Dr. Rodney Plunket

[You are encouraged to read the passages listed in the heading prior to reading the sermon text below]

When I hear the stories of the birth of Jesus there are several elements that just jump out at me.  One of those elements was not a part of our readings this morning, but it is an element that likely grabs everyone’s attention.  That element is Jesus’ virgin birth.  The angel who announced the birth of Jesus to the virgin Mary says, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God” (Luke 1:35).  The truth that Jesus was born of a virgin by the power of the Holy Spirit should grab our attention.  But it seems to me that many people today hear the phrase “virgin birth” . . . think “miracle” and . . . nothing else.  And a miracle it was.  But I fear that we become so caught up in the virgin birth as a supernatural event that we never hear the real message, never get the real point of the virgin birth.

Jesus was born of a virgin not just to encase His coming in miracle; it was to make clear that Jesus was divine––divine at and from conception.  All believers look to God as their Father, but God was Jesus’ Father in an incomparable way.  It was the Holy Spirit of God and the Holy Spirit alone that miraculously fertilized the egg in Mary’s womb.  Jesus had no human father.  Human sperm had no part in His birth.  So I would encourage us to focus on the fact that the virgin birth makes clear the unique connection between Jesus and God.  Jesus was divine.  As the apostle Paul writes in Colossians 2:9, “in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.”  He was the result of the joining of a human egg and a divine spark that came directly from God and from God alone.

I suspect that the virgin birth also indicates the honored status of Jesus.  Think about it.  Later Jesus’ body will be placed in a newly dug tomb in which no other corpse had ever been laid.  His entombment takes place just a few days after He has ridden into Jerusalem on a young donkey that had never been sat upon (Mark 11:2; Luke 19:30).  In the Jewish Mishnah, which was compiled in the 3^rd century AD, we read, “no one may use an animal on which a king rides” (cited by Craig A. Evans, Mark 8:27-16:20, Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 34B [Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2001], 142); it seems that a king’s “specialness”/His honor was accented by riding a mount reserved for him alone.  The donkey Jesus rode, the tomb in which He was laid, and the virgin womb in which His embryo developed––it is likely that the newness of all of these served to convey Jesus’ “specialness”/His honor as the Son of God.  But among these items only the virgin birth is a unique means of conveying honor.  Others have ridden donkeys that have never been ridden before.  Other corpses have been buried in tombs in which no one else had ever been laid.  But the virgin birth is a unique way of accenting the honor and “specialness” of Jesus Christ the Son of God.

So I am trying to see more than a miracle when I read of Jesus’ being born of a virgin.  The virgin birth speaks forth Jesus’ divinity, divinity from the moment that egg was fertilized.  And it speaks forth the “specialness”/the honor that naturally surrounds Jesus because of who He is––who He is from conception.

But the virgin birth is not the only element that jumps out at me from the story of Jesus’ birth.  The next element that jumps out at me is that Mary, the mother of Jesus, had to place her newborn son “in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7).  The word translated here as “manger” can refer to a feeding trough for animals or a stall for animals, but the point is the same.  This baby so special that He was born of a virgin from an egg fertilized by the Holy Spirit of God, this same baby was born into such a lowly state that His first bed was either on the floor of an animals’ stall or in the trough from which animals ate.  This humility and lowliness would characterize the whole of Jesus’ life and would clearly reveal the willingness of God to go as low as needed to bring to us eternal life.

Another item that jumps out at me is the fact that the angels who announced the birth of “a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord” made that announcement to shepherds.  R. Alan Culpepper in his commentary on Luke reports:

Shepherding was a despised occupation at the time.  Although the reference to shepherds evokes a positive, pastoral image for the modern reader and underscores Jesus’ association with the line of David . . . , in the first century, shepherds were scorned as shiftless, dishonest people who grazed their flocks on others’ lands.  Against this background, it is possible that Luke gets double duty from the shepherds––first, developing further Jesus’ connection with David and Bethlehem, and, second, graphically picturing Jesus as one sent to the lowly and outcast.  It is to some of their number, shepherds, that the birth is announced (Ibid., 9:65).

The landowners had no place for Jesus to stay.  It is to shepherds that the angels are sent to announce the most important birth in the history of the world.  The message is clear.  God sent Jesus to reach down to the lowly, the humble. And to this day those who think themselves powerful and self-sufficient have hearts that are closed to the Christ.

The last element that jumps out of these stories is the coming of “wise men from the East” after Jesus was born.  We do not know how long after the birth it was before the wise men came, but the text makes clear that baby Jesus and His parents were still in Bethlehem when the wise men came.  But what is the point of their coming?  What are we to learn about Jesus from their coming?  To grasp what I think is the most important point communicated by their coming, we must first stop and realize that these wise men clearly were not Jews.  They were from somewhere in the East.  The point conveyed by the fact that these non-Jews recog­nized Jesus’ “specialness” and came “to pay him homage” (NRSV) or “to worship him” (NIV, NLT) is well made by M. Eugene Boring in his commentary on Matthew’s Gospel.  He writes,

The magi are Gentiles in the extreme, characters who could not be more remote from the Jewish citizens of Jerusalem in heritage and worldview.  Even at the very beginning of Jesus’ life, then, we see the dividing walls between race and cultures breaking down.  Even here, at the beginning of the Gospel, the mission to all nations, which will close [Matthew’s] Gospel (28:19), is anticipated (M. Eugene Boring, “The Gospel of Matthew,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, ed. Leander E. Keck and others [Nashville: Abingdon, 1995], 8:145).

When I visualize these wise men traveling the distances required and being led right to the place where Jesus was staying, I am reminded that God sent Jesus to the whole world.  All of the world is called to worship Him.

Would the servers please move to the foyer?

As I think about the wise men coming to worship the baby Jesus and bringing, as indications of their worship, gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, I realize anew that one of the ways that worship has always been revealed is through the bringing of offerings and gifts to the one being worshipped.  This morning let’s give with an attitude of worship.  Let’s join with the wise men in bringing gifts––gifts that show that we know the wonder and the glory of our King.  Would the servers please come to the front?  Let’s pray.

[After the Offering]  John’s Gospel ends with this statement, “ . . . there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”  As I read that statement I am reminded of the fact that each Gospel is different.  Only two of the Gospels, Matthew and Luke, record the birth of Jesus.  And no other book in the New Testament refers to it.  Why?

I think the answer is that the significance of Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension to God’s right hand overshadow the significance of Jesus’ birth.  We ask “why” again?  It is because the cross, the empty tomb, and the ascension to God’s right hand are the events through which God saves us.

This should remind us of what we said last Sunday.  Jesus was born to die.  We were and born and will die; but our purpose for being born was not to die.  Jesus’ purpose was death.  He was born to die.

So as we eat of the communion meal on this day just two days before Christmas, let’s focus on the truth that this holy child, so divine and so special, was born to die for our sins.  Let’s pray.

[After the Lord’s Supper]  I want to go back now to an element in the story of Jesus’ birth as it is told in the Gospel of Luke.  We are told that Jesus was laid in a manger “because there was no place for them in the inn.”  That notation has often been viewed by interpreters as a “foreshadowing” of “the failure of humanity to receive the Lord” (R. Alan Culpepper, “The Gospel of Luke,” in The New Interpreters’ Bible, ed. Leander E. Keck and others [Nashville: Abingdon, 1995], 9:63).

The Christmas season has, as usual, brought us many visitors this morning.  And many of those visitors are family members who have come home for Christmas.  Imagine that a child with family arrived at the parents’ door but were not received.  They looked out the window but refused to open the door.

That is what happened to Jesus.  John 1:11 tells us, “[Jesus] came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.”  The phrase “what was his own” refers to Jesus’ home.  The land of the Jews, the city of Jerusalem should have been Jesus’ home.  The Jewish people should have been His welcoming family, but they refused Him and brought about His crucifixion.  This rejection is foreshadowed in the birth story.  It is prefigured by the fact that there was no room for him in the inn.  Is there room for Him here?  Is there room for him in our hearts?

When I was preaching in Dunedin, New Zealand in the seventies, the other preacher there was Bill Such.  Bill is one of the most gifted communicators of the Gospel I have ever know, and I will never forget the Sunday morning that he stepped up onto the platform at the Dunedin church and looked at on the crowd.  Then he walked over to a large fresh flower arrangement filled with large and luxurious flowers.  Bill took one of the flowers and brought it to the podium.  He caressed this flower.  His face and eyes were filled with joy and love as he looked at this flower.  He deeply breathed in the flower’s fragrance.  Then he gently laid the flower down.

He went back to the flower arrangement and took another flower.  This time his expression was very different.  He was hostile and angry.  His eyes were full of hate.  You could feel and see his antagonism toward the flower intensifying.  Finally he ripped into the flower with both hands, and tore it into pieces.

He stepped back from the platform and took a deep breath.  Then he returned to the podium.  Look out at us and said, “Jesus came.  People responded in two very different ways.  How will you respond?

How will you respond?  Please receive the Savior born of a virgin, slain on a Roman cross, raised from the tomb, and ascended to the right hand of God.  Please receive the Son of God and enter into joyful with The Father.  We have people at the back and at the front that you can talk to or pray with.  Please make your way to one of them during the singing of this next song.  Please receive Jesus as we stand and sing.

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