Read Matthew 1:25, Luke 2:1-7 and John 1:14, each of which deals with the birth of Jesus Christ, the incarnation, i.e., the point at which God became a man. Each writer includes that material that is relevant to the main point of the particular Gospel. Compare Matthew’s and Luke’s accounts with John’s.
1. Which is more biographical and historical, and which is more theological or philosophical?
Matthew and Luke are more biographical and historical. John is more theological, telling us of the significance of His birth.
Read Luke 2:8-39, an account of the events immediately following the birth of our Lord. In sending out ‘birth announcements’ of the Messiah, the future king of the whole earth, God chooses to tell nearby shepherds, an old man, and a widow in Jerusalem.
2. Why do you suppose God told these people rather than the heads of state and the religious leaders of this day?
God reported the good news to the faithful, those who were looking for the Messiah. The faithful did not include political or religious leadership. God was not going to use the political and religious leaders of the day to spread the good news. He was going to use ordinary people.
Read Matthew 2:1-12. This records the visit of the Magi (Wise men - not kings) from someplace in the east. We know very little about them, except they were probably believers. There were Jewish settlements established in the area of what was Babylonia during the exile. Many of these continued after Darius allowed people to return to Palestine. Many Jews chose to remain in exile. Although the Magi do not seem to be Jewish, they may have come to believe through these exiled Jews. Their visit did not occur the same night that our Lord was born but at a later date. While it might have been as much as two years following His birth since Herod killed all babies in Bethlehem two years of age and younger, it more likely occurred within a short time of the birth of our Lord. Joseph and Mary and the baby were still in Bethlehem; they had not yet returned to their home. They were in a house, but one would expect they would seek better accommodations the next day. Finally, it would not be out of character for Herod to make sure he killed the rival to his throne by having all babies two and under to be slaughtered. Note: Manger scenes, which include the Magi, are not “historically” accurate in that they did not come that night, but accurate in that they did visit shortly after that in all likelihood.
3. Why do you think Matthew included this account but not the other writers of the Gospels?
Matthew’s purpose is to show Jesus is the Messiah, the true king. This incident points to our Lord’s royalty. If indeed they were Gentiles, as is likely, then it points to the fact that He is King, not just over Israel, but over the Gentile nations as well.
Read Matthew 2:13-23. This passage often upsets some readers because God allowed many innocent babies to be murdered while our Lord escaped. God warned Joseph and Mary, but none of the other inhabitants of Bethlehem.
4. Why do you think God allowed all the young babies in Bethlehem to be murdered? Was God unjust in doing this?
God allows people (us) to make free choices. He also allows people to face the consequences of their actions and the actions of others. The responsibilities of the results belong to the people who made the choices, not God. God did not make Herod murder those babies; he chose to do it. (See applications for a discussion of HUMAN FREEWILL and GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY.)
Read Luke 2:39-52. Very little is told about our Lord’s childhood. Luke alone tells us of this one instance.
5. Why, in your opinion, doesn’t God tell us more about our Lord’s childhood?
We are told what is essential for us to know now. While Our Lord’s childhood, no doubt, is interesting, we do not need to know about this now; we need to know of his later life, death and resurrection. There will be plenty of time in eternity to come to learn all about these other interesting facets of our Lord’s life
The Applications:
What are the applications of these passages to our lives today? Identify as many as you are able.
1. A principle found throughout the Old and New Testaments is that those who seek God, honestly and sincerely, shall find Him no matter where or when they may live. Those that hunger and thirst for righteousness shall be filled. Unfortunately, the inverse of this is also true. An individual who does not want to know Him, who rejects Him and does not want Him in their lives, will be granted that wish. To those who genuinely wish to know Him, He will make Himself known.
2. One of the great debates of the church revolves around the doctrines of GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY and MAN’S FREEWILL. In general, those who firmly hold one view will deny the other. The common understanding of this issue is that you must choose between one or the other; one view denies the other. If you believe that God is completely sovereign, then man has no free will. On the other hand, if you believe man has free will and can choose freely, then God is not completely sovereign. The problem is that Scripture clearly teaches both concepts.
Therefore the student of God’s Word must cling to both as accurate and valid. This, contrary to the opinion of some, is not intellectual suicide. Both ideas are true. The problem is we most often view the concepts from the wrong perspectives. We try to understand God’s sovereignty from the perspective of a being locked in time and space rather than a being existing independently of it. We try to understand man’s free will from the viewpoint of a being who sees the end from the beginning as a single entity.
God’s sovereignty must be understood from His viewpoint. He exists outside of and independent of the space-time continuum in which we live. He experiences all of it as a single thing. The future is just as present to Him as the past, the past just as present as the present. Any divine act in time and space is seen as a whole, not as a series of cause-effects. Any act and all of its results, from the greatest to the least throughout all of time, is perceived as a single item. There is no action that God in His sovereignty ordains that He does not also ordain or allow every consequence thereof. Such a God, existing both in and outside of space-time, is necessarily sovereign over all of history. Any action initiated by Him, as well as all its results, is for Him one single act. Therefore, He is sovereign over all of history in His choosing to act or not.
Our Lord created the universe as an open, causal space-time continuum. Man exists within it and is temporally bound by it. We experience only the present, we remember only the past, and we only speculate and anticipate the future. Therefore man views himself, his actions and all of the results of his actions as a temporal cause-effect sequence. From man’s perspective, and that is the only perspective by which we can live, our choices count. Within the boundaries of space-time, God has given us a genuinely free will. We may choose to act or not act, and are held accountable for those choices.
A seeming contradiction? Perhaps, but only seemingly. Yet, the natural world created by God teaches us that these seemingly contradictory things do exist. What is light? That debate began when man first began to explore his universe scientifically. Is it a particle, or is it a wave? Things that exist as particles have the property that they can travel through empty space. Light travels through the emptiness of space; it must be a particle of some description. But there are properties of light that cannot be explained by its being a particle. It also acts like a wave. A wave may cancel another wave out if the trough of one wave intersects the crest of another. Particles cannot do this. Light waves can cancel out other light waves in the process of destructive interference. Light must be a wave. But waves to propagate must have a medium to disturb since waves are nothing but a disturbance in some medium. They cannot travel where there is no medium to travel through. Space is empty, void of a medium through which a wave could travel. Particles may move through an empty vacuum; waves cannot. Does relativity reign supreme, or does quantum theory?
So what is light; is it a particle or a wave? While we cannot draw a picture of what light is, we know that it has properties of both particles and waves. Indeed we designate it as a wave-particle. Both characteristics exist and are true side by side, although one seemingly contradicts the other. Light is both a particle and a wave. So it is with God’s sovereignty and man’s free will. Both exist and are true side by side. The real issue is not is one true and the other false, but how do we apply these truths in our daily lives. It is a misapplication of God’s sovereignty to say it does not matter if we witness or not since those who are going to be saved will be saved. It is all predestined. This ignores the truth of man’s free will. It is a misapplication of man’s free will to think we can lose our salvation. God’s sovereignty secures it. If He has chosen us, we are chosen.
3. God does not give us all the details, but He does tell us all we need to know. This is true on many levels. The revelation of the Scriptures tells us much we would not have known from any other source. But does it answer all the questions we might have about God, creation, the incarnation and a host of other subjects? Not at all. There are many areas we do not understand and do not yet have the knowledge we might wish for, but God has given us all we need to know for the present.
In our personal lives, He guides us down a road that may well cause us to wonder why this way. Sometimes He may reveal why He has led us as He has; often, He does not. He shows what we need at the time and asks us to trust Him for what we cannot see nor understand.