The Gift of Place 🌟 Message 2

🌟 The Gift of Place 🌟 Message 2

The Christmas story is about real people: Mary and Joseph, Zachariah and Elizabeth.  But it’s also about real places: Bethlehem, Judea, a stable and a manger.  All those places and spaces and locations in the Christmas story, they all matter.  And they all say something about Jesus.  

Scriptures | Matthew 2; Special Focus on Matthew 2:4-6; Matthew 2:23

Matthew 2:4-6  

4 When he (Herod) had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. 5 “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:

6 “‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
    are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
    who will shepherd my people Israel’”

Matthew 2:23

…he (Joseph along with Mary and Jesus) went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene.

Question 1 | You don’t have to have heard the sermon from Sunday, but if you were in church, watched online, what stuck with you?

Question 2 | Where we are from says something about who we are.  Jesus was from two places: Born in Bethlehem, raised in Nazareth.  These are very different places.  Bethlehem special, Nazareth was not.  Bethlehem was the city of Kings, and Nazareth was a village of nobodies.  But as we see from the scriptures above, both locations were ordained by God, and both locations tell us something about who Jesus is. 

❓ What does Bethlehem tell us about who Jesus is? 

❓ And what does Nazareth tell us about who Jesus is?

Question 3 | While Nazareth and Bethlehem were very different places, they had at least one thing in common: Rejection.  Both places would reject Jesus, but they would reject him in different ways.  In Bethlehem, the birth of Jesus was basically ignored.  In Nazareth, the townspeople would eventually try to kill Jesus (see Luke 4).  Jeremy’s terms for this are “Hot Rejection” (hostility, like Nazareth) and “Cold Rejection” (indifference, like Bethlehem). 

❓ Have you ever experienced “hot rejection” or “cold rejection” specifically because of your belief in Jesus? 

❓ If so, what was that like?

Question 3 | While Jesus is from two places, Nazareth gets the greater emphasis in scripture.  The Son of God is called “Jesus of Nazareth” 17 times, but is called “Jesus of Bethlehem” 0 times.  The lesser place (Nazareth) has the greater emphasis. 

This shows us again that Jesus loves the unlovely, the ordinary, and the unspectacular.  That even though he is the King of Glory, he chooses un-glorious people and un-glorious places.  This is part of Jesus’ character, and it can be part of our character as well. 

❓As a follower of Jesus of Nazareth, what helps you to be like him? 

❓What helps you to stay humble, reachable, teachable, willing to serve, willing to associate with the lowly?