Speaker 1: Luke, chapter 2, verse 1.
Speaker 1: In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole empire should be registered.
Speaker 1: This first registration took place while Quirinius was governing Syria, so everyone went to be registered, each to his own town.
Speaker 1: Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family line of David, to be registered, along with Mary, who was engaged to him and was pregnant, and while they were there the time came for her to give birth.
Speaker 1: And then she gave birth to her firstborn son and she wrapped him tightly in cloth and laid him in a manger because there was no guest room available for them.
Speaker 1: I'm going to take a little walk because I forgot my clicker while I tell a story, and the story is that when I was a missionary overseas many moons ago, one of the countries that we were going to visit was in the former Eastern Bloc on the Black Sea.
Speaker 1: It was not long after the fall of communism and the Orthodox Church was gaining a lot of influence in that country, as it has in a lot of those countries Great that Christianity was returning, but they considered us, our ministry, to be a cult, because we were basically an evangelical, not orthodox ministry, and if you're not orthodox, you're not actually a church in their theology.
Speaker 1: So there was a real battle that went on while our advance planning team went in there and tried to get permissions and in the end we just couldn't.
Speaker 1: We had to give up on going into the particular port in that country we were aiming for.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, in Muslim Turkey, there was a city there that was holding an international book fair and the ship I was on was basically a floating bookshop and they were crying out for us to go to their city.
Speaker 1: And it was actually our second turned into our second visit to Turkey and I think that visit got organised in record time and we had a really fruitful ministry there.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes it can feel like we're just not in control of the circumstances of our life.
Speaker 1: The decisions other people are making, society around us is making, just carry us along in directions we don't necessarily want to go, and this is particularly onerous in a culture like ours that emphasises individual autonomy, which, when you think about it, is a little bit of a myth, but that's what we value.
Speaker 1: But, you know, there is one who works all things together for the good of those who love him.
Speaker 1: According to his plan, and as the time of Jesus' birth approached, we're reminded in Luke that Christ was born in a society where people had very little control over their own lives.
Speaker 1: Well, in the case of the story today, it wasn't actually anything particularly serious.
Speaker 1: Joseph and Mary got caught up in a census under Caesar Augustus and, like today, a census is not something you have a whole lot of choice about.
Speaker 1: Unlike today, a census usually was related to taxation rather than planning.
Speaker 1: But all the same, it was a pretty standard event and in fact, historians don't think it was even a requirement for people to travel to their ancestral home like Joseph did.
Speaker 1: That's probably not what being registered in your own town meant.
Speaker 1: Registered in your own town meant, and so it didn't need to be so disruptive.
Speaker 1: But apparently many Jews wanted to be registered in the place where their heart belonged, their ancestral home.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's people here who can relate to that.
Speaker 1: And so Joseph went on a road trip to Bethlehem, the hometown of his ancestor, king David, and he took his heavily pregnant wife, mary, with him.
Speaker 1: Now people question whether Mary would have gone on a road trip like this.
Speaker 1: We're not talking a road trip in a car.
Speaker 1: Of course the story has a donkey Whether there was actually one, we don't know but would such a pregnant woman have made the two or three, three day trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem?
Speaker 1: Well, we do need to be careful in our society, or in any society, when we judge the past by the expectations of the present.
Speaker 1: My wife grew up in a culture where women sometimes went into labor while they were working in a field.
Speaker 1: So there's always a risk, of course, and perhaps greater in those circumstances.
Speaker 1: But Mary traveling to Bethlehem is not as unlikely as you might think.
Speaker 1: Now, the popular nativity images of Mary and Joseph alone in a stable, with no help, and only Joseph available to deliver the baby.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's quite possible that if Joseph wanted to be registered in Bethlehem, so did other family members as well, and they probably would have travelled in a group.
Speaker 1: In any case, they probably would have travelled in a group just for safety.
Speaker 1: We'll come back to that in a moment.
Speaker 1: The point is that this event got Mary and Jesus to the place he needed to be in order to be born, the Messiah had to come from Bethlehem, as was written in the prophets.
Speaker 1: So Micah 5.2 says Bethlehem, ephrathah, you are small among the clans of Judah.
Speaker 1: One will come from you to be ruler over Israel.
Speaker 1: For me, his origin is from antiquity, from ancient times.
Speaker 1: For Jesus to come from anywhere else would have meant that he couldn't be the Messiah, and in fact the Pharisees and other religious leaders thought Jesus came from Nazareth, and so they argued he couldn't be the Messiah.
Speaker 1: But God had so moved the events of history that it would happen the way he'd foretold.
Speaker 1: It would happen the way he'd foretold.
Speaker 1: We may feel like we don't have control over our own lives, but for the one who is committed to God and trusts in his power and his plans, it's not such a problem really, is it?
Speaker 1: Well, the time came for Jesus to be born, and there's a lot of myth that's arisen around this particular story.
Speaker 1: Typically, mary rides into Bethlehem on a donkey.
Speaker 1: There's no mention of a donkey in the Bible, even though there's a whole Christmas carol built around it.
Speaker 1: Joseph knocks on various doors, like we had portrayed today, looking for somewhere to stay.
Speaker 1: The inn is full, so they're relegated to a barn and then poor Joseph is left to deliver the baby by himself, at least in the popular scenes.
Speaker 1: Has anyone seen the new Netflix movie about Jesus yet?
Speaker 1: I'm kind of scared to watch it, so I was just curious.
Speaker 1: Not a recommendation.
Speaker 1: So Joseph's meant to be delivering the baby by himself, which goodness knows how all the women of Bethlehem would have let that happen.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned earlier, it seems unlikely that Joseph and Mary would have travelled to Bethlehem alone, and there's also the debate about where Jesus actually would have been born.
Speaker 1: It's unlikely that Joseph would pitch up in Bethlehem without a plan, and in any case Bethlehem probably wasn't big enough to have an actual inn, like, you know, a hotel or something motel we'd think of it today.
Speaker 1: And the word guest room doesn't necessarily mean an inn.
Speaker 1: It can, but it can also mean a guest room in someone's house, a village, probably not unlike Bethlehem but a lot more recent.
Speaker 1: Most houses had space to keep an animal inside at night, so it's altogether possible that they found accommodation in the house, perhaps of a relative, but there was no space in the guest room at being busy, so Mary had to give birth in the common area.
Speaker 1: She probably had a little more assistance than Joseph, who, I'm sure, would have been shooed off by the women anyway.
Speaker 1: And then the manger would have been the perfect place to lay Jesus, not really out of the way actually, not normally where you lay a baby, but not out of the way.
Speaker 1: So we can only speculate.
Speaker 1: But does that sound plausible?
Speaker 1: Speculating is fun, but it's really not the point of the story.
Speaker 1: Is it Whether it was a barn or one of the living spaces, or a cave out in the back, like some early church fathers thought?
Speaker 1: Luke highlights that Jesus was born in humble circumstances.
Speaker 1: Mary couldn't even get a guest room, and Jesus would later say foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head, as it was during his ministry.
Speaker 1: So it was at the time of his birth.
Speaker 1: It's an inauspicious beginning for the Messiah and, as the Gospel of John says, though the world was made through him, the world did not recognise him.
Speaker 1: He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.
Speaker 1: We live in an age where people not only crave autonomy, they want to be captains of their own ship I don't know about you, but my ship feels more like a rowboat but they also cry out for significance.
Speaker 1: We all seek significance, whether it's in our society, becoming Insta-famous or going viral on TikTok or succeeding in our career.
Speaker 1: We want our lives to count for something, we want our lives to be a big ship.
Speaker 1: And when our lives don't count for what we thought, what do we do then?
Speaker 1: If you're a bit older, like me, you might relate to that.
Speaker 1: What do we do then?
Speaker 1: Or maybe you sort of guess your life will never count for much, not in the eyes of the world anyway.
Speaker 1: I recently heard an interview with journalist, award-winning journalist, stan Grant, who said the principal of one of his high schools when he was a teenager called him and the other Aboriginal boys into his office and told them they'd never amount to anything, so they may as well leave school now.
Speaker 1: I'm glad what is now?
Speaker 1: Dr Grant didn't listen to that principle, but what do you do if that's society's attitude towards you?
Speaker 1: When we look at political movements around the world, we see one response to the loss of significance and control over our lives is the craving for strongman leaders who we want to sort of take control by proxy for us.
Speaker 1: I think, to take control by proxy for us.
Speaker 1: I think we want them to help us feel significant by making something great again.
Speaker 1: Should I put that on a cap?
Speaker 1: Make something great again?
Speaker 1: And of course that never leads anywhere.
Speaker 1: Good, but what did the one human being in all of history who had a say in the circumstances of his own birth because he was also God what did he choose?
Speaker 1: What did the one, the only one who ever truly had a right to the halls of power, what did he choose?
Speaker 1: He chose insignificance.
Speaker 1: At his birth, he was laid in a manger.
Speaker 1: His parents moved him back to a town, nazareth, of which, it was said, can anything good come out of Nazareth?
Speaker 1: I had a friend from Sydney once who said the only good thing to come out of Melbourne is the Hume Highway.
Speaker 1: But he didn't know Fletcher and Chrissie.
Speaker 1: Jesus' ministry was itinerant and when he died he died the death of a slave and was laid in a borrowed tomb.
Speaker 1: So what do you do with a God like that?
Speaker 1: What do you do with a God who could have revealed himself from power and majesty and some people don't believe in him because he doesn't reveal himself that way and instead revealed his glory in the most humble and even ignominious circumstances possible?
Speaker 1: What do you do with a God who gave himself in life and death, not in the quest for greatness but to make others great, and in doing that he revealed what true freedom and significance is.
Speaker 1: What do you do with a God like that, who calls us to abandon everything and follow him?
Speaker 1: Can we relate to a God like that?
Speaker 1: Could we identify with a God like that?
Speaker 1: And then could we let go of the search for autonomy and significance and find true freedom and meaning in obedience and service to that God and, through him, to other people?
Speaker 1: I think Christmas teaches us that even when things seem out of our control, there is one who is still in control.
Speaker 1: And you know, when we feel like nothing, we're in the company of the Messiah himself.
Speaker 1: In the same way, back when I was a missionary and God turned something that was taken out of our hands into something that was part of his plan, when we let go of the need for control and put ourselves into his hands, we find ourselves in the middle of a much greater plan, the plan of a God who works out everything for our good and for his glory.