The Christmas Story You’ve Never Been Told

0:00:00 – (Steve Gray): Was Jesus really born in a wooden stable? A wooden manger with three lowly shepherds and three wise men? We’re doing the Christmas Myth Busters next on the More Faith, More Life podcast.

0:00:11 – (Steve Gray): You were made for more than the status quo. I’m Pastor Steve Gray, and this is the More Faith, More Life podcast. This podcast is for Christians with an ambitious heart who want to be more for their family, do more with their career, and see more of God’s promises in their life. I’ve spent many years as a worship artist, minister, nonprofit leader, bold truth speaker, and most importantly, father and spouse.

0:00:36 – (Steve Gray): When I was in my early 40s, I was craving more. More from God and more from life. I’d done everything I was supposed to do. My life was good, but it wasn’t good enough. So I spent the following years diving into the word of God and searching for the biblical principles that. That would bring me closer to God and help my purpose and life flourish. That’s what I want to share with you. In every episode, you’ll get practical tools based on real life experiences that you can put into action to redefine your faith and ultimately your life.

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0:01:23 – (Steve Gray): Oh, again, everybody, welcome to another More Faith, More Life podcast. Your voice of revival. I’ve got Zion with me today again. Yep. And normally we talk about revival. We talk about having church things and getting more faith so that they can live more life, and we stick with that. But because of when it is and where we are the holiday time and Christmas is right here upon us, I thought we’d talk Christmas.

0:01:56 – (Steve Gray): But for me, even, you know, when I do More Faith, More Life, I try to clarify more our roots, not necessarily traditional Christianity that is off sometimes, but more in context to what did they believe in the first century? What did they mean? And when Jesus said something to a Jewish audience, what did the Jewish audience think? Sure. Not what do I think in my middle America, thousand years later. Yeah. Yeah.

0:02:26 – (Steve Gray): So anyway, so I want to start off with that. So I called it Christmas Myth.

0:02:31 – (Zion Vierra): Yeah, it seems fun.

0:02:32 – (Steve Gray): I’m going to go back. I’m going to go to the one—the last one I have because one of the first things we need to realize, and it doesn’t make any difference except, well, it sometimes does, is Jesus was not born in winter. Now, that’s okay, but there’s a lot of Christmas songs that have him born in winter, but it doesn’t fit because they had him traveling too. You know, they had to go pay tax, and they had to do the census and all that stuff.

0:02:59 – (Steve Gray): Well, they set it up to travel when it was warmer. They didn’t go in the blizzard of winter.

0:03:03 – (Zion Vierra): Yeah.

0:03:04 – (Steve Gray): Like here we’re right in December. We’ve already had snow here, and there’s snow in other parts of the country, I think, even now. I guess so. So. Okay. But does that matter? Not really. But what. What has happened in. While I’m doing myth busters today, what has happened is we know that Jesus is God born in a manger, and Emmanuel—God is with us is the theme of it. But the writers, particularly Matthew, I think, and well, now Luke 2. The writers are telling the story of the birth of Jesus, are saying God’s here, but they’re trying to humanize them, not dehumanize them. They’re not trying to make the deity like Mary gave birth and she wears a halo.

0:03:52 – (Steve Gray): You know, there’s a special. These are special characters that we need to understand. But the writers were not trying to say, these are all divine people, and Jesus is born among divine people, special and everything like that. And God is orchestrating this on purpose like that. It’s what they wanted to do was say, God is with us. He has become human.

0:04:18 – (Zion Vierra): Yeah, right.

0:04:19 – (Steve Gray): That’s the joy of it. He became human. And so that’s the significance of it. Well, tradition then dehumanizes it and makes it something it’s not. Yeah. So I’m going to break some myths today. I hope it doesn’t. I don’t know. It might ruin it. So when they do their Christmas program, unless they’ve already done it, some of the songs might not fit. Yeah, even better. Well, even Silent Night. Holy Night, a great song, but nobody knows it was at night.

0:04:52 – (Steve Gray): And nobody knows it was silent. Yeah. I mean, they even have the cattle being silent. Yeah. Right. Nothing. Yeah. Just no baby. He wakes. Oh, really? They never woke him up. I don’t know what. He must have slept a lot because nobody would wake him up. Yeah. He was such a great sleeper that he never cried. No crying he makes. Jesus never cried. Okay, well, see, it’s dehumanizing him when. What we want to know is he’s very human.

0:05:19 – (Steve Gray): God. He’s God. Fully human that came to represent us. So he. He should cry. He was tempted in all ways as we are. So we really want to cry in Jesus because we want to. When we see our kid crying, we want to say Jesus cried too. But he’s here to help us raise his kids. Yeah, right. You know, he knows what it’s like. The Bible says he knows what it’s like to be human. Well, and Mary did do. And Joseph had to do. They had. So we’re going to go through that. Okay. Yeah.

0:05:47 – (Steve Gray): And by the way, another myth buster that’s going to mess up a lot of theology is Jesus actually grew up middle class.

0:05:56 – (Zion Vierra): Yeah.

0:05:56 – (Steve Gray): And they really make him poor. And he’s poor the whole time. You know, not only can’t he cry, he has no toys, you know, and no skills. And he’s. And Joseph was a carpenter, but he never made any money. So that’s a. That’s one myth. Both. It wasn’t in winter, but also he was middle class. He wouldn’t be upper class that. But he wasn’t lower class either growing up. And his brothers and sisters are half-brothers, as we just say.

0:06:22 – (Steve Gray): Okay, so the big myth buster we’re going to start with now though, that these, those are small ones. The big ones is we all know that the story that there is no room in the inn. Okay. And so we make that, we modernize it. And the inn is a hotel, right? It’s Hotel Motel 6. They left. Yeah, they left the light on and that. And so we make it a hotel. But they were going to a hotel, but it’s full, so they have to go into the stable.

0:06:53 – (Steve Gray): And he was born in the lowly manger in a stable. All right. So there’s a lot of things wrong with that. First of all, if you go to the real story and get the real translation, there’s no room at the end. But it’s not a hotel inn. It’s a family. How do you say it? A family inn where families came and met extended families because a lot of people were coming to town. So the extended family who lived.

0:07:23 – (Steve Gray): Lived in another town would come and then they would all gather in not the hotel, but in their relatives houses or even sometimes non relatives houses if there was room. Okay, okay. But you know, they got there late. We mentioned that last week. They had to go a little slower because she’s pregnant. Yeah. Just clopping along here. And by the time they get there, it’s all full. Right. No room at the end.

0:07:49 – (Steve Gray): Okay. So it was not really a hotel. It was get. There was no room in the guest rooms of these houses. Okay. They didn’t. They didn’t go to, like I said, the. Whatever hotel. The Hyatt.

0:08:04 – (Zion Vierra): Yeah.

0:08:06 – (Steve Gray): Which they could have afforded because they were middle class.

0:08:08 – (Zion Vierra): Yeah.

0:08:08 – (Steve Gray): No, they didn’t go to the Hyatt. And the Hyatt’s full. So you get. Now, I guess you’re going to have to stay in the barn. Okay. That’s what we think. And so what really happened is the guest rooms. There was no room. There were no guest rooms available in any of the homes of their relatives or maybe friends. It was just too packed. So the homes of those days in Bethlehem basically were. You had the main house, main home, main rooms, and then you had the guest rooms because you had to enter. You were by.

0:08:45 – (Steve Gray): Yeah, you. You were supposed to by law, really, Jewish law, not military law or polices, but by their law or their culture. You had to have a room for when guests came, or strangers, if they’re Jewish. You had to provide for strangers.

0:09:00 – (Zion Vierra): Sure.

0:09:00 – (Steve Gray): And. And so. So they would have had guest rooms. Maybe at least one. And there was. But it was full. The neighbors were full, the friends were full. Cousins were all fair. No room at the end was that. And so another thing that we then. So, so. So they had to go where they had to go to the lower level. So they had main level, they had the guest level, and then they had the lower level, and that’s where the animals stayed.

0:09:29 – (Steve Gray): Because people had animals then. Sure. You know.

0:09:31 – (Zion Vierra): Yeah.

0:09:31 – (Steve Gray): I mean, where are you going to put that donkey? Yeah. Or horse or whatever. I mean, they never mentioned that they had to park their own donkey somewhere, so they would have put him in the stable, which was below their house. Everybody had animals. You just didn’t leave them out on the street, because these are city folks with animals. You know, I was thinking about that all the, you know, 150 years ago or whatever, when people, they had to ride horses or they had. Yeah, they had the wagons down. Even in cities, you know, they had horse carriages with horses.

0:10:01 – (Steve Gray): And we never think about how much work, you know, Allie Allison, my granddaughter, she. She rode horses when she was young, and I would take her. That was something we did together. And before you could ride them, you had to do a bunch of stuff. And then after you rode, you had to clean their shoes off, you had to wipe them down, you had to do all that stuff. And we don’t think about how much work was spent keeping the horses in shape because that was their transportation.

0:10:27 – (Steve Gray): We just park our cars, you know.

0:10:28 – (Zion Vierra): Just throw it up.

0:10:29 – (Steve Gray): And so anyway, the rule of it is they had to take care of their animals. So in the lower level, they kept animals. Okay. So that’s where it was. The guest rooms were all full. So below, probably a relative’s house was where the animals were and they had to go there. Now that is prophetic, though, because there are prophecies, Old Testament, that he does. Jesus is born in a lowly place. And we’ll talk about the manger in a minute. But in a lowly manger. Okay.

0:11:02 – (Steve Gray): And so it’s prophetic that that happened, you know, when we’re going to talk about if we have time. The star. That’s prophetic too. They followed the star. That’s prophetic because it’s in the Bible that there’ll be a star will appear and that he’ll be born in a lowly place. And so it still fits. It’s just really to get it right, their houses, it wasn’t a stable made out of wood.

0:11:24 – (Zion Vierra): Right.

0:11:25 – (Steve Gray): Their stables. I mean, if you found a stable made out of wood, you’d be unusual because wood was so scarce.

0:11:31 – (Zion Vierra): So, yeah, it’s not culture.

0:11:32 – (Steve Gray): And so the richer people would get the wood and they would use it for themselves in a more high up way. Yeah, they wouldn’t use the wood that’s so scarce for their donkeys or their sheep. And so the houses were made out of stone and rock. And so each level, both the living area and the guest level and the lower level was not a stable, like we think it was kind of a stable, but it was made of stone.

0:11:58 – (Steve Gray): And get this. Then I don’t know if they’ll be ready for this one. But. So Jesus was born in a stable, but he was born in probably a stone house. Stable, lower level. All right. Which was still lowly. It was still humble. There were animals there. And so it fulfills prophecy, but it just not. It was like three, hundreds of years later where we got the wooden stable and everything like that. Sure. And then we. He was born in what? He was born in a manger.

0:12:28 – (Steve Gray): Okay, well, we’ve also got the manger. If you see all the nativity, they’re all made out of wood. Oh, yeah. But that’s not the. It was a feeding trough. And it was a stone. A stone. It was a feeding trough. Manger like hay, but it was a feeding trough which also would have been made out of stone and rocks, not wood.

0:12:48 – (Zion Vierra): Okay.

0:12:49 – (Steve Gray): So now picture Jesus being laid down in a stone feeding trough. Yeah, like that. Now, the most exciting part about it though is we. That they make sure that we know. Well, let’s, let’s. Let’s back up. Let’s go with the shepherds first, and then we’ll get why that’s important. But. So shepherds in their day was the worst job you could have. They were not, like, elevated like we do. Oh, the shepherds of the sheep. Because Jesus was a shepherd.

0:13:18 – (Steve Gray): But that also says he was lowly and humble. Because shepherds got the worst job. Girls were shepherds too. So they had the worst. Not only they had to take care of sheep, they were girls.

0:13:29 – (Zion Vierra): Yeah, right.

0:13:30 – (Steve Gray): But so that’s what we think of. But that’s not true. Because in order to fulfill scripture, they had to have a certain kind. So these were what we. These are not lowly shepherds, which they had. These are temple shepherds. This is huge and wonderful. It’s a myth buster, but it’s a great one. Okay, so instead of the lowly shepherds who then run to sea, and we know what was said, you’re going to find in a manger. What, him wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.

0:14:06 – (Steve Gray): We don’t have any idea. We. We kind of do now. Even your kids, when they were babies, we’d swaddle them, you know, not me.

0:14:15 – (Zion Vierra): Like a burrito.

0:14:16 – (Steve Gray): Yeah, but you and Brooke knew how to. And I’d see him swaddled and that, you know. So that’s what we think. Like, they just wrapped him up right. Okay. That’s not what’s happening here. This is so wonderful. So first of all, they appeared to the temple shepherds and they had a special job. Their job was to keep the unblemished, beautiful animals that were going to be given to. To God for sacrifice.

0:14:43 – (Steve Gray): Okay.

0:14:44 – (Steve Gray): In other words, they couldn’t have a bad eye, they couldn’t have a broken leg. Sheep did that. Sheep got hurt, she got cut. And if they got cut and they were blemished, they were out of the fold. Because this was a special group. Group of animals that were taken care of. Ah. What was their job? They would then swaddle the sheep, especially at night.

0:15:08 – (Zion Vierra): Interesting.

0:15:09 – (Steve Gray): Especially the babies, but even they would swaddle them. You know why? To protect them. So they didn’t get cut, they didn’t get harmed. You know, they would swaddle the sheep. The reason that’s important, because these are swaddled sheep set apart for God and sacrifice. Okay. The sheep that were swaddled were the special sheep meant to sacrifice, to be sacrificed for for the sins of the Jews at that time in the temple.

0:15:40 – (Zion Vierra): Right.

0:15:42 – (Steve Gray): So the angel says, what imagery or whatever. Yeah, yeah. He says, you guys go. Because you understand the term. You’re going to find this babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. And they go. When they’re swaddled, that means they’re set apart.

0:15:58 – (Zion Vierra): They’re marked for sacrifice for God.

0:16:00 – (Steve Gray): For sacrifice. And there’s the Messiah and he’s going to be sacrificed for the sins of the world. So when we see it. So that’s a great myth buster.

0:16:08 – (Zion Vierra): Yeah, that’s awesome.

0:16:09 – (Steve Gray): So we have a stone house and we’ve got stone trough. That’s okay. It’s not really it, you know, it’s not the Holiday Inn, but that’s okay. And then they go. And so they’re prophetically saying this is it because it’s a swaddled savior. And you guys know what that means? You know what that means. So that’s a beautiful, beautiful image. Yeah, yeah. Okay. That’s really cool. Yeah.

0:16:36 – (Zion Vierra): I never heard that.

0:16:37 – (Steve Gray): Yeah. And so another myth buster. That’s okay because we see the nativity scenes we all have where we got the shepherds are on one side. Yeah, Lowly shepherds. And these would be high up. These would be very special shepherds. But anyway. And then we have the wise men or the Magi or the three kings over here. And they’re bowed down and they’re big fancy camels are there. But that’s not it at all. That’s the myth.

0:17:00 – (Steve Gray): Okay. So by the time the Magi or the kings, whatever you want to call them, we three kings got there and they would. There. We don’t know that there were three kings. It never says there were three kings. Kings. It said there were three gifts. Certain gold. Maybe ten kings gave gold. I don’t know, maybe five kings gave myrrh. We don’t know. But that doesn’t matter. But they say three because there were three gifts. There must have been three kings.

0:17:24 – (Steve Gray): It’s a little bit of myth busting there, but we always have them showing up on the same night. But they didn’t. It was one to two years later. So these are from afar. They’re probably from Persia. And the journey from Persia to where Jesus was born or where he was, was about six months to a year to get there traveling. And so then it’s prophetic that there will be a star will appear. Yeah. Okay.

0:17:52 – (Steve Gray): And so they knew that even though they were not Jewish like that, but they were prophetic magi—astrologers. They knew the sky, whatever you call. So when they saw a star, they knew something special. They probably had heard just if a star appears, there’s something going on.

0:18:09 – (Zion Vierra): Yeah.

0:18:10 – (Steve Gray): And so they see the star, but they see the star for maybe six months or a year. And so by the time they get there to Jesus, he’s a toddler.

0:18:18 – (Zion Vierra): Yeah.

0:18:18 – (Steve Gray): And he’s no longer in the manger.

0:18:20 – (Zion Vierra): Right.

0:18:20 – (Steve Gray): And he’s not in the basement of somebody’s house. He’s at his own house.

0:18:23 – (Zion Vierra): Right.

0:18:24 – (Steve Gray): You know?

0:18:24 – (Zion Vierra): Yeah, yeah.

0:18:25 – (Steve Gray): And they, the Bible even says Jesus that they went into a house. You see, they, the kings went into a house. And we still think stable night of a wooden one. Yeah. But yeah, so they go into a house. So he’s one to two years old.

0:18:39 – (Zion Vierra): Interesting.

0:18:40 – (Steve Gray): And it’s important that they arrive then, because we know that too. Because we know that Herod is going to have babies murdered trying to get rid of the Messiah.

0:18:50 – (Zion Vierra): Yeah.

0:18:50 – (Steve Gray): That’s going to be about 2 to 3 years old. So Jesus would not fit if he’s still in the manger. He would not fit the threat. Yeah, but in stories we’ve got the baby in the manger and then people screaming to save their kids and run around because the babies are being killed while he’s still in the manger. So it doesn’t fit at all. So he’s already two, three, whatever years old. Then it fits the threat.

0:19:13 – (Steve Gray): Now he’s got to get out of town. He’s got to go. And they’re going to go to Egypt. So now we have the prophetic where the kings come or magi come or whatever title you want to give them. Astrologers, not, not astronomers. They’re not looking through telescopes, but they had an eye for the sky, you know, come and they come and they bow down and worship him and give all these gifts, which you and I have talked about before.

0:19:41 – (Steve Gray): Because now they’re going to finance his escape.

0:19:43 – (Zion Vierra): Right? Yeah.

0:19:45 – (Steve Gray): Because Joseph, by the way, I love this phrase in my new book, I think on one of the pages, I love this phrase that Jesus, the carpenter’s son, obviously we assume he would have learned carpentry. And I love this phrase I put in the new book that we’re working on, that Jesus still carries a toolbox. I love that. And not that we’re trying to make him build buildings, but he’s still going to work on your life.

0:20:14 – (Steve Gray): He’s still a Carpenter. But that’s a myth too. There again, we already saying there’s not that much wood to go around. He probably was skilled because they didn’t have wood. But most of them. He would have been a stone cutter. That would have been his main thing. That he would do.

0:20:29 – (Zion Vierra): Masonry stuff.

0:20:30 – (Steve Gray): Yeah. That kind of stuff. Bricks maybe. Who knows? But yeah, but he would have been more that. And so would Joseph. So they probably lived in some kind of stone or home that Joseph probably built because that’s what he did. And if he had some wood, maybe he did a little thing or put a picture. Made him a nice picture frame for Jesus, you know, to put his picture. Put that famous picture of Jesus in.

0:20:55 – (Zion Vierra): Yeah.

0:20:57 – (Steve Gray): But anyway. The blue eyed Jesus. Yeah, but anyway. So. So when the. When they get there, they go to a house, probably his house. But they could still be staying with relatives because that’s not unheard of.

0:21:12 – (Zion Vierra): Yeah.

0:21:12 – (Steve Gray): Because they had a. They, you know, people went back, they stayed and. And so. So then they came and they financed his escape to Egypt. So they had enough money and probably really had enough money to go live until it was safe for him to come back and come back to Israel.

0:21:31 – (Zion Vierra): That’s interesting.

0:21:32 – (Steve Gray): Yeah. So there we got some myth brothers. Not in winter. It was. And it wasn’t just low because the. When we sing Christmas songs, it’s always lowly shepherds.

0:21:42 – (Zion Vierra): Right.

0:21:42 – (Steve Gray): But they would have been. They were the high up.

0:21:44 – (Zion Vierra): The hierarchical.

0:21:45 – (Steve Gray): Yeah. They probably were paid pretty well. Oh, and these sheep did not mix with any other sheep. They were set apart. Yeah. And they were swaddled to protect them from. So they would be perfect for God. But they were. They were set apart for sacrifice. And so when you find him in a manger. What. What’s the first Swaddled. And you’ll find it. Swaddling clothes.

0:22:10 – (Zion Vierra): Yeah.

0:22:11 – (Steve Gray): Did I get it right? And lying in a manger. Now we know why. Very prophetic. And they would have understood it perfectly.

0:22:20 – (Zion Vierra): That’s one of the untrained eye. Like I would have just not even thought twice about it.

0:22:23 – (Steve Gray): Yeah. So, yeah, there’s a few myth busters. They’re not at the Holiday Inn or whatever. Okay. That just makes it for me more interesting that we make them more human because we really get what were they going through. They had neighbors, they had family around. They weren’t alone. And everybody’s a stranger. And all of a sudden, you know. You know, she gave birth and these strange shepherds show up, and she doesn’t know who they are.

0:22:47 – (Steve Gray): They would know exactly who these guys were. These were high up, but, you know, they had neighbors to help them and relatives to help them. So the true story says, we want to show you that God has come down in humanity. So we want to make this story as real to humanity. If we take it out and make it so traditional that there’s wood and there’s wise men are there while the shepherds are all, you know, it’s okay. Yeah, it doesn’t matter. Right. But to me, putting it into context of what. What it was really like to be Joseph, Mary, the babe, you know, the donkey, whatever, where they were, where the people are, and what it meant to.

0:23:27 – (Steve Gray): To show the star was a demonstration. This is the Messiah. And the shepherds became a demonstration. This is the messiah of the world that’s come to take the sins of the world away. Since. Sin of the world away. Yeah. So that’s not too bad, right?

0:23:43 – (Zion Vierra): Not too bad of myth busters, good myth busting.

0:23:45 – (Steve Gray): Yeah, there may be a few more, but, yeah, some are important, some are not. But, you know, we do have a little bit of problem that he. He was born on a cold winter’s night. Sure. Okay. It makes it. I don’t know, it just makes it, I guess, more romantic. Real. Like. Yeah, it was freezing out. And. Yeah. The problem is we’ve got him born on a cold winter’s night without a fire, you know, either. Where’s the fireplace? A lot of hay. A lot of swaddles. Yeah, you gotta be careful that hay.

0:24:13 – (Steve Gray): So it was not that cold, but that’s beside the point. So anyway, a little bit of fun and a little bit of anointing to understand how prophetic God coming to earth as a human to take the sin of the world away. I hope that helps. You can go to https://stevegrayministries.com and subscribe. Tell your friends about it and like the page and all that kind of stuff. And if you like things like this. The books that I have written have other myth busters, usually not about Christmas, but myth busters in religion of things we thought were true, scriptures we thought we understood.

0:24:45 – (Steve Gray): And it examines it from context and. And then we apply it after that. So I hope you have a Merry Christmas. Hope it’s great and wonderful. And now you have something to talk about around the Christmas table.

0:24:59 – (Zion Vierra): Dinner table. Yeah.

0:25:00 – (Steve Gray): Could be dangerous, but it could be fun too. So I’ll leave that up to you. Until next time, bye-bye.