Text: Luke 2:1-21 | Listen to Message
Why Was Jesus’ Birth So Ordinary?
He is the eternal Son of God. His hands stretched out the heavens at the beginning of time. His voice called forth life out of nothing. And now the King of heaven and earth is coming to reign on David’s throne and to rescue his people. This is the moment – and the Messiah – the world has waited for!
We expect the King to be born in Jerusalem, or perhaps Rome. We expect throngs of people to be waiting in the streets – waiting to get their first glimpse of this royal baby. We expect the red carpet treatment, fanfare, and adoration. We expect love.
The last thing we expect is Luke 2!
Luke 2 is both ordinary and offensive. The nation has no room for its King. Nobody knows who he is. Nobody cares. Jesus is born into obscurity, poverty, shame, and rejection.
What kind of King is born in a barn in Bethlehem, the infant son of an unwed teenage mother? What kind of King spends his first night in a manger, surrounded by manure and damp straw? What kind of King announces his birth only to shepherds, a lowly and despised class of outcasts? What kind of King, given the ability to write his own story, writes this?
And why?
The answer is King Jesus – to show the world what kind of King he forever would be. You see, Jesus didn’t come to identify with the powerful and the prosperous. He didn’t come to ingratiate himself to the self-righteous. He didn’t come, like Caesar Augustus, to make himself a god. He came as God to make himself a man. He came in humility to give grace to the humble. He came to save sinners by being despised and rejected.
So the birth of Jesus was more than paradoxical. It was purposeful. It was prophetic. Jesus identified with the outcast and the poor to show us that anyone could enter his kingdom. Anyone. And that’s because it wasn’t going to be about what we could do for him; it was going to be about what he would do for us.
What kind of King is this? This is the King of amazing grace!
Sermon Notes & Application Questions