As you know, the last few weeks we have been looking at a trilogy of verses – Luke 2:10-12 – which Robert Morgan calls “The Bible’s Classic Christmas Text.” I believe he is right. This time I wanted to focus on the last verse in that passage, Luke 2:12, as discussed in Chapter 96 of Morgan’s book, One Hundred Bible Verses Everyone Should Know by Heart. Luke 2:12 states: This will be sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.
Here is Morgan’s account:
The angels called it a sign: “This will be sign for you.” In other words, they were telling the shepherds how to recognize the Savior. He would be wrapped tightly in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger – probably in a cave. The likelihood of finding any baby lying in an animal’s feeding bin was remote. So finding Him just as the angels described Him would be an indication their message was true in its totality.
According to the book The New Manners and Customs of the Bible, the cloths in which Jesus was wrapped were commonly referred to as “swaddling clothes” because they were like bandages, tightly wrapped around a newborn child to hold his legs and arms still. This is still widely practiced in some countries, as I have seen myself on overseas trips. In some cultures, infants are wrapped up papoose style. I used to think it cruel until I recalled that a newborn infant was pretty tightly contained in the mother’s womb, too.
But there is something more here.
It’s impossible to think of these words of Luke 2:12 without remembering the burial of Christ, when He was again tightly swathed in white reams of cloth and laid to rest in a cave under the watchful eyes of angels. The parallels between His birth and His burial are remarkable. Swaddled in white strips. In a cave. Resting. Redemptive. His mother watching. Angels hovering near.
And He didn’t stay in either cave very long.
Bethlehem and Jerusalem are only about five miles apart, and the events were separated by only 33 years. But what mystery! Who can comprehend the Almighty lying in a manger, or the God of glory in a tomb? As Martin Luther said, “No other God have I but Thee; born in a manger, died on a tree.”
Add verses 13 and 14 to your memory work, and you will forever know the entire angelic carol, as recorded in the gospel of Luke. “Suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying: ‘Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth to people He favors!’”
Luke’s gospel was written in Greek; but in the mid-300s, verse 14 was translated into Latin by St. Hilary of Poitiers, and the phrase Hilary created has become famous:
Gloria, in excelsis Deo!
It became a widely-used doxology in the Eastern Church where early Byzantine monks reportedly used it as an exclamation of praise not just at Christmas but every morning. And why not? Every day we should say “This is the day the Lord has made!” Every morning we can truly proclaim, Gloria, in excelsis Deo! Glory to God in the highest!
Morgan’s account ends there. However, the symbolism of the manger does not.
Bethlehem’s manger was not random, it was prophetic. The Greek word for manger is phatnē – a feeding trough, often carved from stone. The shepherds in Bethlehem raised lambs for the sacrifices in the Temple. The lambs for these sacrifices had to be spotless, and had to be without injury or defect of any kind. In a word, they had to be born and remain perfect. I recently read where often, when a lamb was born that appeared to be spotless, perfect, and without defect (and thus a candidate for the Temple sacrifice), it was placed immediately at birth in a manger in order to keep it safe for the first few weeks while the lamb matured. In other words, the lamb for the potential sacrifice was set apart for that sacrifice immediately at birth by being placed in a manger.
So, too, the Son of Man, the perfect, spotless, sinless sacrifice, immediately after taking on flesh Himself, was placed in a manger ... the Lamb who had been set aside for sacrifice before the foundation of the world. Soli Deo Gloria!