Where was Jesus born?

Bethlehem in Judah was a favoured town. It was honoured by being known as David's city. It was marked out for specific honour in the prophecy of Micah 5:2. The Ruler of Israel (not David or any other merely human king), the Eternal God become flesh (come of David's seed), was to be born there. Great cities are mentioned in the Bible: Ur of the Chaldees, Nineveh, Babylon, Jerusalem, Rome, and many others, but they were all passed by. The little town of Bethlehem was chosen for the coming into the world of God's beloved Son.

Jesus was born in Bethlehem. His parents were in the habit of living in Galilee. Their usual home, Nazareth, was at one end of the land. Bethlehem was almost at the other. How, then, could He be born there?

According to prophecy the Saviour had to be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2). But Mary lived in Nazareth. God in His own marvellous way ordered everything. He directed Caesar Augustus to issue the decree of taxation at just such a time and in just such a way, and He so ordered the journey of Joseph and his promised wife Mary, that she had to be in Bethlehem when the days were completed for her to give birth. The great Roman Emperor knew nothing of what God was accomplishing by his decree.

This Scripture plainly declared that Christ should be born in Bethlehem. Bethlehem means "The House of Bread." And has it not been a very House of Bread for hungry sinners for eighteen long centuries? Thank God, it has. From that spot came out the living bread, the bread of God. That Scripture was so well known that when Jesus was born, and the wise men came from the East to look for Him, the scribes could quote the passage. They told Herod that Bethlehem was to be the birthplace of Messiah.

It is very instructive for us that Jesus was laid in the manger, not in the inn. There was no room for them in the inn. The Lord of glory, when born into this world, was laid in the manger. What a picture of the state of the world! There was no room for Him who was God in the world! The children of men, according to their means, found their place in the inn as it suited them. But the parents of the Lord were so poor that they were thoroughly despised at the inn, and the only place where they could find shelter for the Babe was a manger.

Go where the great world registers every individual. Go to the little world of an inn, where each person is measured by the servant's knowing eye and given a place from the attic to the first floor. But there is no room for Jesus! And the manger led, in due time, to the lowest place — to the cross.

It is touchingly appropriate that our Lord should be born at Bethlehem, the city of David in his lowliness. He was not born at Jerusalem, the city of the great king, where David spent his royal life.