Dec 7 - Luke 2:4

And Joseph also went up from Galilee,

from the city of Nazareth,

to Judea, to the city of David,

which is called Bethlehem,

because he was of the house

and lineage of David

Luke 2:4

As we said on the first day of these Christmas devotions, Luke was the evangelist – and historian – to the Greeks.

Luke didn’t heavy-handedly dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s in terms of prophecy – at least like Matthew did – nevertheless, he definitely wasn’t ignorant of the them either! In this verse alone, at least three powerful prophecies are fulfilled (without Luke even bothering to draw much attention to it).

•      Saying that Jesus was of “the lineage of David” fulfilled countless prophecies and centuries of expectation. (See, for example, God’s promises to David himself in 2 Samuel 7:16 – “Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.”) Matthew, the most Jewish of the Gospels, highlights this Davidic connection prominently through, for example, the frequent use of “son of David” as a repeated title for Jesus.
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•      Saying that Jesus was born in Bethlehem fulfilled prophecies too, this time from Micah 5:2. In Matthew 2, when the wisemen and then Herod were pondering, "2 Where is he who has been born king of the Jews ?” The chief priests and scribes responded, "5 In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it is written by the prophet: 6 'And you, O Bethlehem … from you shall come a ruler who will govern my people Israel.'"
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•      Saying that Jesus was from Nazareth also fulfilled a prophecy according to Matthew 2. “23 [Jesus’ family] went and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He shall be called a Nazarene.’”

In a world that too often doubts the validity of scripture and the reality of God, the simplicity and subtlety of Luke’s mentioning of David, Bethlehem, and Nazareth actually lends validity to the historic nature of Jesus’ birth. If Luke were inventing the divinity of Jesus, he would have made up details to mirror prophecy. But you can’t make up the circumstances of someone’s birth and death – especially when witnesses are still alive to testify to the truth. Furthermore, that Luke simply and almost casually mentions these places – without referencing prophecy – assures us of the likeliness that it simply happened this way.

In Christ’s Love,

a guy who’s studied about Jesus

fulfilling about 400 prophecies

that were each at least 400-years-old