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Additional content by Susannah McFarlane. Artwork by Phil Watson and Joy Lankshear. Cover and text design by Olivia Axiak, Joy Lankshear and Phillipa West. Edited by Kristin Argall.
Printed in Australia.
THE TRUE STORY OF CHRISTMAS
The Bible is a big book with 66 smaller books inside it. All these books tell how God created everything, including us, and how he loves everything he created. It is also the story of how we decided to disobey God and tried to do things our way. This didn’t go well, so we needed to be rescued from the mess we made.
The big rescue is
the
true story
of
how God saves The world he loves
The Christmas story is one of the biggest moments in the – when God sent his son, Jesus, to earth to save us.
This story is found in the book of Luke, also called the Gospel of Luke. ‘Gospel’ means good news.
The story of Christmas is good news!
AN ANGEL TELLS ABOUT THE BIRTH OF JESUS
One month later God sent the angel Gabriel to the town of Nazareth in Galilee with a message for a virgin named Mary. She was engaged to Joseph from the family of King David. The angel greeted Mary and said,
‘you are truly blessed! The lord is with you.’
Mary was confused by the angel’s words and wondered what they meant. Then the angel told Mary, ‘Don’t be afraid! God is pleased with you, and you will have a son.
his name will be
@ ( )
Jesus. #
He will be great and will be called the Son of God Most High. The Lord God will make him king, as his ancestor David was. He will rule the people of Israel forever, and his kingdom will never end.’
Mary asked the angel, ‘How can this happen? I am not married!’
The angel answered, ‘The Holy Spirit will come down to you, and God’s power will come over you. So your child will be called the holy Son of God. Your relative Elizabeth is also going to have a son, even though she is old. No one thought she could ever have a baby, but in three months she will have a son.
N OTHING God! ’ isforimpossible
Mary said, ‘I am the Lord’s servant! Let it happen as you have said.’ And the angel left her.
MARY VISITS ELIZABETH
A short time later Mary hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea. She went into Zechariah’s home, where she greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, her baby moved inside her.
The Holy Spirit came upon Elizabeth. Then in a loud voice she said to Mary:
God has blessed you more than any other woman! He has also blessed the child you will have. Why should the mother of my Lord come to me? As soon as I heard your greeting, my baby became happy and moved inside me. The Lord has blessed you because you believed that he will keep his promise.
MARY’S SONG OF PRAISE
Mary said: with all my hearT i praise the lord, and i am glad because of God my saviour. he cares for me, his humble servant. from now on, all people will say God has blessed me. God all-powerful has done greaT thinGs for me, and his name is holy.
MAP OF THE LAND OF ISRAEL AT THE TIME OF JESUS
G ALILE E
S AMARIA
Caesarea Philippi
Cana
Capernaum
Bethsaida
Magdala Tiberias
Nazareth
Tyre
Sidon
Caesarea
A VERY IMPORTANT JOURNEY
Mary and Joseph travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem
HOW FAR? The direct distance between Nazareth and Bethlehem is about 112 km, but the actual travel distance would likely have been longer due to the need to navigate around difficult terrain and avoid certain areas. The Bible doesn’t describe the route Mary and Joseph took.
ON WHAT? Mary and Joseph would probably have travelled on foot or possibly with the aid of a donkey. Many drawings of Mary and Joseph’s journey show Mary travelling on a donkey, but this detail is not found in the Bible.
HOW LONG? On foot, people in ancient times typically covered about 24 to 32 km per day. Given Mary’s pregnancy, their travel pace might have been slower, covering 16 to 24 km per day. Adding possible rest days, Mary and Joseph’s travel time would have been around 7 to 9 days.
WITH WHAT? On the road, people carried their own supplies, including food (e.g. dried fruits and bread) and water in animal skins. Cloaks and tunics protected them in bad weather. Most people wore simple sandals, which meant that their feet got very dusty on long trips.
LUKE 2:1–7
THE BIRTH OF JESUS
About that time Emperor Augustus gave orders for the names of all the people to be listed in record books.These first records were made when Quirinius was governor of Syria.
Everyone had to go to their own home town to be listed. So Joseph had to leave Nazareth in Galilee and go to Bethlehem in Judea. Long ago Bethlehem had been King David’s home town, and Joseph went there because he was from David’s family.
Mary was engaged to Joseph and travelled with him to Bethlehem. She was soon going to have a baby, and while they were there, she gave birth to her firstborn son. She dressed him in baby clothes and laid him on a bed of hay, because there was no room for them in the inn.
THE SHEPHERDS
That night in the fields near Bethlehem some shepherds were guarding their sheep. All at once an angel came down to them from the Lord, and the brightness of the Lord’s glory flashed around them. The shepherds were frightened. But the angel said, ‘Don’t be afraid! I have good news for you, which will make everyone happy. This very day in King David’s home town a Saviour was born for you. He is Christ the Lord. You will know who he is, because you will find him dressed in baby clothes and lying on a bed of hay.’
Suddenly many other angels came down from heaven and joined in praising God. They said:
‘Praise
who pleases
everyone God in heaven!
God. Peace on earth to
After the angels had left and gone back to heaven, the shepherds said to each other, ‘Let’s go to Bethlehem and see what the Lord has told us about.’
PraiseGodinhea v e n ! Peaceonearth
to everyonewhopleases God.’ C
LUKE 2:16–20
They hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and they saw the baby lying on a bed of hay.
When the shepherds saw Jesus, they told his parents what the angel had said about him. Everyone listened and was surprised. But Mary kept thinking about all this and wondering what it meant.
As the shepherds returned to their sheep, they were praising God and saying wonderful things about him. Everything they had seen and heard was just as the angel had said.
‘ i have good news for you, which will make everyone happy. this very day in king david’s home town a saviour was born for you. he is christ The lord.’
H Luke 2:10–11
DID YOU KNOW?
Here are four facts about the Christmas story you may not know.
WHAT ARE ANGELS?
God often uses his angels as messengers to go from heaven to earth to explain things to humans. They often start their message with ‘Don’t be afraid!’ (e.g. Luke 1:30), because they know that humans will be scared by the appearance of these supernatural beings. They come to help humans understand what God is doing and to guide them. While many people think angels have wings, this is not mentioned anywhere in the Bible. There are lot of angels in the Christmas story!
JESUS WASN’T BORN IN A STABLE
Many versions of the Christmas story say that Jesus was born in a stable, but it was not a stable in the more modern sense of a separate building just for animals. The usual design of a Palestinian home was a single-room house with a lower area where the animals were brought in for safety at night.
WHO WERE THE WISE MEN?
The wise men who brought gifts for Jesus weren’t kings, and they weren’t present at Jesus’s birth! They came a few years later (Matthew 2:1–12), when Jesus was a toddler and Mary and Joseph had moved into a house. The men came from far away to see Jesus. This is important: the good news was for everyone, all over the world.
WHY GOLD, FRANKINCENSE AND MYRRH?
Each of the very valuable presents given to Jesus had a special meaning that underlined who he was. Gold was a symbol of kings; frankincense was a symbol of holiness, of God; and myrrh was an oil used to prepare a body for burial. So, in these three gifts, Jesus is recognised as a king and God – and one who would die for his people.
WHAT COMES NEXT?
We don’t know much more about Jesus as a little boy, but Luke tells us that ‘the child Jesus grew.
he became sTrong and wise, and god blessed him.’
Luke: 2:40
Luke goes on to tell the next part of the Big Rescue story: the life, work, death and coming back to life (yes!) of Jesus.
You will be able to read about it in Big Rescue Easter, coming in 2025.
A NOTE TO PARENTS AND CARERS
This little book has been funded by the generous supporters of Bible Society Australia. Our mission is to Open The Bible to all people everywhere by all means possible.
The Bible can inspire us, challenge us and give us answers to the difficult questions of life. It can change us for good.
That’s why we and our supporters work hard to make sure that everyone who wants a Bible can have one – and one in their own language. We help provide Bibles all over the world: to the islanders of the Pacific, refugees from the Middle East, new Christians in China, and the poorest Christians everywhere. We also want people to have the Bible in their hearts as well as their hands! We want to make sure that people can read the Bible and understand the message of God’s love that it shares.
We want children to know the wonderful stories of the Bible. That’s why we created this book, just for them. We hope they – and you – enjoy it.
( ) Happy Christmas!
Do you know the true story of Christmas, when a little baby named Jesus was born?
Do you know why he was born, and how the Christmas story fits into the even bigger story of God’s love?
‘God loved the people of this world so much that he gave his only Son, so everyone who has faith in him will have eternal life and never really die.’
