Just over 2,000 years ago in Roman controlled Palestine, the most important birth that ever has or ever will occur, forever changed the world and brought hope to mankind. The unfathomable became a reality. God the Son came to earth as a helpless baby in the person of Jesus Christ. The Creator came to live as a man within the realm of his earthly creation. Emmanuel – God with us.
Royalty? Riches? Prestige? Popularity? Rather, humility. God choose a teenage peasant named Mary to carry and care for his Son. Jesus’ adoptive father was a simple, humble carpenter named Joseph. Mary and Joseph resided in the small town of Nazareth that likely had no more than one hundred residents. Philippians 2:7 reveals that Jesus humbly and willingly chose to enter the world in the likeness of man and in the form a servant. How amazing to ponder that Jesus, being fully and equally God - the exact representation of the Father’s character and person (Isa 9:6, Jn 5:18, 10:30, 14:9, 2 Cor 4:4, Col 1:15, 1 Tim 3:16, Titus 2:13, Col 2:9, Rev 19:16), arrived in a manger with none but a few shepherd visitors. Shepherding was perhaps the loneliest and lowliest profession of that day, yet God chose to reveal with magnificent angelic majesty the coming of his Son to them. What a profound message of God’s heart for all people regardless of earthly status, as well as a symbolic picture of mankind’s spiritual condition that Christ came to redeem!
Despite the Jews’ overwhelming rejection of Jesus, his arrival was neither unpredicted nor unexpected. The entire Old Testament pointed towards the coming of the promised Messiah. The first glimpse of this promise is seen in Genesis 3, which has been termed the protoevangel. After the fall of man, God declares that the offspring of the woman will bruise the serpent’s head. This pronouncement foreshadows the crushing blow that God in Christ would deal to Satan through his atonement on the cross and resurrection. Continuing to reveal glimpses of his redemption plan through Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, the Exodus, the Law, the Levitical sacrificial system and ordinances, Israel’s judges, Israel’s prophets, Israel’s kings (especially David), and the abundance of directly prophetic passages that foretell of the Messiah and God’s future New Covenant, God sets the stage for the entrance of the promised Savior.
It’s nothing short of astounding to fathom the simplicity and the majesty juxtaposed in that Bethlehem manger. Sovereign over all circumstances, yet there was no room for Him in the inn. Maker and ruler of the cosmos gasped for his first breath and experienced his first tears. The King of kings and Lord of lords was wrapped in swaddling clothes, not royal blankets. The Great I AM was surrounded by farm animals that he created. His earthly parents cared for and sustained his life, yet he made them and sustained their existence!
Rather than merely reading the biblical accounts of Christ’s birth at a surface level, let us always meditate on the awe-inspiring depth they contain. May the profundity of our Savior’s willingness to be born as one of us constantly draw our hearts to praise his worthy name!
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