JESUS' LIFE: His Unusual Birth
We are beginning a new series today on Jesus!
After looking at the gospel over the previous episodes I am sure that you have realised that I think Jesus is pretty awesome. He is the most important part of what Christians believe and is what differentiates us from other religions.
Jesus is so awesome and he did so many things while he was here on this earth and the bible has 4 whole books dedicated to all the things he did and said, and so with this series, my hope is to give you an overview. What I hope we can chat about together will be to really discover who he is and what he came for.
I’ll tell you stories about his miracles, things he did with the disciples, I will share stories about his teaching, his parables and about what life was like when he lived, because it was over 2000 years ago and the world was very different back then.
We are going to start today by looking at his arrival, which was certainly spectacular! We celebrate Jesus’ arrival at Christmas every year, and you might know lots about the nativity story already, but let me tell it again. I don’t think even parents get sick of hearing this! This story is taken from the beginning chapters of both Matthew’s gospel and Luke’s.
God designed all living animals, including big animals, small insects as well as us humans, to have babies. This is how we grow in number. God designed different animals to lay eggs, some to have babies in pouches and others to have babies grow in their mother’s womb. That’s where all of us began, inside our mummy’s tummies!
To make the baby a male and female (a man and a woman) have to mate. This is important information for this story because this didn’t happen for Jesus. God actually placed him in Mary’s womb, so there was no mating and no male human involved.
God sent an angel to Mary to let her know that even though she did not mate with a man that she had a baby in her tummy. An angel also visited Joseph, who was the man who was going to be Mary’s husband but not yet, and the angel let Joseph know that Mary was going to have a baby that had been put in her tummy by God - AMAZING yes?!
Joseph had been worrying because if Mary had a baby in her tummy and he wasn’t the one to mate with her then he assumed that there must be another man for Mary. This was not the case - God put baby Jesus inside Mary’s womb himself.
Um, so you might have a few extra questions at this point in the story, feel free to hit pause and ask away! Sorry if I threw you mums into the deep end!
I will continue on with the story.
The boss of the land at that time, Caesar Augustus, wanted to know how many people he was the boss of, so he made every man go to the place where his family was from to be counted. This meant that Joseph had to travel to Bethlehem. He lived in Nazareth and the walk to Bethlehem would have taken about 4 to 5 days to take, maybe longer, sleeping who knows where along the way! Mary was lucky to sit on a donkey with her tummy huge and ready to give birth. Have you ever ridden a donkey? I have. It was a really long time ago when I was little but I think I remember it being really bumpy!
Because Caesar had made every man go back to his hometown, Bethlehem was full of visitors from everywhere. There were places you could stay and rent, called an Inn, which was like a hotel, but those were all full. Poor Mary and Joseph asked around everywhere and there was no nice comfy bed for them. Mary was not just without a place to sleep, but she was experiencing heaps of pain - contractions - because her baby was about to be born.
I have had 4 babies and getting a baby out of your womb hurts. A lot! I was able to give birth in a nice clean hospital, with a bathroom and shower and clean sheets. There were no hospitals to go to in those days, but at least they had houses and beds to use. But not poor Mary.
One innkeeper must’ve realised Mary was in desperate need of rest and a room so he offered them a stable. Mary and Joseph must’ve really run out of options because they were very happy with the idea of staying in a stable that night. I can imagine them lying their jackets down on some hay on the ground, and then lying down on that, trying to get some rest, but poor Mary can’t sleep because those painful contractions come every 5 minutes and then all the time. Mary finally has the baby and there’s no shower or toilet but she does her best to wipe up the baby with some rags, and he falls asleep. She is so tired too from the 5 days walking and riding on the bumpy donkey that she wants to sleep too so she puts Jesus somewhere safe but there’s nowhere safe here. Oh wait - hang on, what about the feeding trough? Perfect! Jesus is safe in the manger there for now. Let’s sleep! So Mary lies down, exhausted for some much needed rest.
Hang on, not so fast Mary! There are some visitors coming. What’s this racket!? A whole lot of men, smelling a lot like sheep are coming in. What do they want? To see Jesus! Now? Really?
They told Mary and Joseph why they were there and how they found them. They were shepherds and were watching their sheep in the fields nearby. Everything was quiet until a flying angel appeared in the sky and spoke to them. It was frightening and even though it was night the sky was so bright, blinding! They freaked out but the angel told them that they had nothing to worry about. The angel told them that he had come to tell them some news about a saviour being born - the chosen one who was going to save Israel - and he said that the shepherds should go and visit the baby. The angel said that they would know which baby the saviour was because he would be wrapped in a blanket and lying in a manger. Not many babies around there are lying asleep in a manger so this one must be the baby the angel was talking about!
After the angel told the shepherds about the baby in a manger, a heap more angels appeared and started singing like the most beautiful sounding choir you’ve ever heard, singing all about God, “Glory to God in this highest.”
When the shepherds had finished visiting baby Jesus they told everyone they met of their experiences with the angels and the baby in the manger, and they went back to their fields praying to God and thanking him for letting them see such an amazing event.
You would think that getting counted was like teachers taking the role at school in the morning and it would be super quick and then you could go home, but it wasn’t. Life was very different 2000 years ago, so without technology like computers and phones and without a post office or cars, roads, planes and even printers, it all took much longer.
Mary, Joseph and Jesus actually didn’t stay in the stable for very long. They were able to find accomodation and stayed in Bethlehem for a while. They celebrated his birth, he was circumcised according to their customs and they visited the temple in Jerusalem because that was not far from Bethlehem.
While they were still in Bethlehem some wise men from a distant land came to them with some expensive gifts - gold, frankincense and myrrh. The wise men said that they had followed star charts and there was one star that indicated that a king was going to be born, so they followed it and it brought them right to Jesus’ house!
On their way to find the king baby, the wise men came through Jerusalem and they stopped and asked the boss of the Israelites, King Herod, about whether he had any information about a king being born. This King Herod didn’t know about the king baby, but he was a nasty man and jealous too, so he pretended to want to worship this king baby and asked them to give him info when they knew more. (He really wanted to get rid of the threat of another king coming and taking his crown.)
King Herod became a real threat to Jesus’ life, but another angel came to the rescue! He came and told Joseph to take his family to Egypt where they would be safe and to stay there until told otherwise. The wise men were warned not to go back to Jerusalem and see King Herod, so they went back home another way.
Joseph, Mary and little baby Jesus didn’t end up going home to Nazareth for quite some time. They travelled to Egypt, leaving sneakily in the middle of the night, and they stayed there until it was safe and the jealous King Herod passed away.
There was no newspaper or internet to find out news in those days, but there were angels! An angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and told him that they could go home because King Herod was dead and no longer a threat. So finally the little family got to go back home to Nazareth to live.
Discussion Questions:
What do you think the job of an angel is? Are they around anymore? Do they like earth? Do they eat, drink and sleep?
There was one big boss in this whole story, in control of every single thing that happened. Who do you think that was?
So if God was in control, why would he have worked out the story to be like this - with Jesus being born in a manger and visitors not being family members but wise men and shepherds?
