Orchard Church | Pastor Jim Jackson

After Jesus’ birth in the lower room in a house, Joseph and Mary probably stayed at a relative’s house in Bethlehem before going back to Nazareth. When Jesus was around a year old, men called magi (Gr. magoi, ‘magician’) who specialized in studying wisdom literature, astronomy, and the magic arts, travelled...

In the Old Testament law, God required every firstborn male—which was considered the ‘strength’ of the herd or family—to be presented to Him (Ex. 13:2). As the firstborn son was set apart for God, the parents had to redeem or ‘buy back’ their son from service to the Lord with 5 shekels of silver (Num. 3:12;...

Shepherds down through the ages have been primarily lower class and often poor and uneducated. In a family, shepherding was usually done by the youngest son or hired out by owners that could afford it. Bethlehem was a rural town five miles from Jerusalem with open fields for grazing sheep. Though shepherds graze...

When Joseph met Mary, he was probably in his late teens to early twenties, living in his father’s house in Nazareth. For Joseph, becoming a responsible man able to support a wife meant learning a trade or occupation—probably from his father, Jacob. God has tied masculine responsibility to occupational reality....

Mary grew up in a rural area of northern Israel in Nazareth and came from a family with no great social influence. Like most young women of her time, she would have been happy to marry a man she loved, start a family, and please God by being the wife and mother she was called to be. While not special by cultural...