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Exploring the Mysteries of the First Christmas
“For we saw His star when it rose and have come to worship Him.” Matthew 2:2
Some events in the Bible do not seem to make sense. Take the Christmas story, for example. It contains three peculiar occurrences: an unprecedented census, the sudden appearance of angels to a group of shepherds, and a bright star leading foreign Magi hundreds of miles to Bethlehem. How could these things have happened?
The Bible contains many mysteries, and we will never know the answers to some of them. But God has not hidden the lessons of the Christmas story. It is far more than a simple tale of the Messiah’s birth.
Planting an Idea
The Christmas story and its first curious event occurs in Luke 2:1. During Mary’s pregnancy, the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus decreed a census of all the men in Israel.
Up to this time, Jews were not allowed to serve in the Roman army, but Caesar decided to change this rule. He established a series of surveys for governors to take every fourteen years, each being a headcount for military conscription (which only added to the Jews’ hate for the Romans). Never before had a ruler wanted to count every able-bodied man in his kingdom.
To complete the census, Caesar required every Jewish man from every tribe to return to his…
