary and Joseph just arrived and are staying with family, and other family members got there first. And you know how that is, right? When other family gets there before you and takes all the rooms? My family’s laughing because they know what I stayed in a hotel last night because they all took the rooms. And maybe it is with Mary and Joseph that there just wasn’t any more room for them to stay. The truth is we just don’t know.

We do know that because of the crowded accommodations, they were they were forced into the barn, right? Still in Luke 2. Find the barn. Because it’s not there either. We assume a barn because the text does say he was laid in a manger or a feeding trough for animals. That’s true. But look, the Jewish folks of that time kept their animals in all kinds of different facilities. They did have barns, and sometimes they were kept in caves. There’s some traditions about Jesus being born in a cave. Sometimes in that culture, and this kind of grosses me out, but in that culture, the people and the animals all lived under one roof, and there was just sort of little separation between the two. Well, which one is the i is it referring to here?

Where was Jesus born? We don’t know. The text doesn’t tell us. In fact, the text doesn’t mention any animals looking on. We only assume that because of the manger, which me assume means a barn, which may or may not be so. But we do know the kings came, right? Well, the text doesn’t call them kings, it calls them magi, wise men. And typically in the Christmas cards, as with this picture, you got the shepherds and the wise men, and they’re all there at the same idea at the same time, rather, except when we read Matthew’s account of this, it’s pretty clear that the magi came long after the birth of Jesus. In fact, based on that whole interaction with Herod, it might very well be that they didn’t come for a year or more after Jesus was born.

So they probably weren’t at the barn if there was a barn, and they certainly weren’t there when the shepherds were there. Again, that’s just embellishment in the story. And certainly you’ll be thinking today that I need to say something about the date. Do I really need to? I mean, December 25th is so traditionally observed as the birth of Christ, and everybody just assumes that somewhere in there’s something about that. And yet the truth is from Scripture. Not only are we not given a date, we’re not given any way to calculate or guess when this might have been or what time of year it was. We don’t know the date of Jesus’ birth. In fact, what we’re beginning to see is most of what is recited this year about the birth story of Jesus is either stuff we don’t know to be true or stuff that isn’t true.

2. Why So Little About Jesus' Birth?

In fact, I think much of the reason for the confusion is because there is so little information about the birth of Jesus. That’s a remarkable thing. I think that’s one of the reasons that people have come to embellish this story. Because there is so little information to work with. In fact, appreciate that two of the four gospel writers who are telling the story of Jesus’ life, pass right over this part of it. They don’t tell us about the birth of Jesus. Matthew and Luke do tell the story, but even the information they provide is very brief. At best counting, there are only about 48 verses in Matthew devoted to the story, maybe 118 in Luke, but that is, in fairness, a generous accounting for it. If you want to get back to actual events in Bethlehem, Matthew gives us half a verse.

Luke maybe gives us 10 or 20. And I just think that’s fascinating. I mean, I don’t think anybody would argue that we’re talking here about the birth of the most important person ever. Can we agree on that? And there are special things that attach to this birth story. Since Matthew and Luke are telling us about the story of Jesus, and they’re recording his birth, and every good biographer with a birth is important is going to give us a lot of information about that, you would think that they would give us more than they do. Why so little about Jesus birth?

It would serve us well to remember that the Bible is not a history book. And that the Gospels are not biographies of Jesus. It would serve us well to remember that the Bible from beginning to end telling the redemption story. It’s telling us about how God, through Abraham’s seed, Jesus, is working out a plan to rescue man from sin. And that theme pulsates through every single part of the Bible, from Genesis until Revelation. And I will tell you, as a result of that, the Bible surprises us sometimes. It surprises us with the stuff that it includes, and it surprises us with the stuff it does not include. It will not satisfy all of our curiosities. In fact, sometimes it just leaves us frustrated, doesn’t it, Tony?

3. What Matthew Tells Us About the Birth of Jesus

Which makes me kind of curious. What does the Bible tell us about the birth of Jesus? What I would like to do this morning with the time we have left is to go back to the accounts and rather than dabble in the myth, to go back and look at what the scripture actually does tell us about the birth of Jesus. And to see how of all of those threads connect to the broader tapestry of Scripture. How they contribute to the redemption story. So back up in your Bible to Matthew. Let’s start at Matthew chapter 1, where the New Testament begins and where Matthew begins the birth story first by giving us the genealogy of Jesus. And you’re thinking, woo-hoo, that would be a great thing to have a young man cite in Nativity play, right?

You know what we do with the genealogies. We pray that Tony calls on someone else to read that part in Bible class. It’s those long lists of names that are hard to pronounce, and we just get frustrated with them. And so when Matthew begins to tell the birth story of Jesus, he begins with a long list of hard names to pronounce. And when we want to know about the birth story, we pass right over that and we get down to verse 18, right?

This isn’t just a long list of hard names. It’s a critical list. Matthew chapter 1 and verse 1, the record of the genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of David, the son of Abraham. That’s his summary statement here at the beginning. And then he goes through and gives the list. Listen, I’ll tell you why this list is critical. It takes the baby in the manger he’s about to tell us about, and it threads him back all the way through the Old Testament, back to, and I thought you were still in my thunder this morning, Tony, when you went to Genesis 12 3. All the way to the promises to Abraham in Genesis 12 3. In you, all families of the earth would be blessed. This child is not a descendant of Abraham.

He is the descendant of Abraham who’s going to bring that blessing to everyone. This isn’t just an irrelevant part of the story to skip over. It is a key part of the story that ties it all together. In fact, remember that Matthew’s gospel was the gospel written for the Jew. And so for a Jewish audience, he tunes in and listens to this critical connecting thread as Matthew knits together the Bible story and ties it to the baby in the manger. So we start with the genealogy. And then if you go down to verse 18, he begins the actual birth story by telling us of the angel’s visit to Joseph. That was an important visit. Because Joseph was betrothed to Mary, but they had not come together yet as husband and wife, and she’s pregnant.

By the way, you’ll notice that the Nivativity plays pass right over this part of the story, too. And the assumption that Joseph makes is the assumption that any man would make. He knew he wasn’t the father. And concludes that Mary has been involved in immorality. And so his plan as a generous, gracious man is to quietly put her away. And so it necessitates the visit of the angel to come to Joseph. That’s what we have in Matthew 1 and verse 18, explaining this rather complicated situation to Joseph. What’s happened here is the work of the Holy Spirit. But I will tell you, ladies and gentlemen, to my knowledge, the only angels only visit Joseph and Mary. There is no record of God explaining what has happened to Mary to anybody else.

The rest of the world is left to assume that Jesus was born as a consequence of immorality, either on the part of his mother or his mother and father. Think of the rumor and the scandal surrounding the birth of Jesus. There may have been more than one reason there wasn’t room for this young couple at the house. And yet think of the way it foreshadows. What would follow Jesus throughout his day? The rumor, the accusation, the scandal. And then the angel continues by telling him in verse 21 of this child Mary will have, she will bear a son, and you will call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. That’s rooted in Genesis 12 3. That’s the blessing that the seed of Abraham would bring to everybody on earth, deliverance from sin.

And then you press on. And in verses 22 and 23, he ties that thought back to the word of the Old Testament prophets, specifically Isaiah’s prophecy about the virgin birth, the virgin birth. Do you see how it’s all coming together, the whole story? And then we get to chapter 2. And if you look at verse 1, he actually begins to tell us about events in Bethlehem. Now, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, and we’re expecting some things about the innkeeper and the barn, right? And he doesn’t even go there. He tells us nothing about what’s happening in Bethlehem. Instead, he says, Magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem. And from there he intertwines this tale between the Magi and Herod, and we’ll get to Herod in a minute.

And you look at that and you think, why? I mean, Matthew spends a lot of time talking about the Magi’s journey to see Jesus. Why? Twelve verses. You think he at least could have cleared up the barn problem for us. He goes on and onstead about how these foreigners came to see the child. And by the way, did I mention a minute ago that his gospel is a gospel to the Jews? Why is he going on and on about these foreigners coming to see, coming to see the child? Well, you remember that Matthew’s gospel was to the Jews, and it was not being recorded as these events are taking place. No, instead, Matthew’s gospel was written after the fact. His gospel is being written during the early days of the church.

And the gospel to the Jews includes a lengthy section explaining how these foreigners, how these Gentile foreigners were led clearly by God to see the child. You think there was a message there for us?

4. What Luke Tells Us About the Birth of Jesus

And intertwined with that story, as we said a minute ago, is that awful story of Herod’s slaughter of the innocents. Oddly enough, that’s another part of the story that is omitted from the nativity plays. And yet it does help to foreshadow what would be the many assaults of the enemy against the child. If you’ll move to Luke chapter 2, Luke does tell us some about events in Bethlehem. Basically, he just tells us that Jesus was born and wrapped in a manger, and then immediately his attention turns, and he’s focused on those shepherds, and the angels’ visit to the shepherd. Now will you look back again at the words those young boys have to recite in the nativity play and listen to what he actually says. This is the angel’s declaration, Luke 2 and verse 10.

Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy, which will be for all people. Did they even get what that meant? For today in the city of David, there’s another connecting thread. There has been born to you a Savior who is Christ the Lord. We just stop all day and talk about the titles and their significance. It’s all tying Jesus in to the broader Bible story. But what’s more interesting than that is again, Luke moves on quickly from the actual birth story, and instead he moves forward. He moves forward eight days later when his mom and dad bring him to the temple, and they encounter this man named Simeon. You talk about sort of a wacky, bizarre scene. They go into the temple to fulfill an obligation that all Jewish parents would have fulfilled, and this stranger walks up, takes the baby out of their arms, and the moms are already freaking out, right?

And then he says this is Luke 2 29. Now, Lord, you are releasing your bondservant to depart in peace according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples. Look at verse 32. A light of revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of your people, Israel. And his father and mother were amazed at these things which were being said of him. And Simon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother, Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rise of many and Israel for a sign to be opposed, and a sword. A sword will pierce even to your own arms. How long could we spend this morning unraveling all the pieces of that speech and its significance?

Conclusion

What are we to do with the information that the text does supply for?

I think if we look at the birth story of Jesus from the Holy Spirit’s perspective, what reminds us, what it reminds us of is that this is the redemption story. And this theme is finding its way into every part, even as the Holy Spirit records the coming of the Savior into the world. His agenda is not to satisfy all of our curiosities and settle all of our questions, but to present Jesus as the Savior, the promised seed of Abraham, who would rescue us from sin.

Why do we miss that? Why are we more enamored with Christmas Miz than the gospel truth about the birth of the Savior? I have a theory about that. I think we like the Christmas myth because we’re a lot more comfortable looking at that picture than we are looking at that picture. I like to look at the baby in the manger because the baby in the manger doesn’t challenge me. But that other picture does. I have to look at that other picture and be reminded that Jesus is there on the cross because of my sins. And when I look at that picture, I am challenged to consider again the depth of God’s love for me that caused this to happen. I’m challenged to consider the call of Jesus.

To take up my cross and follow him.

Will you think about him this morning? I wanted us to think about that, ladies and gentlemen, because it may be that there is somebody sitting in this crowd right now who needs the Savior on the cross. Who needs to be challenged by the fact that he was there because of our sins, challenged by the reality that we put him there, challenged to consider God’s love, challenged to consider his call. Would you serve him today? We’re going to sing a song right now that will encourage you to make that choice. If you need to, you make your way down front. While we stand, while we sing.