Surrounded By Family And Friends Series

Scripture: Luke 2:1-7; Micah 5:2

Theme: The S of Christmas – THE STABLE

Title: Surrounded by family and friends

Stable – Barn – Cave – What did the place look like where Jesus was born and what were the conditions? Let’s see what we find in Luke 2:1-7

INTRO:

Grace and peace in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

This morning I would like for us to take a little trip. It’s to the town of Bethlehem where Jesus was born. And I would like for us to go to the very location where Jesus was born. The place that has been called a barn, a cow stable and even a cave.

Do you know where you were born?

Was it in a nice, sanitized county or city hospital?

Was it in your parents’ or grandparent’s home?

Was it in a car, ambulance or even police car on the way to the hospital?

For little Rosita, it was a tree in Mozambique, Africa. Her mom, Sofia Pedro climbed a tree to escape the flood waters and delivered her baby holding on to the branches. A few minutes after the birth, both mother and baby were rescued by a South African helicopter crew.

Dominique Trevino was on her way to the hospital by bus in 2009 and started having contractions. Another passenger, who worked at the hospital realized that Dominique was never going to get there on time. She told her to get off at the next stop and go immediately to the library. Dominique barely made it to the library before she had her baby.

Keven Raymar Francis Domingo came into the world at 40,000 feet in the air. His mom, Aida was flying from Manila to San Francisco when she went into pre-term labor and with the aid of three nurses and some cabin crew members, she gave birth to her sky baby.

For Jesus, his birthplace has been called a barn, a cow stable or a cave.

Let’s look at this story in a little more detail and see what it has to say to us today:

I. The Stable

Many of us here this morning has stood in a makeshift stable and played the part of a shepherd, a wise man or if we were of the right age and appearance – Mary, Joseph or even Jesus.

However, the more we really dig into the story of the Stable the more we need to see things not through Gentile eyes but through Jewish eyes.

What I mean by that is sometimes we get these pictures in our heads that have been handed down to us from people that never even visited Israel or studied what life was like in ancient Israel.

For example, have you ever looked at Lenardo de Vinci’s Last Supper Picture. It’s an amazing work of art but it is a flawed work of art when it comes to being accurate to the real Last Supper.

For example:

+Lenardo paints it taking place during the day when the real Last Supper took place at night.

+The people around the table are dressed in Renaissance clothing.

+The bread that is on the table is raised bread made with yeast instead of being unleavened bread made without yeast.

+There is no main cup at the table. Each person has their own individual clear glass cup.

+There is no lamb on the table, instead it is fish.

+They are all sitting in chairs with Jesus in the middle. At the true Passover meal, they would have been reclining with Jesus at the head of the table.

Now, of course we know that Lenardo took some artistic license in his painting to get certain messages across. But at the same time part of his inaccuracies resulted in the fact that he had never consulted a rabbi about Passover or had never visited the Middle East to do some research.

Sadly, the same has happened in our story as well with the Stable.

Jesus was born in the town of Bethlehem.

Jesus was laid in a manger full of straw or hay.

Jesus was born where animals lived or at least where they stayed at night.

But Jesus was not born in:

+A barn – that idea comes to us from the Middle Ages

+A cave – that idea comes to us from Justin Martyr and Origen

Now, both of those ideas are not bad, they just are not accurate.

Over the last 50 years or more there has been an ever-growing dialogue between rabbis and priests and between scholarly Jews and scholarly Gentiles. There has been a great deal of study to understand Jesus and the First Century Church not only from a Gentile point of view but from a Jewish point of view.

As a result, we have been able to have a more accurate picture of Jesus’ life and even some of his teachings.