Jesus’ Birth | 5 Discoveries of Jesus (Ep. 1)

Hi, I'm Bob Ronglian. I'm your teacher and your guide in this course, Five Ancient Discoveries That Will Rock Your View of Jesus. I'm a pastor, teacher, and guide, and I've been taking people for over 30 years on unique immersion experiences in the Middle East following the footsteps of Jesus and the footsteps of Paul. I have a master's degree from Princeton Theological Seminary in New Testament. I've done postgraduate studies at the Kol Biblik in Jerusalem where my wife and I lived for a year while I was studying New Testament archaeology and sociology. I have a passion for going to the places where Jesus carried out his mission and gaining new insights from the history, the archaeological discoveries, and the culture that illuminate the way of Jesus. And so in this course I'm going to be sharing with you five discoveries from five different places that will open your eyes to new insights about Jesus and that will help you to follow him more closely. So let's get started. As we move into our first course we're going to be looking at Bethlehem, Jesus' birth. In the second episode it's going to be in Nazareth where we look at Jesus' home. In the third episode we're going to Capernaum where we're going to look at Jesus' new family that he built there and then we're going to continue at the Sea of Galilee looking at Jesus' call to disciples. And finally we're going to go to Jerusalem for the epic culmination of Jesus' mission looking at Jesus' triumph. So in this first episode let's go now to Bethlehem and let's look at Jesus' birth. You know we all bring so many assumptions to who Jesus is and to what he's about but sometimes we're kind of missing the mark and it's keeping us from knowing who Jesus really is. And so Jesus' birth is one of those stories

that we're so familiar with that that we've all heard so many times at Christmas and yet some of our assumptions might be blinding us to the full story of what's going on. Now at that time it was the Roman Empire that had conquered Israel and they were ruling that part of the world. It was Herod the Great who was kind of the proxy king for Israel and he did whatever the Romans said basically and the Romans ruled by decree. So here you can see a picture of a Roman soldier reading a decree and the Roman Emperor at that time was Caesar Augustus. He's one of the longest reigning and most effective of all the Roman Emperors and it provided a world of relative peace which allowed the gospel to spread in a way that it otherwise couldn't have. But it was this emperor, this Caesar, who declared that there should be a census. As Luke says it in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria and all went to be registered each to his own town. Now some scholars over the years have said well there's no evidence that the Romans required people to go back to their original hometown and so maybe Luke was just making this up but lo and behold not long ago they discovered an ancient papyrus, a document written on some sort of dried reeds and in that document was exactly what Luke describes. It was a different governor and a different census but the same concept. Gabeus, Vibius, Maximus, Prefect of Egypt declares the census by household has begun and it is accordingly necessary that all persons who are not resident at home for one reason or another at this time return to their home places in order to undergo the usual registration formalities and to attend to the cultivation of land which is their concern.

So there you have it, a Roman governor decreeing that people return to their hometown to be registered and that's exactly what brought Joseph and Mary from Nazareth in the north and Galilee where they lived down to Bethlehem in the south which was Joseph's original hometown and so even though Mary was nearly ready to give birth they made the arduous journey, it's about a five-day journey by foot. Mary may have been riding a donkey, we don't know, that's how we often picture it, but they made the journey down to come back to Joseph's original hometown. You can see on the map here that they would have come down through the Jordan Valley and made their way to Bethlehem which is just south of Jerusalem. Now here's what Bethlehem looks like today. It's a pretty good-sized modern city. It's actually in the West Bank, not in the state of Israel proper, and it's primarily a Palestinian city. And it's a place where there's quite a bit of tension still because of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. And so in some ways, it's quite similar to the situation at the time of Jesus, where there was also a lot of tension between the Jewish residents and the Roman rulers and the Herodians who ruled them directly. Here in the most ancient part of Bethlehem, we find the Church of the Nativity. It's one of the oldest sort of continuously standing and used churches in the world. And here's a little closer look at the facade.

It's not the most beautiful church you've ever seen, but it has stood the test of time, and it's kind of got bulwarks built around it to strengthen it and hold it up. But when you go through, you can see there's a kind of a tiny little doorway there. You have to bend over to get through. They've blocked it up over the years for security. And when you go through that little doorway, you come to the interior of the church, which is quite beautiful. It's been just recently restored. These beautiful monolithic rose limestone columns that date all the way back to the time of Constantine in the fourth century. And under the floor are incredible mosaics, also from the time of Constantine and so forth. So it's a beautiful, ancient, Byzantine-style church, but underneath the altar of the church, there is a large cave system. And the ancient tradition holds that it was in this cave that Mary gave birth to Jesus. And so immediately you say, wait a minute, cave? I thought it was in a stable. And so here's where we start to kind of take a closer look at this familiar story. So Luke records very simply the birth of Jesus. 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. Now, if you notice, this is a pretty sparse description of the birth of Jesus. But behind it, we can see some of these details. And what we usually do is we kind of fill in the details with our own imagination and pictures that we've seen. Maybe you have a little nativity scene in your house at Christmastime. But actually, if we look at the text, it might be a little bit different. So when Luke says there was no place for them in the inn, we automatically think of like a Motel 6 or a Holiday Inn, or all the motels are full, they have no place to stay. So she laid him in a manger, so they must have gone to a barn somewhere, right? But if we look at the language, actually, it's a little different picture. The Greek word for inn is pandokion. And the Greek word for innkeeper is pandokios. But that's not the word being used in Luke chapter two. Now in Luke 15, we hear the parable of the Good Samaritan about an inn and an innkeeper. And the Good Samaritan takes the beaten traveler to the inn and he pays the innkeeper money and the innkeeper takes care of him. That's more like what we think of as a motel, right? But in Luke chapter two, the word that's being used is kataluma. And a kataluma is best translated, not an inn per se,

but actually a guest room. Now I'm still in the Gospel of Luke, but if you go to Luke 22, and you hear the instructions that Jesus gave to his two disciples to make preparation for the Passover, Jesus specifically says for them to ask, the teacher says to you, where is the kataluma, the guest room, where I may prepare to eat the Passover with my disciples? And he will show you a large upper room furnished prepared there. You see, that's the word that Luke uses, not only for the Passover room, but also for what was full at the time of Jesus' birth. So better to translate it, there was no room in the guest room. There was no place for them in the guest room. Now, this causes us to go back and rethink the situation a little bit. Why are Joseph and Mary going to Bethlehem in the first place? They're going there because it's Joseph's hometown. That means he has relatives in Bethlehem. And so when he comes to Bethlehem, he's not gonna be looking for a Motel 6, he's gonna be staying with his relatives. In Middle Eastern culture, in biblical times, and still today, hospitality is one of the highest values. value is to care for your family and relatives.

So if Joseph and his pregnant wife come into town, believe me, they're going to be staying with relatives. And so the real picture that we're getting is that there was no place for them in the guest room of Joseph's relatives. And in ancient times in the Middle East, and again, still today, oftentimes, people don't live just as nuclear families, but they lived as extended families, multiple nuclear families that live together in a single compound, kind of like what you see here. This would be made up of multiple rooms built around a central courtyard and surrounded by a strong wall with a single door. And this is how they kind of protected their family. But also this is where they carried out their family business. And one of the rooms in a house like this was typically set aside as the place where you would put up guests when they came, and that's the kataluma. And so when Mary and Joseph come to Joseph's relative's house, Mary is just about to give birth. The relatives have to give them hospitality, but apparently there's already somebody staying in the kataluma, in the guest room, and so there was no place for them there. Now that raises a question. Why? You know, if Mary is about to give birth, don't you think that they would have emptied out the guest room and said, hey, you know, Uncle Fred, I'm sorry, but Mary's going to give birth. So we need the guest room, right? That's what you would expect, but that's not what happens. Instead, Mary has to give birth and lay the baby in a manger, which doesn't imply a stable.

But again, in these ancient homes, they typically had a handful of animals that could provide eggs and milk for the family or whatever. And so there was often a part of the courtyard or even a back room of the house, which was used as the place to keep the animals at night. During the day, they'd be staked out or they'd be in the courtyard. At night, they'd come into this certain part of the house. So when it says that she laid him in a manger, it implies that they were relegated to that part of the house where the animals were kept. And by the way, when it says manger, it's not necessarily the little kind of wooden creche that we might think of from maybe our, you know, our nativity scenes, something like that. But actually they were carved out of a block of stone. So here you see an ancient manger, one side for water, one side for feed. This would probably be in the courtyard of the house or in one of the back rooms. And so why is it that they relegate the pregnant woman to the area where the animals are instead of clearing out the guest room for her? Well, you remember that Mary's pregnancy came about quite in an unusual way, right? She and Joseph were not married yet. They were engaged to be married and Mary miraculously conceived by the Holy Spirit. And obviously that took some faith, right? Joseph had an angel appear to him in a dream to convince him of it.

And so the rumors will be swirling around about Mary's pregnancy and whether or not it was legitimate. Were they really married? And in that culture, which Middle East is an honor-shame culture, the most important thing is to bring honor to your family and the worst thing is to bring shame to your family. So if Mary's pregnancy came about out of wedlock, that would bring shame to her family. And so the picture we get is that when Mary and Joseph come to Bethlehem, they had to be received by the family. The culture demanded that they show hospitality, but they didn't necessarily have to honor them. In fact, they could kind of shun them and that's what they did. They didn't give them the guest room. Instead, they put them in the part of the house where the animals sleep. And that was, I think, their way of saying, hey, you brought shame on our family and we're not going to fully receive you. It's interesting what John says after his account of Jesus' birth. He says, Jesus came to his own and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, he gave them the right to be the children of God. I think that puts a new kind of spin on the Christmas story is that even at Jesus' birth, there was this sense that Jesus was being rejected, but at the same time, Jesus was welcoming people into God's family. I think it's very interesting that Jesus was not born in an anonymous stable somewhere, but he was born into an extended

family. And that's what he said about his followers. He said, these are my brothers and sisters and mothers. This is my family. So Jesus came to establish a new kind of family, the family of God, but his own biological family did not really receive him. Now, in John's gospel, John gives a very different sort of description of Jesus' birth. In Matthew and in Luke, we have these very nitty gritty stories about Mary giving birth in Bethlehem, but in John, we get more of the cosmic view. And he draws on Genesis 1. Remember Genesis 1? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. But now John uses the kind of language of the philosophy that was popular at his time, and he uses this Greek word logos, which we translate word as a kind of a word for God. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. Remember how when God created all things, he spoke it into being, let there be light. And that word was part of who God is, but it was one of the three persons of the Trinity. It was the second person of the Trinity, Jesus. That's what John goes on in verse 14. He says, the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory, glory as of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth.

So this baby that was born to Mary in a very real, very human, very gritty way, kind of off, put off with the animals in the house of Joseph's relatives, this wasn't just any baby. This was God himself entering in to our world through this child, Jesus. And so we see the mystery of Jesus, that he's fully God, that he's fully human. And yet I think sometimes because the divinity of Jesus is what's unique about him, we tend to focus on that. When we think of Jesus, we think, oh yeah, he's God. And we forget that actually God emptied himself in order to become fully human. In fact, this is the way Paul says that he's actually quoting an ancient creed or hymn. And he says, have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God, a thing to be grasped, meaning to be held on to, but he emptied himself. The Greek word is kenosis. It's like he poured himself out by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And so in this, we see that for the 33 or so years that Jesus lived on earth, God, the second person of the Trinity, the word, emptied himself of his eternal glory, of his infinite power, of his perfect foreknowledge.

He emptied himself and he took on humanity so that he could walk among us. And this is so important because sometimes when we look at Jesus, we think, oh, I can't do what Jesus did because he's God. And yet Jesus' call to each of us is follow me. And this is critical that we understand. When we think about the birth of Jesus, we understand that God emptied himself and he came into this world fully as a human being. He never chose to sin, so he was perfect. He's the only human being ever to live a truly sinless life. But the life he lived, he lived in his humanity to show us the way that we are meant to live. And this is what discipleship means. This is what it means to be a disciple. To be a disciple is somebody who's patterning their life after the way of Jesus, who's following in the footsteps of Jesus. And just because Jesus was God doesn't mean that we can't follow him. In fact, everything he did, he did to show us the way. So as we think about this amazing thing that took place in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago, I want you just to reflect for a minute. What is God saying to you about the birth of Jesus? Born into a family, rejected, but come to show us the way. And as you listen to God and reflect on what he's saying to you,

consider what is your next step of faith? What does it look like for you to take the next step in the footsteps of Jesus? In our next episode, we're gonna be moving on from Bethlehem to Nazareth, Jesus' hometown. And as we do that, we're gonna look at the particular sort of context of Jesus' boyhood and how that served to prepare him for the mission that his father had in store. So I hope you'll join us on the next episode