The Birthday of a King!

‘And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth.  And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.” –Luke 2:6-7 (ESV).

Now the birth of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords was on this manner:

Because there was no room in Bethlehen Inn, Mary with her husband Joseph were lodged in a stable.

This humble resting place may have been, we are told, a lime-stone cave in a hillside near the inn where animals were kept from the elements and where they rested after grazing all day.  Or it may have been, others say, the place where the people who were actually lodging in the inn stabled their animals while they were in the town. This would have been a room or area perhaps below the inn at ground level that was the room for animals.  We are told that the Jews, being very fastidious, cleaned the stable area every day.  Still, this was an unlikely place for the birth of anyone, let alone the King of Glory, the Lord of Lords, the Savior of the world, the Messiah.

And so it came to pass that the place of his birth was a stable.  The first resting place for the newborn King was a manger—a feeding tough.  We are not told, but we can imagine Joseph quickly cleaned any residue of animal food from the manger tray and laid it with soft, fresh hay.  That would have made a fragrant-smelling crib to receive the Babe, wrapped in swaddling cloths that no doubt His mother, anticipating His birth while they were in Bethlehem, had brought from Nazareth with her.  What does the manger point out for us?  It bespeaks the poverty, humility and humanity of Jesus.  The poverty:  “no crib for a bed”  we sing the words from “Away in a Manger.”  Of lowly parents and of lowly beginnings, even His birth identified Him with one who told His disciples later that He “had no place to lay His head.”  But there, on the night of His birth, His head was cradled on the hay.  His birthplace speaks of humility—Immanuel, God with us, was among the lowliest—born where a servant might have been born.  Paul wrote about this humility in Philippians 2:6-7:  “Who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.”  And as to the humanity of the Babe, He could cry, He felt heat and cold, He was subject in His body to all the feelings, emotions and needs of any human, although God.  He was both wholly human; wholly divine.  Later we would be told of Him:  “He was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin”(Hebrews 4:15)  The human side of Him would know that dimension.

Jeremiah wrote:  “I will raise up…a King who will reign wisely” (Jeremiah 23:5).  Song writer and musician William Harold Neidlinger gave us both words and music to the carol “The Birthday of a King”:

“In the little village of Bethlehem, There lay a child one day,

And the sky was bright with a holy light O’er the place where Jesus lay.

Aleluia!  O How the angels sang.  Aleluia!  How it rang!

And the sky was bright with a holy light,

’Twas the birthday of a King.

Prayer.  Today, as we celebrate the King’s birthday, let us allow the depth of truth of this blessed event draw us closer to Him.  May we adore and serve Him in true allegiance to the King of Kings.  Amen.