History’s greatest story began with Christ
You could not write an unlikelier story if you tried, and yet it is all true.
He came from nowhere, seemingly.
A silver spoon? No, not this child. He was born into poverty.
To make matters even worse, the circumstances surrounding his conception caused most people in his day to write him and his family off from the get-go.
And then there was the actual birth itself. Many infants have no doubt been laid in secondhand cribs and stained playpens, hand-medowns from others. But this child was not afforded even that. He was laid in a manger, a feeding trough that had for years been saturated with the saliva of filthy animals.
He did not wear a cute onesie or a baby blue pajama set given to him by friends. He was wrapped in swaddling clothes, old strips of rags.
Many generations back his family had actually been royalty. But there was no crown or scepter waiting for this child as he grew, merely a life of anonymity. He spent his days sawing and nailing and sanding in a carpenter shop, a long way away from the capital city of Jerusalem.
Nazareth, that was his hometown. An immoral, violent outpost, a center of disrepute so bad that a man who would later follow him innocently asked, “Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?”
At about 30 years old, he laid aside the tools of a carpenter and, with no formal training, went into the ministry. The country was overflowing with professional ministers, men who had studied their entire lives in preparation for the job. What chance did he think he had to be successful, when so many who were “so much more qualified” were already at the task?
But he was successful, beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. In short order, multitudes were flocking to him in spite of the fact that he often told them the last things anyone wanted to hear. The prosperity gospel? No, that didn’t come from Jesus. He told people to deny themselves and take up their cross daily. A gospel of acceptance and tolerance? No, that wasn’t his either.
He commanded people to repent of their sins and then to go and sin no more. He proclaimed to be the only way of salvation, thereby excluding every other perhaps well-meaning religion. Who in the world could build a following like that?
But he did. The miracles certainly helped; for multitudes and multitudes testified to blinded eyes being given sight, lepers being healed, demons being cast out and even the dead being raised. Jesus quickly became the most popular man in the nation. But that popularity came with a price.
The leaders of his nation at that day loathed him. In a jealous rage, they convinced the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, to have him put to death in the most ignominious way: crucifixion. It was a shameful, horrible death, one that put such a stain on the person that their reputation would never recover.
His body was laid in the tomb, a tomb that had to be borrowed from someone else since he in his poverty did not even have a grave spot reserved for himself. It was good, though, that the tomb was borrowed, since he would not need it long.
Three days after his death, the babe of Bethlehem, the whole point of Christmas, the Lamb of God, rose from the dead. And what has happened in the two millennia since it all began has been testimony to the truth of his improbable story. A babe born in poverty became a simple carpenter became an untrained preacher and was killed for his preaching.
He never possessed wealth, never commanded an army, was despised and rejected, and yet has become the most famous individual who has ever lived.
Our calendar is dated based on his life. He is known by his first name, Jesus, around the globe.
He never conquered a single land, and yet he, not Alexander the Great or Napoleon or any other selfstyled strongman, is literally worshiped by billions. Belief in his name has dried out the drunkard, cleaned up the addict, made the cannibal change his diet and created order out of madness.
Every day, the hungry are still fed in his name, the naked clothed, the homeless ministered to, the down-andout given hope and the lost saved. Men will come, and men will go; their names will be blown away as if written in the shifting sands of time.
But the child that began life in a manger, the virgin-born Son of God, will still be standing tall when all those who assail him have been forgotten.
Merry Christmas indeed! Bo Wagner is pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church of Mooresboro, N.C., a widely traveled evangelist and the author of several books available on Amazon and at www. wordofhismouth.com. Email him at 2knowhim@cbc-web.org.