The Birth Of Our Lord Jesus Christ

Feature 3 – December 2021 – Grace & Truth Magazine

The Birth Of Our Lord Jesus Christ

The birth of our Lord Jesus Christ is told in the second chapter of The Gospel According To Luke , but God carefully built the foundation for this marvelous event throughout the Old Testament. Let’s glance at some of the events and prophecies leading up to this unique and astounding occasion, when God the Son would infinitely humble Himself, stooping to become true Man. In doing so, He could, 33 years later, bring glory to God by dying for sinners’ salvation. Hebrews 2:9 tells us, “Jesus … was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death” ( NKJV ).

As God He cannot die, but as a true Man His soul and spirit would be separated from His body in death. Therefore He had to become Man in order to be able to die. We become man through birth, so He too was born and grew up to be a true Man, while still being God the Son.

First Indication
The story begins in Genesis 3. The woman, before she had even been given the name Eve, yielded to the serpent’s (Satan’s) temptation and ate of the fruit God had forbidden. She gave some to her husband, Adam, and he ate, disobeying God’s direct command and thus bringing sin into the world (Rom. 5:12-19). Dealing with the matter, God told the serpent that the “Seed” (Gen. 3:15) of the woman would crush his head, while he would crush the heel of this Promised One. Thus the Promised Seed was to come through a woman, not as the normal outcome of the relationship between a husband and wife. God thus directly proclaimed Satan’s doom to him, at the same time giving mankind the blessed assurance of their coming Savior.

His Human Ancestors
Going on through Genesis we are told the names of the human ancestors of the Savior. Those who lived before the flood are listed in Genesis 5, while the line continues after the flood in chapter 11. Joshua 24:2 adds the sad fact that even some of these people became idolaters. Yet from out of this background God sovereignly called a man through whose Seed all the earth should be blessed.

Abraham was called to leave his country, family and father’s house and go to the land God would show him. He became the father of many nations, but it was through his son Isaac and Isaac’s son Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel, that God’s promise would in “the fullness of the time” be fulfilled (Gal. 4:4).

Jacob’s son Judah was next in this genealogical line. The line is traced all the way to the birth of Jesus in two of the Gospels. The genealogy in Matthew 1 is the royal genealogy, establishing His right to the throne of David. We find in Luke 3 the genealogy of our Lord’s mother Mary, the wife of Joseph, who was the foster or legal father of the Son of God when He was here on earth. Both Mary and Joseph were descendants of King David. The stories of the lives and activities of many of these ancestors are found in the Old Testament. God has recorded them not merely for the lessons we learn from them personally but also because they are in the human lineage from which our Lord Jesus was descended.

Attempts To Keep Him From Being Born
It is interesting to see the many attempts Satan instigated to keep the Seed of the woman from being born into the world and even living afterward. A few that stand out are:

• Cain killed his brother Abel who had brought a sacrifice that God had accepted. Seth replaced Abel in the genealogy (Gen. 4).
• By the time of Noah, Satan had so succeeded in corrupting mankind that God destroyed all flesh except for Noah and his family. “Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD … [He] was a just man, perfect in his generations. Noah walked with God” (6:8-9).
• In Exodus 1:15-16 we see the Egyptian Pharaoh ordering all the boys born to Israelite women to be killed.
• We read in 1 Samuel 18–19 that King Saul threw his spear at David twice. In the following chapters we see more of Saul’s many attempts against David’s life.
• Wicked Athaliah attempted to murder her grandchildren, the royal heirs of Judah. Only Joash was rescued. He was hidden in the temple and eventually brought out and made king (2 Ki. 11).
• Haman, in Esther 3, got permission to send out a decree to exterminate all Jews throughout the entire Persian Empire. God thwarted this effort as well.

Prophecies About His Birth
Meanwhile, God through His prophets had been giving clear indications about the birth of the Lord Jesus. The prophet Micah told where He was to be born: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth to Me the One to be Ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting” (Mic. 5:2). His contemporary prophet, Isaiah, spoke and wrote much about the coming Messiah, including His name and the fact that He would be born of a virgin: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel” (Isa. 7:14). These prophets prophesied more than 700 years before their prophecies were fulfilled. Hosea, too, prophesied about His having to be taken to Egypt when still a baby, saying: “Out of Egypt I called My Son” (Hos. 11:1).

The prophets often did not understand what the Holy Spirit was saying through them when they wrote about “the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow” (1 Pet. 1:11), but they searched their writings to understand them (v.10). We see Daniel was an example of this, for as an old man he read the book of Jeremiah, prayed earnestly and gained knowledge about future events (Dan. 9).

Angelic Announcements
To Zacharias. For 400 years no prophetic voice was heard. There was no further revelation about the coming of the Lord Jesus into the world. Then heaven moved. The angel Gabriel, already seen as a messenger from God, appeared to the aged priest Zacharias, who was offering incense in the temple. This godly priest and his equally godly wife, Elizabeth, barren up to this point, were to become the parents of a boy named John, who was “to make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (Lk. 1:17). John would be the forerunner of the Messiah. For not immediately believing the angel’s word, Zacharias was deprived of the ability to speak until after his son was born. Then once again we hear a prophetic word as he spoke to his infant son.

To Mary. About six months after appearing to Zacharias, the angel Gabriel was sent to a young virgin named Mary, a descendant of King David living at Nazareth in Galilee. She was engaged to Joseph, a carpenter who was also descended from this king. Gabriel greeted her and told her she had found favor with God: she was going to become the mother of a Son whom she was to call Jesus. The Lord God would give to Him the throne of His father David and He would reign over the house of Jacob forever. Of His kingdom there would be no end. Mary was shocked and asked how this could be. The angel explained that the Holy Spirit would come upon her, and the child would be called the Son of God. He further told her that her relative Elizabeth, who had been barren so long, was now in the sixth month of her pregnancy. Mary then quietly assented, in Luke 1:38, terming herself “the maidservant of the Lord!”

Mary hastened to travel to Judea to visit these aged relatives. As she entered the door, Elizabeth greeted her as blessed and the fruit of her womb as blessed also, and asked, “Why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (v.43). Elizabeth spoke of the baby in her womb leaping for joy as he heard Mary’s greeting. Then she spontaneously burst into a song of praise to God celebrating Mary’s pregnancy, which would not have been at all noticeable to anyone at this point. Mary’s visit lasted three months, after which she returned home again.

To Joseph. Mary’s pregnancy became known to Joseph, troubling him, as could be expected. But as he was considering ending the engagement, “an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins’” (Mt. 1:20-21). The angel went on to point out that this was a fulfillment of the prophecy we have noted in Isaiah 7:14. Joseph too obeyed the directions given him, taking Mary as his wife but not having the normal husband-wife sexual relations with her until after the birth of her child. What a noble, obedient, self-sacrificing couple!

An Imperial Decree
“The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, like the rivers of water; He turns it wherever He wishes” (Prov. 21:1). We now see another example of the truth of this verse. Caesar Augustus, the mighty Roman emperor, at precisely this time decreed that his entire empire be registered for tax purposes. Luke, the careful historian, mentioned the Syrian governor under whose rule this census took place. Rather than the census officials going from house to house, registering their inhabitants, the people all had to go to the city of their ancestry. Submissive to the decree, Joseph took Mary, at this time in her last stages of pregnancy, to Bethlehem, the city of their ancestor, King David (Lk. 2:1-5). The journey was not easy or comfortable. The stage for His birth was now set.

The Humble Birth Of Jesus
“So it was, that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn” (vv.6-7). God the Son laid aside all the outward evidences of His glory, making Himself of no reputation and becoming Man. To God the Father He said, “A body You have prepared for Me … Behold, I have come – in the volume of the book it is written of Me – to do Your will, O God” (Heb. 10:5,7).

Neither Joseph nor Mary heard these words of His. They were doubtless overjoyed by the birth of their seemingly helpless Baby and did what they could for His comfort and well-being. Their poverty is clearly evident. The fact that there was no room for this little family in the inn speaks volumes: our Lord was rejected from the very onset of His life on earth!

Heaven Rejoiced To Share The News
While the high and mighty of earth had their plans and activities and would have been greatly disturbed to know that God’s wonderful counsels, purposed before the ages of time, were being put into effect that very night, there were humbler souls to whom the good news was made known. “God was manifested in the flesh … seen by angels!” (1 Tim. 3:16). What a glorious message! This had to be shared, had to be made known!

Shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night, suddenly saw an angel of the Lord standing before them and the glory of the Lord shining around them. They were startled, greatly afraid! “Then the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger’” (Lk. 2:10-12). All of a sudden, many more angels were there. Just as when the foundations of the earth were laid, and the morning stars sang and the sons of God shouted for joy, so here this heavenly host was “praising God and saying [not singing, as many hymn writers have erroneously said]: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!” (vv.13-14).

The Shepherds Spread The News
The shepherds, taken up with what the Lord had made known to them, went to Bethlehem in haste. They found Mary and Joseph and the Baby lying in a manger. When they had seen Him, they made known around the country the thing that had been spoken to them about this Child, causing all who heard the things the shepherds told them to marvel (vv.15-19). Yet we do not find anyone else responding by coming to see this marvelous thing made known by the angels. Only Mary kept all these things in mind and pondered them in her heart.

Where Were The Wise Men?
It is well to note that Scripture says nothing about wise men coming that same night together with the shepherds. The scene presented to us in Matthew’s gospel of wise men coming to worship the One who was born King of the Jews is something that took place months later, in all likelihood, a year or more afterward. In Matthew 2 we gather that the wise men knew that the promised King of the Jews had been born before they left the East to worship Him (v.2). They found the young Child in a house with Mary His mother (v.11). Three more times Jesus is called “the young Child” in this passage before Joseph took Him and Mary to Egypt (vv.13-14), and three times He is called the same thing when the family returned from Egypt and settled in Nazareth of Galilee to live (vv.19-23). Also, in order to make sure that he would have Jesus killed, Herod had all the male children “from two years old and under” in Bethlehem and the surrounding districts put to death (v.16). The wise men wisely obeyed the warning given them in a dream, and did not return to wicked King Herod (v.12).

Circumcision And Presentation
Joseph and Mary as godly Israelites obeyed God’s law, which called for every male child to be circumcised eight days after birth. This procedure was carried out as required, and “the Child … was called JESUS, the name given by the angel before He was conceived in the womb” (Lk. 2:21). The family evidently stayed in Bethlehem, or at least in Judea, for we find Joseph and Mary coming to Jerusalem 40 days after His birth to present their Baby, Mary’s firstborn male Child, to the Lord. According to the law, every male firstborn child was “holy to the LORD” (vv.23; see Ex. 13:2).

Mary, His mother, had to be purified at that time in accordance with the law as given in Leviticus 12. For this it was necessary to bring a lamb for a burnt offering and a turtledove or a young pigeon for a sin offering. Very poor people could substitute a second pigeon or turtledove for the lamb. This is what Joseph and Mary did, and from this we see their deep poverty. Truly our Lord Jesus humbled Himself to take His place in such a needy family.

Simeon
We next see a man, Simeon, “just and devout, waiting for the Consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him” (Lk. 2:25). In fact, the Holy Spirit had revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen the Lord’s Christ. Just as Joseph and Mary brought Jesus into the temple, this aged saint was led by the Spirit to come into the temple as well. He took the Child Jesus up in His arms and blessed God for letting him see His salvation which He had prepared for all peoples, the Gentiles as well as Israel. He blessed Joseph and Mary and told her, “Behold, this Child is destined for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign which will be spoken against (yes, a sword will pierce through your own soul also), that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed” (vv.34-35).

Anna, The Aged Prophetess
The prophet Malachi had said that those who feared the LORD in a day when the people as a whole despised His things would speak often one to another (see Mal. 3:16-18). We have been seeing some of these here in the early chapters of Luke, associated with the events connected with the birth of our Lord Jesus. The last of these coming to our attention, in Luke 2:36-38, is the prophetess Anna from the tribe of Asher, most of whose people had long before been carried into captivity by the Assyrians. She had been widowed after seven years of marriage and was at least 84 and possibly 105 years old (depending on how to understand the text), living in the temple and serving “God with fastings and prayers night and day” (v.37). She too came in right at that instant when Simeon finished speaking, gave thanks and, in true fulfillment of Malachi’s prophecy, spoke of this Child to all those who looked for redemption in Jerusalem. She was obviously well acquainted with them all. How good it is to associate with those who fear the Lord and enjoy hearing and speaking about Him!

Concluding Thoughts
After all these facts associated with the birth of Jesus, Scripture tells only a few things about Him until, at the age of 30 He entered on His public ministry. Luke 2:39 shows us Joseph and Mary, having performed all things according to the law of the Lord, returning to their city of Nazareth in Galilee. We read that Joseph and Mary went to Jerusalem annually at the Feast of the Passover (v.41).

Obviously, the visit of the wise men came after the birth of Jesus and when they were in a house at Bethlehem, which is only a short distance from Jerusalem. The flight into Egypt followed, and then when the threat to their young Child was over, according to Matthew 2:23, the family returned to live at Nazareth. Here “the Child grew and became strong in spirit, filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him” (Lk. 2:40).

By Eugene P. Vedder, Jr.

“Fear not” (Lk. 2:10 KJV). Again and again, heaven echoes its own words in speaking to trembling sinners. Do not pass them by as unnecessary words. What title had the poor shepherds to them that you and I have not? They were sinners, but faith entitled them to it. And the angel said, “Unto you is born … a Savior” (v.11) – not a judge or a lawgiver. The grace of God brings salvation (Ti. 2:11). The angels talked of salvation. From beginning to end of the Bible, salvation is the burden. So too in Luke 2: “And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger” (v.12). It cost Christ everything, and brought the Son from the Father to be made flesh. The beginning of the story of His sorrows is here, lying in a manger! The story of what His days were to be began to tell itself out. —J. G. Bellett, adapted from Present Testimony, 1866