Where's the Manger?

“Jesus took His place in a manger 

so that we might have a Home in heaven.” Greg Laurie

 Can you imagine New Year’s Eve without horns, party hats, champagne or clocks counting down to midnight? What if for the 4^th of July you couldn’t find anything red, white and blue and there were no American flags anywhere, plus no parades, cookouts, picnics or fireworks?

  Yet if you venture into most stores around Christmas, you’ll have difficulty finding a nativity scene. Mangers are as hard to find as a snowball in July. Christmas decorations might include Santa, elves, snowmen, lights, gnomes…even baby Yoda, but it’s rare to find a nativity scene or manger. While they’re rare in stores, they’ve often been banned from public places like parks, malls, schools or government buildings only to be replaced by images of snowmen, candy canes, and reindeer.

  The irony of all of this is lost on a pluralistic culture where Christmas is just another holiday. It’s like celebrating someone’s birthday and completely ignoring the one whose birthday is actually being celebrated.    

  Luis Palau tells of a wealthy European family that decided to have their newborn baby baptized in their enormous mansion. Many people were invited. It was an elegant and elaborate affair. They took off their coats and laid them on the bed in a designated room. Soon the time came for the main purpose of their gathering but then no one could find the baby! To the horror of all they finally found the baby who was now buried under the pile of coats, jackets and furs, nearly smothered to death.

  In essence, in western civilization, we’ve buried Baby Jesus under our other trappings of a Christmas celebration. Why has that happened? The manger represents what we humans are not and what we don’t want to be. The manger represents…

  God in His helplessness. We don’t like to be helpless and we avoid those who we consider helpless. The nativity account in Luke 2 says that His mother “wrapped him in swaddling cloths” (vs. 7). Back then newborns were wrapped in strips of cloth to protect them from the harsh elements. Mothers would wrap the arms and legs separately and then wrap the torso until the baby looked a bit like an Egyptian mummy. It severely restricted the child’s movements. But in a world with little medical care where babies routinely died before their first birthday, it was a way to provide a crude kind of protection. At His birth, Jesus was as helpless as any other baby.

  Decades later an adult Jesus stood before the Jewish authorities, bound and guarded like a common criminal. When falsely accused, He didn’t respond. When reviled, He refused to answer. He stood before His accusers with his hands bound, awaiting a verdict that would end His life. It’s not a coincidence that He entered the world as He left it, bound and helpless.

  God in His humility. How would you respond if someone served your dinner in a dog’s food bowl? The word manger means a feeding trough. Even in that feeding trough, our Savior was already bearing the only cross a baby can bear—extreme poverty along with the contempt and indifference of mankind. In the words of Francis of Assisi, “For our sakes He was born a stranger in an open stable; He lived without a place of His own wherein to lay His head, subsisting by the charity of good people; and He died naked on a cross in the close embrace of holy poverty.”

  This newborn lying forgotten in an exposed stable, resting in a feeding trough is God’s appointed “sign” to us. It’s the Incarnation. God came into this world in the most unlikely way. It’s what Philippians 2:7 means when it says Jesus “made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.” Nothing about Baby Jesus appeared supernatural. There were no halos, visible angels or choirs singing.

  If we’d been there and had no other information, we’d have concluded that this was just another baby born to a poor young couple down on their luck. Nothing about His outward circumstances pointed to God. Looking at the baby this way, no one would think that He only came for the rich or powerful. No one would suggest that He used His heavenly power to make an easy or grand entry into the world. Jesus came not for an elite few. He came to be the Savior of all the world.

  God in His humanity. “A baby.” That’s all the original Greek says. The word means “an infant” or “newborn.” It’s an ordinary word used to describe the birth of a child. It reminds us that Christ came into the world just as we all do. Even though we often speak of the virgin birth, it should be remembered that the real miracle occurred at the moment of His conception nine months earlier. Jesus’ physical birth was completely normal—or as normal as it could be given the unique circumstances.

  To say that Christ was born as a baby brings us face-to-face with the truth of the Incarnation. Although Jesus was fully and truly God from all eternity, the Second Person of the Godhead took on humanity when He was conceived in Mary’s womb. He wasn’t half-God and half-man, He was fully God and fully man. He never ceased to be God, though He temporarily laid aside the glory of His deity. In some way mysterious to us, Jesus was the God-Man, two natures joining together in His one Person.

  That’s the central truth of Christianity. God entered human history in order to provide for our salvation. What we could not do, He did for us through His Son. Everything else flows from this truth. If Jesus had not been born, He could never have died for our sins and would not have risen from the dead. He had to become like us in order to be able to save us. There was no other way.

  Yet, it’s because Jesus was helpless, humble, and human that this world doesn’t want to be reminded of mangers. The necessity of His manger means that we couldn’t fix it. We couldn’t save ourselves. We must be rescued.

  Our world’s greatest need isn’t a new government program or more education or better housing. It’s not even affordable healthcare.

  2,000 years ago the angels announced our greatest need,  “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

  What we desperately need is a Savior! Thankfully, Jesus came to be our Savior. And while you may not find a nativity scene, you can’t hide Jesus. He’s already come to earth. My friend, have you let Him into your life?

Can we help you spiritually? Please check out more resources on our church's web page, Gracechurchwi.org. Or call us at 262.763.3021. If you'd like to know more about how Jesus can change your life, I'd love to mail you a copy of how Jesus changed my life in "My Story." E-mail me at Carson@gracechurchwi.org to request a free copy. Please include your mailing address. 

 

Happy 250th!

“God is not an encyclopedia whose task it is to satisfy our curiosity.”

Jacques Ellul

You probably didn’t know this but last Thursday, December 6^th, was the 250^th Birthday of the encyclopedia. On December 6th, 1768, the 1^st edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica was published in Edinburgh. Other encyclopedias existed before the Britannica, but none of its predecessors attempted to systematically cover all of the major subjects of human knowledge. The original three volume publication promised “accurate definitions and explanations, of all the terms as they occur in the order of the alphabet.” The 2^nd edition increased to 10 volumes and soon became the standard, earning a reputation for its rigorous editorial standards.

  Some people have tried to read the entire encyclopedia. Very few have succeeded. A.J. Jacobs read the entire 15^th edition, about 40 million words, on nearly 230,000 topics. He wrote about the experience in his 2014 book: “The Know-It-All,” saying, “I’ve definitely forgotten a lot, a huge amount, 97, 98 percent maybe, but there’s so much stuff left in there…”

  In 2012, after 244 years of publication, the Britannica announced that it would no longer publish print versions, focusing instead on digital products. Though it’s now in a digital format, today’s Britannica has 44 million words in 32 volumes at about 1,375,000 words per volume. All of this reminds me of the last verse in the Gospel of John, chapter 21 and verse 24: “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”

  Though we know much about the last three years of Jesus’ life, we know very little about His birth. While it’s been the subject of countless dramatizations and speculations, the historian Luke gives it all of one sentence: “And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.” The Gospel of Mark doesn’t say a word about Jesus’ birth. The Gospel of John only focuses on His deity and eternality.

  It can almost be frustrating. If most of us had written the story of Jesus’ life, we’d have explained a lot more about Mary and Joseph and why Mary was traveling with Joseph to begin with. There would have been many details on why no one found a room in any inn or at the very least in Bethlehem had welcomed them into their home. Much more than the simple “because there was no place for them in the inn” (Luke 2:6).

  Why wasn’t there a better place for them to stay than a barn, who was with them when that baby was born, and so many other questions? We would have done a lot more investigating and reporting, filling in all of those details and removing most of the speculation. We wouldn’t have gone all Kitty Kelley, but a little David McCullough would have been nice.

  But in doing so, we would have drowned the account in needless, even distracting detail. Often when it comes to the Bible, God doesn’t give us all the details we want, but He always gives us the details we need. When it comes to the birth of Jesus, we get all the details we need to understand one thing with the utmost clarity: Jesus comes quietly, even insignificantly.

  Luke opens this part of his account of Jesus’ life with the name of Caesar Augustus, the mighty emperor, the man who can speak a word and make millions of people do his bidding. With a mere word he can force his citizens to travel significant distances to do something as simple as register for taxation. This is Caesar, the strong, Caesar, the proud and Caesar, the powerful. He’s the greatest emperor of the greatest Empire and the mightiest man on the planet. But then, Luke switches his attention to an infant, born in the most ignominious circumstances. Born to a virgin, born away from home, born in a barn, laid to rest in an animal food trough. The contrast is both powerful and undeniable.

  We would imagine, of course, that the Messiah would be born high and rich, a son of great privilege. We’d expect that He would be born in circumstances more befitting a king. He should have been born to royalty, not to peasants. He should have been born in a palace, not a barn. He should have been born surrounded by the finest doctors who would have safely ushered Him into the world.

  But no, everyone in the entire town turns away his parents, even though it’s obvious that Mary is about to give birth. They have nowhere else to go, so He is born in a stable and laid to rest in a feeding trough.

  Why? Because God will teach us something vital through Jesus. He will teach us that we see this world completely backwards. He will teach us that the way to be great in God’s eyes is to be nothing in the world’s eyes. He will teach us that the way to exaltation is through humiliation, that the way to go high is to go low. He will teach it first and best through His very own Son, “who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” He came as the least because He came for the least.  

  Do you feel small, insignificant? Maybe just a number? Do you feel that you don’t really matter? You do. The One who left heaven to come to earth 2,000 years ago reminds us that as the world thought that He was insignificant, He came to this earth in love for all of the “insignificants.” He came for you and He came for me! He was the first Christmas gift and the only one that you will ever need. 

Can we help you spiritually? Can we help you know Jesus better? Please check out more resources on our church's web page, Gracechurchwi.org. Or, call us at 262.763.3021. If you'd like to know more about how Jesus can change your life, I'd love to mail you a copy of how Jesus changed my life in "My Story." E-mail me at Carson@gracechurchwi.org to request a free copy. Please include your mailing address.