WWUTT 2268 Away in a Manger (Luke 2:6-7)

We commonly view the nativity scene as being Mary and Joseph, the baby Jesus in a manger, some animals around, shepherds, wise men, and Jesus being born in a barn. But is that accurate? When we understand the text.

This is When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible study in the Word of Christ. For he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Tell your friends about our ministry at www .wutt .com.

Once again, it's Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Gospel of Luke, we've been in Chapter 2, just touching on the birth narrative of Jesus at the start of the chapter. Let me read once again verses 1 -7 as we get started.

Hear the word of the Lord. In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria, and all went to be registered each to his own town.

And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.

And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

Luke 2 and the Birth Narrative of Jesus

And we've talked about some various things so far this week concerning these opening few verses of Luke 2. We've considered Caesar Augustus and who he was, Quirinius, and some of the controversy surrounding Luke's statement about him being the governor of Syria.

We talked about Joseph and Mary's journey from Bethlehem down, or sorry, Nazareth down to Bethlehem. Now, if you're looking at it on a map, Nazareth is in the north, Bethlehem is in the south. And so we would say that they went down to Bethlehem.

But notice that it says in verse four, Joseph went up from Galilee to Judea. Why would they say going up? Well, because as far as the topography is concerned, you would be ascending. Judea was higher in elevation than Galilee was.

And any time the Jews journeyed to Jerusalem to go to the temple, it's always talked about going up to the temple. Since the temple was built on Mount Moriah, it was an elevated place there in Judea. All of the Psalms that talk about going up to the house of worship, it's always described as ascending.

You have the various Psalms of ascents. They would be Psalms that would be sung by the Jews as they were going up to the temple, perhaps to Jerusalem for a time of festival or something like that. So even here it is said that Joseph and Mary went up to Judea to the city of David, which is Bethlehem.

While they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And of course, where she gives birth is a place where apparently animals slept because she wrapped her baby Jesus in swaddling clothes and laid him in an animal's feed trough called a manger because there was no place for them in the inn.

Now we've already talked about this concept of the inn a little bit. If you missed any of that, you can listen to yesterday's episode, but let's consider the whole setting that we refer to as a nativity scene.

Whether acted out by children in church or cast in small figures in a home or set up as a life-size spectacle on the front lawn, the nativity scene has become a regular thing to Christmas decorations.

You have a little model of it on your counter, or maybe your church does a living nativity out in the parking lot. There's all different kinds of shapes and sizes and depictions of the Christmas nativity, but you know a nativity when you see one.

The word nativity comes from the Latin word nativitas, meaning arisen by birth. Legend has it that a 13th century friar, St. Francis of Assisi, perhaps you know that name, first introduced the nativity scene, which he set up life-size, like living animals, an empty manger as a visual, probably had some sort of building set up too, like a shack that he would have called his stable.

And this was the way that St. Francis would present the gospel. He would set up this nativity and he would talk about the savior of the world who was born in the flesh, who put on flesh and dwelt among us.

The traditional nativity will contain figures of Mary and Joseph kneeling beside baby Jesus in a manger. Yours might also include a couple of shepherds with expressions of wonder on their faces. And along with the shepherds, you'll have some sheep.

There might even be cows and a donkey. Don't forget the three kings, even though they were not there at the birth of Jesus, but almost always a nativity set will have the three magi, or at least the magi depicted as three men because they brought treasures of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

So each wise man has one of those treasures. You might also add an angel standing nearby or suspended over the scene. And all of this is set under a cutaway stable with grass and hay inside. After all, as everybody knows, Jesus was born in a barn, right?

Well, if you listen to yesterday's episode, you know that my response to that is no, he was not born in a barn. Contrary to popular belief, Jesus was not born in a stable. This myth has come about partly because we live in a different time and culture, but mostly it's because the scripture has been misinterpreted.

That error has been repeated over and over and over for so long, for centuries, if not a thousand years, that we think that this is how the story goes. But just as the gospel of Luke never mentions an innkeeper, there's also no stable in the Christmas story either.

So coming back again to verse six, we read, and while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son, which, by the way, implies she had others. It implies that there has never been a baby born to Mary until this child, but it also indicates, as Luke will say later in the gospels, and we'll come to that, it also indicates that Jesus had other siblings.

He had half-siblings. Since Jesus had no earthly father, he was conceived of the Holy Spirit, but he did have an earthly mother, Mary, and Mary had other children after Jesus. So it is said here that he was her firstborn son, whom she wrapped in swaddling cloths, just whatever kind of cloth she had that she could wrap a baby in.

There are some that will say that Jesus was wrapped in burial cloths, because this was all that Mary and Joseph had. Some of the legend, as I've heard it, goes that whenever people traveled, they traveled with their own burial shrouds, their own burial clothing, because you never know.

While you're traveling, you may die. So you want to have some garments of some kind nearby in your possession, in your belongings that could be taken out. The body can be wrapped if you've got to be buried on the side of the road or something like that.

So they had burial cloths with them, and therefore that's what Mary wrapped him in, and it's supposed to be like foretelling of the fact that Jesus was born to die, but that's not.

True.

Swaddling cloths gives us no indication of this being burial garments. It's just the typical garment or typical sort of cloth or blanket. You might wrap a.

Baby in.

All of my kids were born in a hospital, and after the nurse cleans them up, she swaddles the baby, puts a blanket around the baby really tightly, really snug, and then puts the baby in the little bassinet thing.

So this was that sort of thing with Mary. She's just wrapping the baby in whatever garment she had, whatever cloth she had to swaddle a baby. So she wraps him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger because there was no place for them in the inn.

It's this word manger, which comes from the Greek word fatni, that has led many to conclude that the setting of the birth of Christ was in a stable or some sort of a structure where livestock are kept.

Many, even like in the early days, in the early centuries of the church, believed that this stable was a cave because there might be some sort of a stable that was hewn into the side of a rock where animals would be kept.

And so that was the place where Jesus was born. It was inside a cave. Really, for the vast majority of church history, there's been this belief that Jesus was born in some kind of a stable. A manger, of course, is an animal's feed trough, as I mentioned, hence why we also depict the birth of Christ surrounded by sheep and cattle and donkeys.

Any kind of painting of the nativity that you've ever seen will certainly depict this. The word for manger, it's used again in Luke 2, 12, when the angels told the shepherds that they would find the Savior wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.

So if baby Jesus was placed in a manger, why is it unreasonable to assume that he was born in a barn? Because we're imagining with Western world minds in the 21st century, rather than thinking of a first century setting in the Middle East, the common dwelling in first century Palestine.

And I mean, Palestine, not as the country, not as a nation, but Palestine is the region back then it was it was referred to as Palestine. That's not that's not an unusual description of that region. I know there's there's distinctions today between Israel and Palestine, but it wasn't the case back then.

That was what the region was called. So the common dwelling in that region of the world in the first century was comprised of two levels. The upper room was for dining and sleeping. And we already talked about how that word for in, kataluma, is the same word that comes up again to describe the upper room where Jesus and his disciples would share the last supper.

So that's that's where the in would be. This was the place for dining and sleeping. The lower level would be for work and for fellowship. And at night, the animals would be brought into the home to ensure that they would not run away or be stolen.

Obviously, the animals remained on the lower level while the occupants stayed upstairs. Now, in the wintertime, this was also beneficial because the animals being downstairs would generate heat. And so it helped to heat the upstairs to have these warm blooded mammals sleeping downstairs right underneath where everybody would sleep.

Remember that we considered how Joseph and Mary had been in Bethlehem for at least several weeks by the time Jesus was born. They did not arrive with Mary in the throes of labor pains because they returned to the place of their lineage.

They would have been staying with family. Now, the house was full of people who had returned to register for the census. So the upper room or the in, as it's called here in verse seven, was occupied. So Jesus was born downstairs and a manger was made his crib.

Mary may have even preferred to have her baby downstairs instead of being surrounded by a bunch of people, because it certainly would have been more private. Now, just because Jesus was born in a place where the animals were kept, that doesn't mean that animals were present.

Joseph and Mary were not staying with a bunch of heartless aunts and uncles who told her to grin and bear it, forcing her to give birth under the rear end of a cow. The animals would have stayed outside.

Now, also keep in mind that Luke is giving an account of a great historical event, the birth of the Savior of the world. He's not just spelling out these details for the sake of giving details. He's letting you know this is how the Savior was born.

And one of the things that Luke is particularly concerned with are dates, places, but especially people. He said this at the very beginning of the Gospel of Luke. These are eyewitness accounts. So he wants you to know there were all kinds of people who were there when Jesus was born.

That's the significance of saying that there was no room in the inn. It was customary to wrap newborn babies in swaddling clothes, but it was not customary to lay them in mangers. Why did Mary put him there?

Because there was no room for them in the upper room of the house where everyone slept. There were a lot of people in this house. So here in Luke 2, 6 through 7, he's showing the reader that there were many witnesses to the birth of Christ.

Mary and Joseph were not by themselves out in a barn. There was no place for them in the inn means the house they were in was full of family. A second thing to consider is that Luke is setting up the next part of the story where he introduces another group of witnesses, shepherds, to whom angels announced that the Messiah had come.

Here's the angel's message again. We'll get to this part of the narrative next week. The angel said to them, fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord.

And this will be a sign for you. You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. It was necessary for Luke to say in his narrative that Jesus was wrapped in swaddling cloths and placed in a manger because it was part of the angel's announcement to the shepherd.

So this is setting up the next part of the narrative. The sign of Jesus' birth is understood in two ways. First, the angels announced that the birth of Jesus was the fulfillment of the sign that God promised through the prophet Isaiah.

Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel. That is in Isaiah 7 14. The angels said that this baby born in Bethlehem was the Messiah who had been foretold.

But the second way this sign is understood is how the shepherds would find the Christ child wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. Wrapped in swaddling cloths indicated to the shepherds that this miracle baby was a newborn.

Bethlehem was a small town with no more than a few hundred people. Still, there may have been a few babies. So the shepherds were looking for the baby who had just been born in a manger, told the shepherds where the baby was.

The angel didn't exactly set the shepherds up with a street address, but in a manger was enough. Since animals were outside during the day and inside at night, their feed troughs were likely built into the wall, half outside, half inside.

This meant the shepherds could find the baby without knocking on doors or tromping through someone's home. The shepherds found the baby just as the angel had said, wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger, having been born in a home, not in a barn.

Now, if this ruins your perspective of Jesus' lowly beginnings, it shouldn't. Instead of being born in the palace, which, as I said earlier this week, would have been visible from Bethlehem. The King of Kings was born in a peasant's home, in the part of the house where the animals sleep.

We read in 2 Corinthians 8 -9,. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich. Jesus Christ left his throne in heaven, took on human flesh, and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

He became nothing, so that through him we might have everything. Therefore, let us be imitators of Christ our Savior. What do we read in Philippians 2 -3 -5,. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus. God considered our greatest need, and that was our need to be forgiven our sins so that we might be reconciled back to God.

And he gives his Son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins, so that all who believe in him will not perish. Our sins are atoned for by faith in Christ and his sacrifice. We are made new before God and adopted into his family as his sons and daughters, reconciled to God and reconciled to one another.

This was our great need that God considered and gave his Son to fulfill. And Jesus gave himself for us. As we go on to read in Philippians 2, that he did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself by taking the form of a servant born in the likeness of man.

And he humbled himself, becoming obedient even to the point of death on a cross. Therefore God is highly exalted him and given him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Jesus gave himself for us. And so we should be willing to give of ourselves for each other. Heavenly Father, we thank you for what it is that we have read here today. We are reminded of Jesus' lowly beginnings.

He deserved to be born in a palace. He deserved to grow up with richness and servants waiting on him and sitting upon a throne and ordering people around. He would have reigned even over his own parents, for that's what he deserved.

But that is not the way that he came into this world. He came with humble beginnings, so that we likewise would humble ourselves, humbling ourselves before God, humbling ourselves before one another. And we would learn to live as Jesus did, not to be served but to serve, giving his life as a ransom for many.

So may we serve one another as Jesus has done for us, as he has shown to us, humbling ourselves and not considering our needs as greater than someone else's, but considering the needs of others even ahead of our own.

Give us this humble spirit of Christ. It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.