O Little Town of Bethlehem
Download MP3If you have a Bible, I invite you to turn to Micah chapter 5, Matthew chapter 2. It's okay if you don't know where Micah is. Few people do. Unless you grew up doing sword drills. Anybody grow up doing the sword drills?
Joel Brooks:You know, if you were to take away the the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, you would lose almost the entirety of the new testament. But if you were to take away his birth, you lose about 2 or 3 chapters. There's just not much written about the birth of Jesus, and because of this, if you're a pastor, there's always this pressure every Advent season because, you know, you don't have much to draw from there, and, so there's always this desire to, really to be faithful, and at the same time, ask God to open up our eyes to what's wondrous, but has now become familiar, because we hear it so often. As we approach this Advent season, I was trying to think of what I could do maybe a little differently, and I I thought possibly I could do a character study. I did my first character study a few weeks ago when I looked at the life of Barnabas, and I heard back from a lot of you saying how helpful that was.
Joel Brooks:And so I thought, well, I'll do that again. And I began to look at Mary or Joseph or Herod, and, and ultimately, I decided not to do that because I kept going back to a place. I kept thinking about Bethlehem, the little town of Bethlehem. And so, I'm going to do a location study. We're actually gonna look at the location of Bethlehem.
Joel Brooks:I've never done a location study before, so if this works, great. If this doesn't work, I've been here 10 years. I've got tenure, and it's it's okay. We'll move on. So Micah chapter 2, and we'll also read from Matthew.
Joel Brooks:It's there in your worship guide as well. But you, oh Bethlehem Ephrathah, who were too little to be among the clans of Judah, From you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days. Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labor has given birth. Then the rest of his brothers shall return to the people of Israel, and he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they shall dwell secure.
Joel Brooks:For now he shall be great to the ends of the earth, and he shall be their peace. And now Matthew chapter 2. Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold wise men from the east came to Jerusalem saying, where is he who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose, and we have come to worship him. When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.
Joel Brooks:And assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, in Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet, and you, oh Bethlehem, and the land of Judah are by no means least among the rulers of Judah. For from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Joel Brooks:If you would pray with me. Father, we do pray that through your Spirit, you would cause Jesus to be born to us today, that we would see him clearly clearly, that he would be alive and vibrant in our hearts and minds and spirit. Jesus, we thank you for the life that you have given us, your life. It's the reason we are gathered in this place. It's great to come here and to see friends and acquaintances.
Joel Brooks:It's great to come here and sing familiar songs, but ultimately, we are here because of you, Jesus. Through your death and resurrection, you have given us new life and you have made us all here family, and we give you thanks. And now, Lord, I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But Lord, may your words remain and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Amen. There is a small town in Montana that I often drive by. I like to go to Montana in the summers if I can, and I drive by this town on the way to one of my favorite trails. And it's a really small insignificant town. The name of it is Nye, and I love as as you're going there, you would never even notice nye because there's there's not a, you know, stop light, there's not a stop sign, there's not even an intersection there.
Joel Brooks:There's only 2 or 3 small buildings. And as you're approaching it, you see a sign there, and it says, now entering and leaving nigh. And I love that. If Bethlehem was here today, the size it was when Jesus was born, you would have that sign there. Now entering and leaving Bethlehem.
Joel Brooks:Bethlehem was about as small as a town or city as you could have. It was way smaller than what we commonly think of when we think of Bethlehem. It's certainly smaller than what the artwork that we see about Christmas depicts Bethlehem in or the movies in which we see Bethlehem. It consisted likely of about 12 families, perhaps 70 people. Archaeologists archaeologists would say the high end, the highest end of what Bethlehem would have had during the time Jesus was born there would have been 300 people, but it was likely a dozen families, maybe 70 people.
Joel Brooks:So even when you picture Herod sending out the soldiers to go and kill all the children who are ages 2 and under, It's not really a mass slaughter. It would have been a few children, a few children easy to find by the soldiers. So it's small, which we'll find out later is of great significance to us. The name Bethlehem itself is significant. The word Beth, everybody say Beth.
Joel Brooks:Alright. We're gonna do a little call and response here. The word Beth means house. Alright. Now say the word Lahem.
Joel Brooks:This is really why I wanted to do it. Alright? Lahem. There we go. It's not lacham.
Joel Brooks:It's lacham. You have to like, you're coughing up something. It means bread. And so you put those things together and Bethlehem is the house of bread and, it's appropriately named. It was a very fruitful area.
Joel Brooks:A matter of fact, the original name for Bethlehem, which is Ephrathah, which is why Micah says both Ephrathah and Bethlehem together. Ephrathah means fruitful. It was a fruitful place. It was the house of bread. It was, a city that was surrounded by fertile lands where people would would, raise sheep and also raise a lot of grain.
Joel Brooks:They'd farm a lot of grain there. It was the breadbasket of Judah. So we see just even at the start here, Bethlehem begins to tell us a story. Bethlehem, as the house of bread becomes the appropriate place for the bread of life to come to us. It sits in the shadow of Jerusalem.
Joel Brooks:It's about 4 miles outside of the city, and no one ever gave it another thought because it was so insignificant. I'm sure that when the people who were from Bethlehem traveled outside of Bethlehem, they never would tell strangers that they were from Bethlehem. They'd always just say we're from Jerusalem. Much like those who are maybe from Moody or from Hueytown here when you travel outside of Alabama, you don't say you're from Hueytown or Moody because the next question is gonna be, where's that? And you always say, well, it's it's right outside of Birmingham.
Joel Brooks:So these were people who lived in the shadow of Jerusalem, and it had always been small. Bethlehem was actually a very old city. It predates Israel. When Joshua went into Canaan and we see the conquest of Canaan there, we see all the cities of Canaan listed, and Bethlehem was so small, so insignificant, it didn't make the cut. Bethlehem is not listed among all of those cities.
Joel Brooks:As a matter of fact, if you go through the Bible, you'll find that Bethlehem is only mentioned 5 or 6 times in all of scripture. But what happens as you begin to take a closer look at each one of these accounts where Bethlehem is mentioned, you begin to put together a story. You begin to see a picture and it's really this beautiful picture of the gospel, and you begin to understand why God didn't send his son Jesus to be born in a great city. He didn't send Jesus to be born in Jerusalem or in Rome or any other prestigious city out there, but Jesus had to be born in Bethlehem and he began to see that Bethlehem was 2000 years in the making of the perfect city from which the Messiah would be born. And so let's walk through these occasions in which we see Bethlehem mentioned in scripture.
Joel Brooks:The first time Bethlehem is ever mentioned in scripture is in Genesis chapter 35. Genesis 35 is when Jacob and Rachel are having a baby and I have it up here on the screen and I'll read it. We read that Rachel went into labor and she had a hard labor. And when her labor was at its hardest, the midwife said to her, do not fear, for you have another son.' And as her soul was departing, for she was dying, she called him Benoni, but his father called him Benjamin. So Rachel died, and she was buried on the way to Ephrathah, that is Bethlehem.
Joel Brooks:This story here happens almost 2000 years before Jesus is born, and yet right at the start and the first mention of Bethlehem, we already get a hint of the gospel. It's not the gospel in full, but we certainly get a hint of it. Rachel is giving birth, to the last born here. Jacob had 12 sons, which would become the 12 tribes of Israel. And here as this last son is being born, there are complications in the birth and Rachel is dying.
Joel Brooks:So she names the boy Benoni, which means son of my sorrow. Son of my sorrow. So early on in Bethlehem's history, it is associated with sorrow, associated with pain, and associated with death. And, of course, we fast forward 2000 years, and we think of Jesus, in which one of his titles was he was a man of sorrows. Isaiah 53 says that Jesus was a man of sorrows.
Joel Brooks:He was one who was acquainted with grief. But Benoni would not stay Benoni. He didn't keep his name for very long. Just before Rachel dies, Jacob renames Benoni, renames him Benjamin, which means, son of the right hand. So we go from son of sorrow to son of the right hand, and once again, we're pointed 2000 years later to Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Jesus would not always remain the man of sorrows, but after his death, resurrection, and ascension, He would be the one who is exalted at the right hand of God. Hebrews 1 says after making purifications for sins, Jesus sat down at the right hand of majesty. So we see from the very first mention of Bethlehem, this hint of the gospel in which we move from sorrow to exaltation. Let's look at the next mention of Bethlehem, and it comes in the familiar story of Ruth. The next appearance appears in the book of Ruth.
Joel Brooks:Ruth is one of the most beautiful books we have in the Bible. It's an incredible story of of love, faith, grace, redemption. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the story of Ruth, let me just kind of summarize it for you. It begins in Bethlehem. It begins with a man from Bethlehem taking his wife, Naomi, to go and live among the Moabites.
Joel Brooks:He actually takes his wife and his 2 sons. And while they are there living in the country of Moab, the sons get married, and they marry 2 women. 1 is named Orpah, not Oprah, but Orpah, and the other marries, a woman named Ruth. Now sometimes sometime after the sons get married, the father, the husband dies, and then both of the the sons die. And so we're left with Naomi, who's a widow and now with her 2 daughter in laws who are also widowed.
Joel Brooks:Well, Naomi is gonna return back home. She wants to go back to Bethlehem, and, and she tells her daughter-in-law, you don't have to go with me, and Orpah says, I'm not. I'm gonna actually remain with my family here, in Moab. But but Ruth Ruth, she famously says, your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. And Ruth goes with Naomi, and she settles back down in Bethlehem.
Joel Brooks:And while she's in Bethlehem, she's working the fields, she's she's faithfully picking up grain, and she catches the eye of a man named Boaz. Boaz looks at her, and he falls in love, and he becomes what we have described in the book of Ruth, a kinsman redeemer. A kinsman redeemer, Which means that he's a close enough relative that, if he gets permission from the closest relative, which he does, he could then marry her and the children they have will actually be named after her former husband. But what we see here is when Boaz brings her into his family, it's a beautiful picture of what we see in the gospel happening later, in which we have someone who's outside the covenant family of God. Somebody who is a stranger, but then through the grace and love shown from another, shown from a redeemer, this person is brought in to become part of the covenant family of God.
Joel Brooks:It's a beautiful picture of the gospel and the entire setting for this love story is Bethlehem. Now at the end of the book of Ruth, the people from the town of Bethlehem, they gather around Boaz and they're going to bless him. And we read these words. This is the blessing that they give Boaz. They said, we are witnesses.
Joel Brooks:May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your house like Rachel and Leah, who together built the house of Israel. May you act worthily in Ephrathah and renowned in Bethlehem. And may your house be like the house of Perez whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring that the Lord will give you by this young woman. And so the people bless Boaz and and bless Ruth here and they basically say, may you become renowned in Bethlehem because of the child you will have. And so Ruth does have a child.
Joel Brooks:She has, Obed who then has Jesse, who then has David. Ruth is the great grandmother of King David, which picks us up into the next time Bethlehem is actually mentioned. It's mentioned at the introduction of David and when he is anointed as king. 1st Corinth or 1st Samuel chapter 16. In first Samuel 16, this next mention of Bethlehem, it comes at a time when God has just rejected the king of Israel, Saul, And now he's looking for a new king and so he tells his prophet Samuel, he says, Samuel, I want you to go to Bethlehem.
Joel Brooks:I want you to go to Bethlehem, and I want you to find Jesse. And Jesse's gonna have a child that I want you to anoint as king. And so Samuel, he goes to Bethlehem of all places. God doesn't send him to Jerusalem, which would have been such a surprise, but but God doesn't send his prophet to, you know, the New Yorks or the L. A.
Joel Brooks:S of this world, or to the Harvards or to the Yales of this world to find a new leader or a new ruler. He sends him to this insignificant, small place that no one gives a thought, Bethlehem. So Samuel arrives in at Jesse's house who had to be surprised that the great prophet Samuel was was at his door, and Samuel says, I need to see your sons. He's gonna anoint one of these children as king. And so the first son that Sam or that is introduced to Samuel is the son Eliab.
Joel Brooks:And Samuel looks at him, and he's tall. He's handsome. He has this regal look to him, and Samuel's getting out his oil ready to anoint him as king, and God says, stop. It's not him. It's not him.
Joel Brooks:And God says these words to Samuel. It says, Do not look at the outer appearance or the height of his stature because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. Now God is saying this about a person, but he might as well have been saying this about the city of Bethlehem itself.
Joel Brooks:Bethlehem didn't have any stature. It wasn't regal in its appearance. It didn't have any tall buildings. It was a nothing city, and yet God chose Bethlehem. Samuel, he keeps looking at the sons that Jesse parades before him, and each time he's about ready to bring out the oil and every time God stays his hand.
Joel Brooks:Finally they run out of children. And Samuel says, do you have any is this it? And and Jesse goes, yeah, that's all my sons. Oh, well, I do have one more, but it's it's David and he's just a shepherd. He's out in the field.
Joel Brooks:You you wouldn't want him. And I love Samuel. He goes, we will not sit down until you get him. You're like, oh, gosh. Alright.
Joel Brooks:So they so they run to go and they get David. David was a shepherd. He was he was out working the fields just outside of Bethlehem. Keep this in mind, he's he's in the same fields in which we read about later about these shepherds keeping watch over their sheep by night. It's where David is.
Joel Brooks:And once again, we have heralds coming to David to announce a new king. He just doesn't know it's going to be him. He's the king. And from this point on, this a shepherd leader, not just a leader. You know, as I was just studying through Bethlehem here and just thinking through David's life around Bethlehem, it it dawned on me that Psalm 23 was likely pinned here.
Joel Brooks:The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. David is there writing these things as he is in the green pastures that surround Bethlehem. So the Lord here chooses an insignificant shepherd boy from some podunk town to be Israel's greatest king. And from this point on, Bethlehem is gonna be called the city of David.
Joel Brooks:It's his city, the city of David. Alright. Let's look at the final time that we see Bethlehem in the old testament. It's in the book of Micah. And it's here that we get our prophecy that will be quoted later in Matthew.
Joel Brooks:Here we get the prophecy about the Messiah being born in Bethlehem. If you notice in Matthew chapter 2, when Herod asked his chief priest or asked the scribes, where is this ruler to be born? Without hesitation, they say, well Micah the prophet says this, and you, oh Bethlehem, in the land of Judah are by no means least among the rulers of Judah. For from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. Alright.
Joel Brooks:So let's look at Micah and the situation that was happening in which he prophesied this. Micah was a contemporary of Isaiah. They prophesied around the same time, 8th century BC, which was a really difficult time in Israel's history. For those of you who are here during the summer and you can remember that far back, we went through the great prayers of the Bible and one of the prayers that we went through was a prayer that Hezekiah prayed. This was happening during the time of of Micah and Isaiah.
Joel Brooks:And if you remember the situation that was there, Hezekiah was surrounded by the Assyrian army. Assyria had been marching through, just conquering city after city, and they have conquered 46 cities in a row, and now they are right outside of Jerusalem hoping Jerusalem will be number 47. And all of Jerusalem is surrounded by an army that was 250,000 men strong. And so Hezekiah, he prays to the Lord. He seeks the Lord.
Joel Brooks:What am I supposed to do in this situation? And the Lord does a miracle and safely protects Jerusalem. But you know who was not protected? Bethlehem. Bethlehem got completely ravaged during this time, which makes sense when you have 250,000 soldiers surrounding Jerusalem.
Joel Brooks:Well, what are they gonna eat? Well, they're gonna go to the closest nearby town there, Little Bethlehem, the the breadbasket of Judah, And so there, they they pillaged that place, and they took the sheep, and they they took the grain. So Bethlehem, at this point in history, has been basically destroyed, lying in ruins, and so Micah now comes here, and he looks at this little town of Bethlehem that was never much to begin with, and he thinks, Lord, is this it? I mean, I guess this was it for this little place. And he wonders and he asks a question, will Bethlehem ever recover?
Joel Brooks:And the Lord tells him, yes. Yes. Not only will Bethlehem recover, but a ruler is gonna come forth out of Bethlehem that will shepherd this flock in the strength of the Lord. A ruler is gonna come to make them dwell It's important for us to understand that this prophecy that Micah gives came at a time when Israel was in decline. It came at a time when everything was really falling apart.
Joel Brooks:I mean, long ago was Israel's glory days when you had King David and you had King Solomon. Now 10 tribes, had already been conquered. The only ones that are left are Judah and Benjamin, and Assyria's knocking on the door with them. The days are numbered, and they know it. And there was nothing for Micah for him to physically see to give him any hope to say these words.
Joel Brooks:And I think it is really important for our congregation to hear this because we are predominantly a young congregation. And by that, what I mean is most of our life is ahead of us. Most of our life is still being put together. So when your life is still being put together, you remain a somewhat hopeful people. But now that, I'm 45.
Joel Brooks:Now that I'm 45, I actually find myself becoming less hopeful and less optimistic as I continue in life. And let me explain what I mean by that. When I would injure myself when I was younger, you know, I'd injure myself and I'd go to the doctor. The doctor would say things like, you know, after we rehab that, that body part's gonna be better than it was before. And you're like, wow.
Joel Brooks:I'm gonna come out of this better. You know, like, then then the next time you injure yourself and, by the way, I've had I've had 8 shoulder surgeries, and so the the next time you you injure yourself, the doctor doesn't say, well, you know, you're gonna be better than you were before because a few more years have gone by. And now it's like, you know, we're we're gonna do the best we can to get you back to normal. Like, well, normal, that's a that's a downgrade, from better. But okay, normal's great.
Joel Brooks:And maybe they even use the language, we'll get you back to a 100%. A few more years go by, another injury happens and you go to the doctor and the doctor, he no longer says, we're gonna get you back to a 100%. He says, you know, we're gonna do the best we can to get this as functional as possible. You don't like the language of that? Like, as functional as possible?
Joel Brooks:And then it gets worse. A few more years go by and you go to the doctor and they're like, well, we're trying to do the best we can to just, manage the pain. So you're no longer at functional, you're just trying to be able to sleep through the night at this point, and you notice in each doctor's visit that they have a harder time looking you in the eye. You know? But you realize as you age, the the 100% recovery is gone.
Joel Brooks:It's gone. You're you're no longer putting your life together. It's actually it's actually falling apart a little bit, and it's only gonna keep getting worse. In other words, I I see my trajectory now. And at 45, you know, you begin feeling this even when you're 40.
Joel Brooks:When you're being put back together, you always had the promise or potential. When people talked about you, when people you know, even when I was a young preacher, I always had potential. But once you hit around 40, you no longer have potential. You are what you are. That's a hard thing to deal with.
Joel Brooks:I've shared this before, but, a few years ago, 5 to be exact, Lauren and I were a little melancholy. It was hitting Lauren a little bit more than me, but we were both going through this little melancholy period, which is not like us. We're not melancholy. And we were trying to put a finger on it, and it was it was hard to understand because everything was going so well in our lives, And then we realized that was that was why we were melancholy, because we had hit that peak. You know when you're a child and you always wonder, I wonder what my life's gonna look like?
Joel Brooks:We were at that point. You know, that's when you you imagine your family, what kind of family we'll all have. It's always like the children just young enough where they stay at home. You could do things together, play games at night, all this. Like, we were at that point where it was so much fun, and then we started realizing this is it.
Joel Brooks:It's gonna start the slow steady decline here. And so we actually began to feel a little melancholy about this. It's okay. You're all gonna get there as well if you aren't already there. Now I remember I visited my grandmother.
Joel Brooks:She, she died when she was 98. She was living in a nursing home and went there, and you could look at the nurses. They were wonderful. They're just loving people, hard workers. Yet if you really looked at them, you noticed that they really didn't have hope in their eyes.
Joel Brooks:I remember seeing this so clearly. It's because they knew the best they could do is maybe provide a bus trip once a week to a grocery store or, perhaps give some games at the evening or some kind of activity, maybe do a little bit of therapy, but ultimately, they could do nothing. Nothing. Listen. At some point, our trajectory goes down this way.
Joel Brooks:You might not feel it yet, but someday, it's going to be that way. And you know what? The only thing you're going to have to hold onto is the Word of God. It'll be the only thing you have. Micah is looking out at a situation in which Israel has peaked and now is declining and has been devastated and he sees nothing, no hope, and God says, the messiah is gonna come out of this.
Joel Brooks:I'm saving the world through this place. And all he had was the word of God to hold on to. Hear me. When it comes to the end of our lives, all we have is believing that the perishable will put on the imperishable, that the mortal will put on immortality and that death will be swallowed up in victory, the victory that was given to us through the resurrection of Jesus. That's all we have is that hope.
Joel Brooks:Let's look at the final mention of Bethlehem. The final mention of Bethlehem is the most familiar. It's what's in the gospels. It's at the birth of Jesus found both in Matthew and in Luke. Once again, by time we get to this point in the story, Bethlehem is small, you know.
Joel Brooks:It's the it's the maybe dozen families or so, maybe 70 people. It's insignificant, and during this time God causes this empire wide census to move a small little Jewish couple from point a to point b. He disrupts 1,000 and thousands and thousands of lives simply to move a couple from Nazareth to Bethlehem. I I love pointing this out because everybody tries to figure out what the Lord's doing, what the Lord's will is for your life and I just wanna say you have no idea. Alright?
Joel Brooks:You have no idea if you would disrupt the lives of thousands of thousands of people just to move a person from point a to point b, you have no idea what he's doing in your life. But he does move Mary and Joseph from Nazareth to Bethlehem because Jesus had to be born in Bethlehem. He's been preparing Jesus or be preparing Bethlehem for Jesus' arrival. Now Bethlehem, because it was so small and so insignificant, it would have been completely flooded with people coming for the census that was happening there. So Mary and Joseph, they couldn't find a place to stay.
Joel Brooks:Now the innkeeper here, you know, always gets a bad rap in the Christian plays. You know, he's like the innkeeper Nazi, you know, just like, you know, get out of here. You know? But there's no innkeeper in this story. Did you notice that?
Joel Brooks:There's not an innkeeper telling Mary and Joseph, no room for you, you know. That's just something we put into place to make a little more interesting. We don't know why there was not room for Mary and Joseph. Probably, you know, knowing a typical dad, he forgot to call and make reservations, you know, or something like that. It's just we we only know that there was no room.
Joel Brooks:So Mary and Joseph are forced to stay someplace else. Now I know from all of our Christmas cards, you know, nativity scenes and Christmas movies, we we see Jesus being born in a stable or born in a barn, but once again, notice that's nowhere in the Christmas story. I'm just shattering childhood myths for you right now. I know. But but there's no barn here mentioned in the Christmas story.
Joel Brooks:It's likely that Mary and Joseph, they stayed in one of the back rooms that was often attached to these homes, especially the poorer homes. They would just kinda have this add on lean to room in the back. And at night, this room was a place where they would bring in their animals to keep them safe at night, but it was actually attached to the home, and it's likely here. It's where Mary and Joseph found the place to stay, And so Mary gave birth to Jesus there. And all you ever have, like, in the gospels described is, and so Mary gives birth to Jesus or Jesus is born.
Joel Brooks:I just wanna throw that out there because I've heard like birth stories that have taken an entire day to share. But, when Jesus is born, it's described in about one second. So Jesus is born. He's wrapped in swaddling clothes and he's laid in a manger. So that part is true, you could keep that in all your Christmas narratives.
Joel Brooks:And he's he's laid in this, you know, manger, a feeding trough. Just let that sink in that the King of the universe finds a feeding trough for a bed. He's not born in a palace to prestigious parents. Instead, he's born to a Jewish poor couple who were nobodies in a place that was reserved for animals, and this is how our Savior comes to us. Now, Bethlehem in this day was still known as the fruitful place.
Joel Brooks:It's where the grain came from and where the sheep came from. It was an enormous shepherding community in this day, And since it was so close to Jerusalem, it didn't just provide sheep for all of Judah. Its significance was that it provided the sheep for the temple sacrifices. That's what Bethlehem was used for. And when you come to understand this, you begin to understand why it is that God did not allow His Son to be born in an inn.
Joel Brooks:He did not allow His child to be born in, you know, a normal room of a house, but his child needed to be born in a place that was typically used for the birth of sacrificial lambs. Jesus would be the lamb of God who would come and he would take away the sins of the world. So this is the story of Bethlehem. It's a story that moves from sorrow to exaltation. It's the story of redemptive love coming on and making a stranger outside of the covenant family of God and bringing them in and calling them child.
Joel Brooks:It's the story of God raising up a shepherd to become the shepherd leader of Israel, and it's the story of the word of God being the only hope we have when everything else is falling apart around us. So ultimately, I would say this. The story of Bethlehem is the story about how salvation comes to us. All along as I was studying this, each one of these sessions of scripture, I kept thinking of 1 Corinthians chapter 1, in which we read these words. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards.
Joel Brooks:Not many were powerful. Not many were of noble birth. But God chose what was foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what was weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
Joel Brooks:God did not choose Bethlehem because Bethlehem was great. He chose Bethlehem because Bethlehem was nothing, and it removed all grounds of boasting we have. He chose Bethlehem for the same reason that he chose us. God did not save us because we were great. He did not save us because of our achievements.
Joel Brooks:God does not save us because of any merits that we have to offer. God saves us because he simply wants to save us, and he comes to us in our weakness and our insignificance. He comes to us when we are powerless. What we see here is the good news of the gospel. I'm thankful that Jesus provided a way that we could not come to God, so God came to us.
Joel Brooks:Pray with me. Father, we thank you. We thank you for the gift of your son whom we will celebrate this advent season. We thank you that how even when we were insignificant in nobodies, you came to us. Thank you for how we see this, throughout Scripture depicted in your little town of Bethlehem.
Joel Brooks:Lord, I thank you that in our hearts, in the dark streets of our hearts, a light shines and that you have shined into our hearts and you have given us new life. We thank you, and we love you, and we celebrate this, this season. In your name, Jesus. Amen.
