IT is striking and very humbling to notice the contrast between earth and heaven at that moment the most intensely interesting in the annals of time and in the counsels of eternity. It was night, and the world was slumbering when Christ, the Lord, was born.
Nevertheless, all unconsciously to themselves, the council chambers of the earth had been set in motion to accomplish the word of prophecy which had gone forth seven hundred years before (see Mic. 5:2).
Mary had returned to Nazareth (Luke 1:56) from the hill country whither she had gone to visit her cousin Elisabeth just before the birth of John the Baptist, the forerunner of Messiah. Her family was poor in Israel, proved by the fact that when the time of her purification, according to the law of Moses, had come (Luke 2:22) she avails herself of the gracious provision of the Lord for His people (see Lev. 12:8).
But her very poverty would naturally have kept her at Nazareth at such a time; hence all the world is set in movement to bring it about that Christ shall be born at Bethlehem. The Roman emperor makes a decree that all the world shall be enrolled. This evidences on the one hand the low estate of Israel as subject to the Gentile power; on the other hand, the faithfulness of God to His own word and promise, for it obliges Joseph to go up from Galilee to Judea “unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem (because he was of the house and lineage of David), to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child” (Luke 2:4-5). This is intensely interesting — the whole world set in motion politically to accomplish prophecy.
But though this is true, yet how sad to see the utter unconcern not only of Gentiles, but of Jews as well. Bethlehem slumbered when Christ, the Lord, was born. A few humble shepherds were the only ones who were brought into proximity to the mind of Heaven at this stupendous moment in the history of the universe. How humbling to the pride of man — pride, that Satanic characteristic so hateful to God (Ezek. 28).
While earth slept, all heaven was astir — “suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God,” &c. (Luke 2:13,14). That moment revealed more than five hundred years before to Daniel (Dan. 9:25-27) had come, the Messiah was born — “unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ, the Lord.”
The angels return to heaven, which seemed so near, and the shepherds go to Bethlehem where lay the holy Babe cradled in the manger, the emblem of that rejection at the hands of men which marked His entrance into a world which soon was to give Him but a cross. Yet all the counsels of God were centered in that Babe. “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.”
Another evidence of the indifference of the world to the birth of Christ is found in the fact that even Simeon and Anna do not seem to have been aware of it for a whole month, notwithstanding the close proximity of Bethlehem to Jerusalem, and the daily intercommunication between the two cities. Expecting it they were, and, doubtless, they looked for it at about that very time. Simeon had received a special revelation as to it (Luke 2:26), and the godly remnant at Jerusalem were all looking for it (2:38), most probably from their acquaintance with Daniel’s seventy weeks’ prophecy; but so little had the birth of the Saviour affected the people of Bethlehem, that the news was not carried to Jerusalem. Had Simeon known that the Lord’s Christ was already born, the short journey would undoubtedly have been taken to Bethlehem where the child Jesus was. Led by the Spirit into the temple at the very moment that Mary presented the child Jesus after the custom of the law, Simeon’s lips are opened in praise to God: “Mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.” The godly remnant in Jerusalem knew one another, and soon through the instrumentality of Anna were speaking often to one another OF HIM (2:38).
A. H. H.