Family Sermons

There was nothing great about Bethlehem. It was “little among the thousands of Judah” (Mic. v. 2); perhaps but a shepherdvillage or small market-town; yet there the great purpose of God became a, fact; “The Word was made flesh.”

It is in facts that God’s purposes come to us, that we may-take hold of them as real things. It is into facts that God translates his truth, that it may be visible, audible, tangible. It is in facts (as in so many seeds) that God embodies his good news, that a little child may grasp them in his hand. So was it with the miracle of our text. God took his eternal purpose and dropped it over Bethlehem in the form of a fact, a little fragment of human history. Over earth, the first promise had been hovering, for four thousand years, till at last it rested over Bethlehem, as if it said, “This is my rest; here will I dwell.”

The city is poor rather than rich. It is not without its attractions; but these are of the more homely kind. Its scenes are not stately; its hills are not lofty; its plains are not wide; its slopes are rocky; it is not like the city of the Great King, beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth. Yet there “the Word was made flesh.”

It has no palace nor temple; only an inn for the travellers passing between Hebron and Jerusalem; its dwellers are not priests nor princes; it is not a sacred city, and is but little noted in history. Yet there, not at Jerusalem, “the Word was made flesh.”

But its lowliness makes it more suitable as the birthplace of Him who, though he was rich, for our sakes became poor. And all about it seems to suit him too. It is “the house of bread,” fit dwelling for him who is “the bread of God.” Its old name was Ephratah, “the fruitful,” as if pointing to the fruitful one. At its gate is the well of JJavid; and not far off are the pools of Solomon, which pour their water into Jerusalem, telling us of the living water, and the river whose streams make glad the city of our God. The gardens of Solomon are also hard by, speaking to us not only of “the garden of the Lord,” and the second Adam, and the tree of life, but giving us the earthly scenes (which are the patterns of the heavenly) which the “Song of songs” describes. (Song of Sol. ii. 12, 13.)

In walking through its streets, or wandering over its heights, one seems to read text after tqxt, written, not with an iron, but a golden pen, upon its hills and rocks. “Unto us a Child is born,” seems inscribed on one; “Unto us a Son is given,” on another; “Unto you is born a Saviour,” on a third; “Glory to God in the highest,” on a fourth; the name of Jesus upon all. The city is not now what it was, yet there it sits upon the northern face of its old height; the one town in Palestine still possessed exclusively by those who call themselves by the name of Christ.

Bethlehem is not named in our text; but you cannot read the verse without being transported to that city. “In the beginning was the Word,” carries you up into heaven, and back into past infinity. “The Word was made flesh,” brings you down to earth and the finite things of time; to the manger, and the stable, and “the young Child.” The shepherds are gone; the wise men have departed to their own country; the glory has passed up again into heaven; the angels have left; the song of the plain has ceased; the star has disappeared, — the star of which Balaam spoke, as yet to sparkle somewhere in these eastern heavens, and which Micah may be said to have fixed and hung over the city, when he named the name of Bethlehem as the birthplace of the coming King, — but the city itself is still there, rooted to its old spot; not, like Rachel’s tomb hard by, a memorial of death and sorrow, but a remembrancer of joy and peace, a witness of the everlasting life which came down from heaven.

At Bethlehem our world’s history begins. All before and after the birth of the young child takes its colour from that event. As the tree, rising from a small root or seed, spreads its branches, and with them its leaves, its blossoms, its fruit, its shade, north, south, east, and west; so has this obscure birth influenced all history, sacred and secular, before and behind. That history is an infinite coil of events, interwoven in endless intricacies, apparently with a thousand broken ends; now upward, now downward, now backward, now forward; but the ravelled coil is one, and its centre is Bethlehem. The young Child there is the interpreter of all its mysteries. As He is “the beginning of the creation of God,” the “first-begotten of the dead,” so is he the beginning and ending, the centre and circumference of human history. “Christ is all and in all;” and as such, from the manger to the throne, he is the incarnation of Jehovah’s purposes, the interpretation of the divine actings, and the revelation of the heavenly mysteries.

Few statements contain in them such a world of truth as this of our text. Let us see (I.) what it is, (II.) what it teaches.

I. What it is. — The “Word” is the eternal name for the young Child of Bethlehem. He is so called because he istherevealer of the Father, the exponent of Godhead. He is so now: he was so in the clays of his flesh; he has been so from eternity. The names Christ, Immanuel, Jesus, are his earthly ones; his names in time, connected with his incarnate condition; but the names “Word” and “Son” are expressive of his eternal standing, his eternal relationship to the Father. What he was in time and on earth, that same he has been in heaven and from eternity. The glory which he had “before the world was” (John xvii. 5), and of which he “emptied himself” (Phil. ii. 7, see Greek), wTas the glory of the eternal Word, the everlasting Son. As the eternal revealer of Godhead, the “brightness of Jehovah’s glory, and the express image of his person,” his name ever was The Word; as the declarer of the mind of God to man, his name is no less The Word, with this addition, “the Word made flesh.”

“In the beginning was the Word,” is the divine, or heavenly, or upper portion of the mystery; “the Word was made flesh,” is the human, the earthly, the lower. It is this latter that so specially concerns us; for without it the former was nothing to us. God manifest in flesh is the “great mystery of godliness,” which links together the creature and the Creator; which brings down to the sinner’s side the waters of the eternal well. It is this that makes the inaccessible and unapproachable Godhead accessible and approachable; the unseen becoming the seen, — nay, the most seen of all; the far-off becoming the near, — nay, the nearest of all; the incomprehensible becoming comprehensible, — nay, the most comprehensible of all, a little child, — a child of poverty and weakness, suckled at a woman’s breast, and resting upon a woman’s knee.

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