Mary was heavily pregnant by the time they reached Bethlehem; 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 chapter 2 verses 6 and 7 - NIV) A manger is an open container that animals eat hay from, and which happens to be about the right size and shape for a makeshift cradle for a baby.
Nearby that same night, an angel appeared to some shepherds who were keeping watch over their sheep.
As you might expect, the shepherds were filled with fear when they saw the brightness shining all around them as the angel appeared.
The angel announced the birth of the Savior to the shepherds, and told them where they would find the baby. Then suddenly, ‘there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”’ (Luke chapter 2 verses 13 and 14 - ESV)
Without a doubt, this was the arrival of God’s gift to the world: a Savior, through whom our sins could be forgiven, through whom we could be made acceptable to God.
After Jesus was born, a group of scholars arrived from the East. These wise men had seen a particular star rise that had indicated the birth of a new king, and they had travelled all this way just to worship him.
King Herod heard about these wise men and their search for the new king; Herod was naturally worried, because he did not want any competition for his throne.
So Herod assembled his chief priests and asked them where this new king was to be born: from the old prophesies, the chief priests were able to tell Herod that the new king would be born in Bethlehem.
Herod was very cunning: he sent the wise men to Bethlehem to find the new king, explaining that he also would like to meet and worship him; but it was just a wicked plan to discover the location of this new king, and have him killed.
The star that had told them of the birth of this new king, guided the scholars to the house where they saw Jesus with his mother. They worshiped Jesus, recognizing him as the new King.
They gave Jesus valuable gifts that were appropriate to give to a king: gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh.
The scholars did not return to Herod to tell him where Jesus was, because they had been warned in a dream that Herod was planning to kill Jesus; the scholars took another route to return to their home in the East.
The Bible doesn’t say how many wise men visited Jesus.
They brought three gifts, so it is possible that the Christmas cards are correct, and that there were only three of them.
The Bible doesn’t say how old Jesus was when the wise men arrived; the Bible simply refers to Jesus as a child, not a baby.
The story also says that they found Jesus living with his mother in a house, not a stable.
At this point the story becomes very distressing.
Herod was very angry when he realized that the scholars from the East had purposely avoided telling him where Jesus was.
An angel appeared to Joseph, the adopting father of Jesus; the angel told Joseph to, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, because Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” (Matthew chapter 2 verse 13 - NIV)
Sure enough, after Mary and Joseph had escaped to Egypt with Jesus, Herod ordered the execution of every boy aged up to two years old living in Bethlehem and the surrounding area.
The killing of all these innocent little boys sounds terrible, but even this mass murder was prophesied in the Old Testament. God knew what was going to happen, and he protected his Son, because Jesus had a very special purpose to fulfill.
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, had arrived in human form to live among us, to deliver God’s new promise.
God’s new promise allowed for the inclusion of everyone into God’s family, and only the sacrifice of his Son’s life would make this possible.
Jesus Christ would die on the cross, accepting the punishment that you and I deserve for our sins; the death of Jesus would be the perfect sacrifice that God needed to forgive our sins.
When you ask God to forgive your sins, God can forgive you because Jesus Christ has already accepted the punishment for your sins when he was crucified.
Christmas has become a frenzied festival of overindulgence: giving and receiving gifts has lost its meaning.
The best gift that you can receive is God’s forgiveness.
And this forgiveness was only made possible by the gift that God gave us. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John chapter 3 verses 16 and 17 - NIV)
Church
Many people confuse the word church to mean a big building where people meet to worship God.
Actually, the definition and use of the word church is more confusing than you might think.
The word church comes from the Greek word kuriakos, which can be translated as, belonging to the Lord.
However, the word that is used in the original language of the Bible, which has been translated as church, is not kuriakos, it is ecclesia.
Ecclesia can be translated as the called-out people.
The word ecclesia was used in Greek society hundreds of years before the beginning of the first Christian communities; ecclesia was used to identify a body of elected people who had been chosen, or called out, for public service.
Ecclesia originally had nothing to do with religion.
Some people who translated the Bible into English used the word church to replace the word ecclesia.
(Some early English translations of the Bible do not use the word church.)
English translators of the Bible replaced the word ecclesia with the word church to identify the people who had been called out from the Roman and Jewish systems of the day, and who professed that they now belong to the Lord.
The word church in our English translations of the Bible identifies these groups of people as living independently from the rule of kings and governments; these groups of people were ruled by God’s Holy Spirit, and served Jesus Christ, not the Roman Emperor, (which is one of the reasons why the early Christians were persecuted by the ruling Roman authorities).
What this all means is that the modern biblical use of the word church represents a body of people who accept God as the ultimate authority: they do not accept civil government as the ultimate authority.
If we can scrape through all this translation business, the key point is
