Luke 2:1-7 Away in a Manger
Format for Your Devotions
Instructions: Do not read my example devotion until you have completed your own devotional time in the scriptures. Reading my thoughts first may limit your own understanding. Let the Holy Spirit speak to you alone before looking to see what anyone else has to say, whether it is me, a Bible commentary, or a friend. Let God speak to you before you let another person speak to you. I have provided a format, but modify it to fit your needs. For example, I usually combine my application and prayer together talking to God about the application to my own life. You can go through this devotion process mentally, speaking out loud, or in writing as you wish. Don’t worry if you are not following this process exactly. Sometimes, I add extra information and sometimes I emphasize one part more than others. However, you should always think about what you learn about God from this passage.
Step 1: Pray–Ask for the Holy Spirit’s guidance first of all and that God may reveal the lessons that He wants you to have that day. Request that God protect you from Satan’s distractions (and the devil will try to distract you whether it is pinching the baby or putting you to sleep). Ask to see God more clearly as you read and think about the passage.
Step 2: Read the passage–Read to get an overview of the information first. Then start looking at specific parts after the first reading. You may read a larger or smaller section than I have here because you do not have to follow my organization at all.
Step 3: Understand the passage–You can summarize, ask and answer your own questions about the passage, visualize the story, analyze the characters, and relate this passage to other scriptures and personal experiences.
Step 4: What does this reveal about God?–What do you learn about the Father, Son, and/or Holy Spirit from this passage?
Step 5: Apply this to your own life.
Step 6: Prayer
My Example Devotion: June 15, 2018 Luke 2:1-7
Note: In the devotion examples, I leave my questions and thought processes in the text because I am trying to demonstrate that a devotional time is a dialogue with God about what you are reading from His word. As such, any questions or ideas that you have should be explored by talking it out with God. These example devotions are not my attempts to teach you what the meaning of a particular scripture is. They are an attempt to teach you the process of devotions, which is a combination of prayer and Bible study where you explore ideas with God as you read His word.
In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. 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.
(Understanding the Text) Joseph probably did not want to take Mary with him on the journey since she was towards the end of her pregnancy. However, it would be just as hard to do the journey with a newborn son and nursing mother. He had no choice about going himself, and he did not want to leave Mary alone in Nazareth unprotected. God had given him, Joseph, the responsibility for protecting the Messiah, and Joseph was not going to prove unfaithful. I wonder if maybe Mary was not full-term yet. Maybe, Joseph thought that they could make the four-day journey there, spend a couple of weeks to register, and make the four-day journey back. If Mary was only about eight months pregnant, Joseph might have assumed that he had time, and took Mary along merely as a precaution. Or maybe Joseph thought that he had made arrangements for accommodations and been kicked out because someone with more money and prestige came in to take his place. The SDA commentary suggests that Mary may have known the prophecy about Bethlehem and wanted to come along.
How long were they in Bethlehem before Jesus was born? I always picture Mary on a donkey having contractions on the last part of the journey and Joseph desperately going from inn to inn trying to find a room. However, Mary might have been walking rather than riding a donkey. They may have been there a while before the labor started. Maybe, they even had accommodations at first, but were sent to stay in the stable when more important guests came. Maybe the regular inn prices had been raised so high because of the mass influx of people that the only place that Joseph could afford was the stable. It may have been that they preferred the stable because the inns were too crowded for a pregnant woman to deliver a baby, but the stable was more spacious and private. I always think of it as the only alternative-the only space available, but maybe it was simply the best of many spaces available at the time.
There may be an interesting contrast of cultural ideas here. Joseph and Mary were peasants who were about to give birth to and raise the King of the universe. We look at the stable and the fact that Jesus is God and think of the humbleness of it. However, the peasants Joseph and Mary may have simply looked at staying in a stable as normal. They may not have seen anything strange about the Messiah being born in a stable. In fact, the stable may have been nicer than their own home. It’s sort of like my family not thinking anything of visiting somewhere and sleeping on the floor where my in-laws would have felt insulted if someone had asked them to sleep on the floor. Luke, the Gentile physician, saw the contradiction between the birth of the King and the humble location. Thus, he had to add the detail that Jesus’ crib was a feeding trough. Mary may have simply thought what she was doing was normal, if not usual, while Luke saw the incongruence and wrongness of the humble situation of Jesus’ birth.
Mary was probably only sixteen or seventeen when Jesus was born. Thus, she may have lived many years after His death. She may have only been about 46 or 47 when he died. She could have easily lived 20 or 25 years with John after the death of her son Jesus, maybe to A. D. 55 or 60. I don’t think that she spoke directly to Luke since he wrote his gospel in A. D. 70 which was 10 or 15 years later, but she may have. However, it is more likely that Luke spoke to James or Jude or John and got the story second-hand from them.
(Revelation of God) Jesus, the Word of God, consented to give up his omni-powers and become a helpless fetus inside the womb of a peasant girl and be born in a place kept for animals, a place considered too low for people. Thus, in His birth, Jesus descended below humans to animals. Jesus does not look to His own comfort or dignity or pride of place. This shows us that the God of the universe is the most humble being of all. God does not consider His own comfort or dignity or pride of place. Like David dancing in joy and showing his bare bottom, God does not consider modesty or decorum when it comes to loving us. He simply loves us and does whatever is needed, no matter how painful or humiliating to Himself, for us to be rescued from this horrible situation that we chose and keep on choosing.
(Application / Revelation of God) My application for myself is God’s path is not going to be the path that I expect. He performs His acts in ways that are strange to human expectations. Jesus was the Messiah, the King of the Jews, yet he started, lived, and finished his life in ways that no one would expect of a king. He was born to a family of peasants, not priests or royalty. Yes, they were of royal descent, but they, themselves, were poverty-stricken laborers. After His birth was announced gloriously, He lived in hiding outside of His country in His early years. Then, He grew up in an obscure low-class town far from the capital of His kingdom. He only spent about 3 1/2 years actually interacting with his subjects (except for the few in Nazareth). He died on a cross with only a crown of thorns.
(Revelation of God) God’s idea of how a king should live and die is strange to the world. We picture a baby born to a royal family in a palace who grows up taking king lessons and then fights victoriously in a war. If and when he dies, it is either gloriously in battle or in his kingly bed of old age or if through treachery, then of poison or a knife in the back. However, Jesus lived His life of Kingship just as He had planned, except that He planned that everyone would accept His gift of life. He planned for the rejection of the Jews, but He also planned for the later acceptance of the Jewish leaders.
(Application / Prayer) I need to be humble and ready to follow God any direction that He leads me. I don’t know what God wants me to do specifically, but I will continue to follow the goals He has laid out in the Bible as best that I can. Help me to be ready for Your plans. Help me to trust You and follow Your lead. I’m not good at trusting, and I hate being hurt, so I avoid it as much as possible. In the process, I am afraid that I might reject the path that You want me to go on. Help me to see the rightness of Your paths. Help me to continue in the way You are leading and not avoid or turn back from the right direction.