Well, I think we all like a good underdog story, where the small one triumphs over the big one, and one of the greatest underdog stories of the Christmas story is the little town of Bethlehem. Hello, church. I am Pastor Ryan, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, and just a couple of weeks ago I preached some thoughts from the Christmas carol “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and put them together in a booklet that we called Unlikely. Like in an underdog story, it is very unlikely that the weaker one is going to win, whatever that may be, whether it is a sports movie or some kind of destination movie, that kind of thing. It always seems so unlikely, but not impossible, and that is the beauty of the Christmas story: all throughout the Scriptures we see some unlikely things happening in the hands of the God who can make all things possible. So in the Christmas story, and lifted from phrases of “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” I found five unlikely things that God has done, and it seems like the writer of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” did as well.
The Story of the Carol
It was a giant of a man, a man who was 6 foot 8 and 300 pounds. I believe his name was Phillips Brooks, and he was a priest in the Episcopal Church and had pastored in the Boston and Philadelphia area. While in the Holy Land, he was in Bethlehem for the Christmas Eve service. It was a five-hour service there, and it seems like those events stuck with him, and when he came home, a couple of years later, he wrote a poem for his children’s program. He wanted his church organist to come up with a tune and teach it to the children’s choir for the Christmas Eve service, so he gave it to him the week before. I find that kind of fascinating, that they expected the kids to just learn this song and sing it in the Christmas Eve service. It came down to one day before, and still there was no tune. His church organist, a real estate agent by the name of Redner, still did not have a tune until he was woken up in the middle of the night. He felt like the Lord gave him the tune to this song that we sing, “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” The children’s choir learned it, they sang it that night for the Christmas Eve service, and then it was largely forgotten. Neither of them really expected the song to live past that day, and yet it was picked up by a few local newspapers or publishing outlets, and then six years later it was in a hymnal. It was not until a couple of decades later that it became more and more popular, and after it became an official Christmas carol of their denomination, the popularity continued to spread, and we still enjoy that special song about this little, insignificant town of Bethlehem.
An Unlikely Place
Now, the Bible says in Micah 5:2, “But thou, Beth-lehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.” It is interesting that Bethlehem, this little, insignificant town, was the one God used to bring about the Saviour, where Messiah was born. And you think, “Well, I am from nowhere.” I guess that is the first unlikely point in this book: it is an unlikely place. You might be from an unlikely place and think that it is no big deal. You think your life is not amounting to much because you come from somewhere without education, or you look at everybody else and the ethnicity that everyone else is, and maybe you do not feel like you fit in, and you think, “Well, I am coming from nowhere.” But you know what God did with Jesus? He took Him from Bethlehem, which according to the prophecy was just little among the thousands, and yet God chooses to use what man despises. What man shoves aside seems to be the very people and the very things that God uses. So that is the first unlikely truth from the Christmas carol “O Little Town of Bethlehem”: an unlikely place.
An Unlikely Timing
Now, the second unlikely truth from the Christmas story is an unlikely timing. I mean, if it is the timing in Mary’s life, well, she did not expect Messiah to be born exactly when this census is taken, when this taxation is taken, and they have to leave Nazareth and travel to Bethlehem. That seems like terrible timing: “God, why would You do this to me right now?” And within the Jewish world, it was not the likeliest of timing for the Messiah to come. They were under heavy Roman occupation. They were under the strong thumb of the Romans. The Romans allowed them freedom within the Jewish temple, but at any time they could have come in and stormed the temple. They allowed the Jews to have their time, but it was not like there was this rising political unrest and this growing number of Jews who were just at the tipping point of taking over the government. It was not the greatest political scene for them either. It seems like the most unlikely timing in terms of politics and the society they were living in. If they were expecting a political ruler, this probably would not have been the time. And yet, again, God does things backward from what we expect. Actually, His timing was perfect, if you think about the timing of the birth of Jesus Christ compared to the events of world governments and all of that. The Babylonians and the Assyrians would have been the first of the world empires, and then, well, the Medo-Persians were in there, and they just assimilated a lot of different cultures, but it was Alexander the Great who spread the Grecian Empire all over the known world at the time, and through that, the Greek language spread across all of the known world at the time, and the culture of Greece. There was a unification that happened, a uniting of many of these disparate empires. Now, when the Roman Empire came to be, they were the longest-lasting, because they were so good at the infrastructure of connecting all of these disparate countries across the known world at the time. So it was not exactly the same as the Greek culture, but the Greek language laid the foundation for the connection between these cultures, and then the roads the Romans built were a way to connect the actual movement of the people throughout these cultures. Now, in God’s eyes, I can see that not only was it not unlikely, it seems to be the best time for the world to be turned upside down by the gospel, because the gospel was not a political force of the Jews overtaking the world again. That was not His intention at all. His intention was that the gospel message be proclaimed through all the world, to the ends of the earth. So what looked to be unlikely timing, say for Mary, or for the Jews who were under Roman control at the time, was actually the perfect timing for the spread of the gospel. The persecution that happened in Jerusalem spread them throughout all the known world at the time. They took the message of the gospel everywhere, and within a generation they had turned the world upside down. So it is like God takes the unlikely and says, “Well, I use the weak things. I use the unexpected things in My favor all the time.” So the first unlikely truth was the place, “O little town of Bethlehem.” The second unlikely truth was the timing, “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”
Unlikely People
The third unlikely truth from the Christmas story is the people God used. “For Christ is born of Mary” is how the song sings it, and that was one of the most unlikely people who could ever have been used. Now, we have sort of romanticized Mary, and some people take that to the extreme and have almost idolized her. They have lifted her to the same status as God, and the Scriptures never do that. The Scriptures just view Mary as directing people to the words of Jesus Christ. The Scriptures never venerate Mary as though she is some kind of Queen of Heaven. That was a term of idolatry in the Old Testament. Mary was a sinner like the rest of us. She was in need of the Saviour, and she even said as much, that she needed a Saviour. So Mary is not some kind of teenage Queen of Heaven. She was just a young girl God used, who had a heart for God, and she kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. She had a special favor of God upon her, but to lift her to some kind of co-redemptrix is nothing the Scriptures have done, to make her somehow have to suffer for our sins to make up for the suffering of Jesus Christ. Well, that is not in the Scripture. Jesus’ sacrifice was enough to save us completely from our sins. His blood was sufficient to cover our sins. There was no extra sacrifice that needed to be made, and Mary could not handle that anyway. If we venerate Mary to the level of hearing our prayers, or somehow being the go-between, the intercessor, that is Mary taking the place of Jesus Christ, and the Scriptures never do that. The Scriptures say Jesus is our great High Priest. We need no one between us and the Father. It is not Mary who hears our prayers and makes them palatable to God; it is Jesus who does that. If Mary could hear our prayers, she would need to be omniscient and omnipotent, and yet she does not have the qualities of God. The Scriptures do not define her as some kind of fourth person of the Trinity. She is outside of the Godhead, and so we cannot ascribe to her these attributes that belong only to God, such as omnipresence and omniscience. She is not everywhere to hear everybody’s prayers. She is not all-knowing, to be able to understand and comprehend and hear our prayers. No, she was a human, a wonderful, highly favoured human, but a human nonetheless, in need of the Saviour, the same as us. So it is an unlikely person God used: Christ was born of Mary, this poor, lowly girl, and yet God used her in such a miraculous way to be the virgin who would conceive and bear Jesus Christ, who would be the Saviour of the world. Now, it is not just Mary who was an unlikely person for God to use. It was Tamar and Bathsheba and Ruth and Rahab, these ladies who were used in the lineage of Jesus Christ and are mentioned in the genealogies of Jesus Christ. It was Zacharias and Elisabeth, who would have been so unlikely to be used in this Christmas story, and yet they became the miraculous parents of John the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus Christ. It was the shepherds God used; they were the least likely in their society to be used. It was the wise men, these Gentiles, who were religious men, and yet the religious leaders who were right down the street from Jesus were the Pharisees, who rejected Jesus as their Messiah. It took the unlikely Gentiles from the outside to see the signs and to pursue the Lord as their Saviour. So there are so many unlikely people that God uses in the Christmas story, and I look at that and go, well, I am thankful that God uses unlikely people. We look at some people who have some extreme gifts and think, “Of course God is going to use them.” And yet I am not convinced heaven is going to be filled with these big, flashy Christians who did all these great things for God. I think it will just be some unlikely people, where you look and say, “I kind of overlooked you. You were not the most out-front Christian I saw.” But God may not be looking for the ones who are out front. It may be the hidden man of the heart that God is looking at, and that is going to be some unlikely people God uses. So I encourage you, if you feel like, “I am not sure if God is using me,” well, God uses unlikely people all the time.
An Unlikely Plan
Well, it was an unlikely place, at an unlikely time, with unlikely people, and it is also, number four, an unlikely plan. It seems so strange to us that God would use the plan to send His Son into the world with little fanfare, send Him to a poor couple, and nobody knows about it except some shepherds, and then He lives, and He is rejected by His own, and ultimately they end up crucifying Him and putting Him into a grave. Now, if you were writing the Christmas story, if you were writing a gospel story, you certainly would not have chosen that plan. Some say, “Well, Christianity is just a plagiarism. The virgin birth is just a plagiarism of mythology,” and nothing could be further from the truth. There is nothing at all like this that humans have ever come up with. It is so unlikely that man invented this story. I mean, the very nature of the Christmas story itself, and the virgin birth of Christ, shows me that the Scriptures are authentic, because of how unlikely they are. This unlikely plan was that Jesus would come as a baby, as a man, to show that He was 100% human, to go through the process of humanity to relate to us, and yet still be divinity, God in the flesh, and He would live a perfect life, and He would die on the cross for our sins, and He would be buried and raised from the dead. That plan is the gospel.
An Unlikely Result
That is so unlikely that we get to the fifth point, which is an unlikely result. The Christmas carol “O Little Town of Bethlehem” sings this: “Cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today.” That is the most unlikely result of any of this, that God would want to come down to this life to give us new life, to cast out our sin. We were in Micah earlier, but Micah chapter 7, verse 19, says, “He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.” That is the beauty of the Christmas story: Jesus came to die for our sin and to forgive us of our sin. This verse is referring to the ultimate cleansing and the ultimate removal of sin, even the presence of sin, but when you are saved, when you ask Jesus for forgiveness, then you are cleansed. Those charges against you are dropped. They are taken from you and dropped into the depths of the sea. Now, the Mariana Trench, that is a pretty deep part of the sea, and God says, “I have dropped the charges against you into the depths of the sea.” I love that idea. I love that whole concept, and the final phrase of that song: “our Lord Emmanuel,” God with us. What an unlikely result, that God would be with us, that God came to be with us in the flesh. But when we are forgiven of our sin, God is in us. God is with us all the time. What a great truth, and an unlikely result of an unlikely plan, that God uses unlikely people at an unlikely time in unlikely ways. And you might look at yourself and go, “Boy, if God can do that with them, well, then I hope He can do that with me too.” Would you commit your life to just give yourself to the Lord, however you can be used, in whatever small way you can be used? I hope this is an encouragement to you. This booklet is available for free in our book rack at our church, and I encourage our church members to grab one. If you are local in the area and would like to join us for a church service, I would encourage you to drop by Calvary Baptist Church in Temecula, California. We are looking forward to putting out more of these encouraging resources, and we will look at “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” next. God bless you; we will see you in the next video.
