“Bible places: Bethlehem”
Luke 2:4
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
About a hundred miles southeast of Memphis, Tennessee, there’s a little town called Tupelo, Mississippi, population 38,842. It’s the home of the Tupelo Automobile Museum, the famous Natchez Trace Parkway, and the Tupelo Furniture Market, “upholstery capital of the world.” For you history buffs, it’s also where the Battle of Tupelo was fought to protect General Sherman’s supply lines, and it’s the very first city to be electrified by the Tennessee Valley Authority, the TVA. Even President Roosevelt stopped by to visit back in 1935.
And on the east side of town, not far from the Tupelo Consignment Music Shop, Dollar General, and Highway 45, there’s the birthplace of Elvis Presley.
It’s nothing to write home about. In fact, it’s barely even a home. It’s a two-room “shotgun house” built by Elvis’ grandfather just before his birth.
What’s a shotgun house? It’s a long, narrow, two-room shack of a house with a kitchen in the front and a bedroom in the back. And they call it “shotgun,” because if you fired a shotgun through the front door, the pellets would go right out the back door without even hitting a wall. Some even call them “railroad apartments,” because they’re about the size and shape of a railroad car. They’re just that small.
But if you were to visit there today, you’d find that, naturally, the birthplace of Elvis Presley is a pretty big deal. And for $8 for adults and $5 for ages 7-12, you can even go inside. And there you’ll see the room in which he was born and the kitchen where he sat for the first two years of his life.
It’s a small reminder that even the most humble of beginnings can produce a king.
Places matter. Birthplaces matter. That’s why, each year, thousands visit Wakefield, Virginia, birthplace of George Washington, and Sinking Spring Farm, Kentucky, birthplace of Abraham Lincoln. It’s where they were born. It’s where their stories began.
Our Savior Jesus had a birthplace too. And it was small, so small, that when Joshua and Nehemiah made a list of all the cities in Judah, they didn’t even bother to mention it at all. It was just that small.
Please turn with me in your Bible to page 1090 as I read the words of our text. I’ll start where it says, “The Birth of Jesus Christ,” Luke chapter 2, verse 1: “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.”
Let’s stop there for just a moment to be sure we get all our facts straight.
First of all, who’s Caesar Augustus? He’s Gaius Octavius, Imperator Caesar Divi Filius Augustus, “Son of God,” Supreme Military Commander, the first emperor of Rome, grand-nephew and adopted son of Julius Caesar, the First Citizen of the State. His father died when he was only four, so he was raised by his grandmother, Julia, sister of Julius Caesar.
Thanks to him, Rome enjoyed two hundred years of Pax Romana—Roman peace. It’s even how the month of August got its name.
But a nice guy, he was not. Historians tell us he was ambitious, ruthless, and cruel, devious, untrustworthy, and bloodthirsty. In the words of Roman historian Tacitus, he had a “lust for power…There had certainly been peace, but it was a blood-stained peace of disasters and assassinations.” And another wrote, “While fighting for dominance, he paid little attention to legality or to the normal facilities of political life…he suffered from no delusions of grandeur.”
Even on his deathbed, he boasted, “I found a Rome of bricks; I leave to you one of marble.” And to his friends he said, “Have I played the part well? Then applaud me as I exit.” When he died, like Julius Caesar before him, the Roman Senate declared him to be a god.
And as Luke wrote in his first verse: “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.”
And who’s Quirinius, governor of Syria? He was a war hero, a senator, a proconsul, one of Augustus’ most capable and trusted friends. And since he was such a close and trusted friend, Augustus appointed him to govern Syria, one of the most important provinces of the empire.
And as Augustus reigned and Quirinius ruled, as Luke wrote in verse 3, “All went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was the house and lineage of David.”
Have you ever wondered why Bethlehem? It is, after all, a really small town. I mean, why not Hebron or why not Jerusalem?
For one reason, Rachel, Jacob’s wife, was buried there. Just as soon as she gave birth to little Benjamin, she died, and Jacob buried her there. Her tomb is there to this day.
Also, Ruth was redeemed there. It’s where Boaz paid a dear price for her property, then took her home to be his wife.
David was anointed there. When Samuel, sent by God, came to choose a new king, he was out keeping watch over his sheep. But that’s when God told him—“David, he’s the one!”
And David was refreshed there. For when the Philistines had him backed into a corner, trapped in a cave, he said, “Oh, that someone would get me a drink from the well near the gate of Bethlehem!”
That’s why Jesus was born there.
Is it any surprise that God would choose such a lowly place like Bethlehem?
It shouldn’t be. He once chose two aged, childless adults, named Abraham and Sarah to be the father and mother of His people. He used a boy named Joseph, sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, to rule the nation of Egypt and provide food for His people. He used the cries of a baby named Moses to move the heart of Pharaoh’s daughter. He used a schoolboy’s lunch of five loaves and a couple of fish to feed thousands. And He used twelve unschooled, ordinary men, to turn the world upside down.
Of course, Jesus would be born in Bethlehem.
On June 5, 1978, little seven-year-old Martin Turgeon slipped off a pier and fell into the Prairie River. And even though a dozen adults were standing on the same pier, none of them did anything to save him. After a few moments he sank and drowned.
So why didn’t anyone dive in to save him? Because just upstream, there was a factory that dumped raw sewage into the river.
In the words of one eyewitness, “We weren’t about to get into the river—the water was too dirty.”
Later, a policeman said, “It makes you wonder how human people really are. The boy probably could have been saved.”
And think of John Everingham, an Australian reporter working in Laos. He was engaged to a local, but was expelled by the Communists, forcing him to leave her behind.
But he refused to leave her behind. For ten months, he carefully planned her rescue. He bought a scuba tank, face masks and fins, then plunged into the rain-swollen Mekong River.
The water was so dirty, he couldn’t see. So with a compass, he crawled along the mucky bottom, and swam against its swirling currents.
When he surfaced, he found he had underestimated the current and was well past the spot where she was waiting. Exhausted, he swam back to Thailand.
Then he tried it again, starting further upstream. And when he finally made it and crawled out on the bank, she had given up and was walking away. So he yelled at the top of his voice till she turned and ran, falling into his arms.
Exhausted, but together, they made it to Thailand.
God is not a God who stands by, unwilling to get involved. He’s a God who loves us so much, He’s willing to plunge into the murky waters of humanity and be identified with us all the way.
In His conception, He was submerged in the amniotic fluids of His mother’s womb. In His birth and infancy, He fled the swirling waters of King Herod’s insane death decree. In His boyhood, He was immersed in the waters of obscurity, soaking in Scripture, saturated in patience and divine wisdom. And all through His life and ministry, He plunged into the polluted waters of sin-sick lives, was baptized with sinners, and ate with sinners, risking filth and contamination.
Until finally, engulfed in the whirlpool of betrayal and denial, He entered the murky depths of death itself, even death on the cross.
A nice, decent god would have probably sent us some help—maybe an angel or some divine advice.
But our God went radically beyond that. He refused to remain standing on the pier. Instead, He jumped into the putrid waters. He became vulnerable for our sake.
That is, after all, what the name “Emmanuel” means—not God for us and not God against us. It means “God with us.”
In the words of author, Frederick Buechner, “Those who believe in God can never, in a way, be sure of Him again. Once they have seen Him in a stable, they can never be sure where He will appear or to what lengths He will go or to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation He will descend in His wild pursuit of man…And this means that we are not safe, that there is no place where we can hide from God, no place where we are safe from His power to break into and recreate the human heart, because it is where He seems most helpless that He is most strong and just where we least expect Him that He comes most fully.”
And that’s the good news of Christmas.
O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray; cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today. We hear the Christmas angels, the great glad tidings tell; O come to us, abide us with us, our Lord Emmanuel! In Your holy name we pray. Amen