Matthew 13 and we will read from verse 53 to 58 and look particularly at verse 55. So Matthew chapter 13, And it came to pass that when Jesus had finished these parables, he departed thence, and when he was come into his own country, He taught them in their synagogue insomuch that they were astonished and said, whence has this man this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary and his brethren James and Joseph and Simon and Judas and his sisters Are they not all with us? Whence then has this man all these things? And they were offended in him. But Jesus said unto them, a prophet is not without honor, save in his own country and in his own house. And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief." And I would have you note especially verse 55, is not this the carpenter's son? Well, this is a verse that we do not often study in our Bible reading. I have once heard a sermon on this verse, but it dealt with the second part. Is not his mother called Mary, and his brethren James, and Joseph, and Simon, and Judas, and his sisters? So how many children were Jesus and his siblings? We haven't had a homeschool question for a long time, or a public school question, Christian school question, but here is one. How many kids were they at least? Well, you can figure it out from here, can't you? Because there's Jesus, there's James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas, and his sisters. So they were at least seven, at least seven siblings. But what we want to know today particularly is this first part. Is not this the carpenter's son? He's not just the carpenter's son. A very interesting question. It's kind of asked somewhat in mocking. Where does he get all this wisdom? I mean, he's just a carpenter's son. You see there's a touch of ridicule in that question. But there's certainly a note of humility there, right? This is a man who doesn't come as a scholar. This, of course, at the start of Jesus' ministry, let's say he was 30 years old or so. He's not a scholar. He's not trained. He's not a scribe. And still we find him in a position of humility, which, of course, continues and confirms the humility of Christ when he was born, isn't it? Christ was born, and this is really the miracle of, in our church tradition, what we celebrate as Christmas. Here is what one theologian writes. Consider Jesus. This is not the quote, sorry. But there is a quote. And it is this one. Consider Jesus. Consider Jesus. What is the greatest wonder that this world ever saw? The greatest wonder that this world ever saw is the incarnation of the Son of God. Incarnation means becoming flesh. The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. John 1 verse 14. Two natures, infinitely distinct, God's divine nature and the human nature of Jesus. Two natures, infinitely distinct, year united in one person. Astonishing, glorious, mysterious fact. This is mysterious, isn't it? This is glorious. This is the greatest miracle that this world has ever seen. As the apostle said in 1 Timothy 3.16, without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory. It's a mystery. It's a miracle. And yet, for all the glory of this miracle, we shouldn't miss something, and that is this. That there is utter humiliation, too. That Christ empties himself in becoming a baby. And there's humiliation here. Christ is born as a human. In this world of misery, in this sin-cursed world, becomes like us. A human body, a human soul, and with all that that entails. And moreover, the Lord could have arranged, God could have so arranged that Christ was born in a palace, right? The son of a princess. But he's not. He's born here. We read in Luke 2 of his being laid in a crib, basically. Between the animals, the donkeys and the sheep and the cows, nobody wants that for their baby. Nobody wants that for their wife to give birth in circumstances like that. There are some little babies here in the room this morning. There are some of you that are looking forward to the birth of a new baby. What would you think if dad says, you know, mum's going to have a baby soon, so let's make her a little bed in the barn, right in between the cows. Let's get some hay, and we make it nice and comfortable, and mum can have the baby right here. And the first few nights, you know, she can just be here between all the animals. You'll say, well, can't she rather have it in the house? Of course. You want that for her, right? That's what you want. Nobody wants their baby to be born in kind of unpleasant circumstances. Confirming, of course, that Jesus and Mary, Joseph and Mary, were poor, right? Of course, we read about the census, we read about the tax. Everybody's there in the town to be written up, to be enrolled, so not a lot of accommodation available. But if they had enough money, they could get that. It's just like that always, right? Even if it's rush, if it's peak season, if you pay enough, if they had a handful of silver coins, which few people had. If they had a gold coin, which few people ever saw because it was so expensive, the innkeeper would have said, oh, I can fix something for you. You just wait here. You can move into my and my wife's house. Just wait an hour. We'll fix everything up for you. They would have made a plan. But they didn't because these folk had to pay what they could afford. And it wasn't much. The humiliation you see of Christ's birth of God becoming human. And this, when we look at verse 55, is confirmed, wasn't just a momentary, accidental kind of thing that soon blew over. Because we read in verse 55, is not this the carpenter's son? Kind of a surprise and somewhat insulting question. You know, this is a man of insignificance. In those days, there were many carpenters because it was a common profession. Everything had to be made, all sorts of furniture. It's not like carpenters today are kind of more skilled and perhaps more highly paid. It wasn't like that. But Jesus here, many years later, is still called the carpenter's son. So this is the first thing I'll suggest to you that Jesus, the carpenter's son, Most likely a carpenter himself. Now, the Bible doesn't say that absolutely, and we cannot say that this was absolutely the case, but most likely. This is what most people did. If your dad was a carpenter, you became a carpenter. If your dad was a farmer, you became a farmer. It was a very local economy. There wasn't a lot of mobility. This is most likely, and this is kind of suggested too by the question, right? Isn't this the carpenter's son? Yeah, the carpenter, Jesus, is the carpenter's son. as well. But note this, in Jesus being presumably a carpenter himself, and certainly growing up as a carpenter's son, Christ's humiliation wasn't just incidental, it was a central part of God's design and purpose for him. Now it could have been different again, I mean if somebody like Jeff Bezos, right, or Mark Zuckerberg or somebody who's very rich and famous, they tour Mexico. And lo and behold, the wife goes into labor, and she has to have her baby in some rural hospital in Mexico or Panama or Nigeria or somewhere. It'll be all over the media, but this humiliation will soon blow over. And a few years later, little Jeff Zuckerberg or little whoever it is, little Jeff Bezos or somebody, you know, the baby, will be back to his life, his cushy life that he was born to with a silver spoon, right, as they say. This was, that would be born to parents, born to position, born to status, born to a wealth, but Jesus simply wasn't. He confirms, he continues in his life the humiliation that started with his birth. His humiliation still endures. It continues with his occupation and his station in life and so on and it comes to fruition in his adult ministry because now he faces opposition from all the important people and the Jewish learned classes and the temple class, the scribes and the Pharisees and so on. They hate him. And soon it reaches its high point, or its low point if you want to call it that, in the prosecution and the persecution he faces, and being put on trial, and being punished, and being publicly humiliated, and most likely publicly executed and crucified naked, you know, as a spectacle, as an insult, as a mockery, and then being buried. So usually in theology we talk about his birth, life, death, and his period after his death as Christ's humiliation. So it was a central part of God's purpose and design for him. Why? Why did it have to be this way? Well, by his humiliation, you see, Christ truly identifies himself with us, with humans, and with our condition. our broken condition, our sinful condition, our miserable condition, and with the curse that we suffer, the cursed condition that we are in. And of course, ultimately, the purpose is because he wants to ransom these people, redeem them, and remove the curse. We'll say something about that in a minute. But see this, that Christ the carpenter confirms that Jesus was undergoing the miseries of this life, like we all have to undergo to some extent, and that he was truly identifying himself with us as humans in our case. Now, the first example, of course, is Jesus being born a baby, which, I mean, in the nostalgia and the romance of Jesus, the little baby in the crib, we forget that it's not nice to be a baby. Babies cry all the time, and the reason is they have all sorts of pains and cramps, and weans, and indigestion. They suffer a lot. Babies do suffer. They don't verbalize it, so we kind of get used to they're always crying. But if they could speak, we'd probably be horrified what the poor things are suffering, isn't it? And then they start teething. At some point they start teething and that's horrible too. Now I don't want to intimidate the mothers here but it's just a lot. We've had a few and it's not easy to raise a baby and you feel sorry for the poor things. But this is what Jesus went through too. He also was teething. He also had nappy rash. and all the sicknesses and all the miserable afflictions that little babies have to suffer. So that started then, but it didn't stop then. It went on all through his life. This identifying himself with us, suffering what we have to suffer, and then now being a carpenter's son. Presumably being trained in his father's trade, working in Joseph's carpenter's shop. I'm not very good with carpentry, and I can hardly use a nail and a hammer and a saw, but I'm encouraged to see that even those who are very expert at these things, you'll see their hands are all full of bruises and cuts and blue marks and sometimes a broken finger or stitches, because that's part of being a carpenter. Now, back then, it was even worse. Your equipment were more primitive, chisels and saws. and drills and the nails were more rough. It wasn't as precise as now. It was certainly more expensive. It was a rough and it was a trade full of risks and injuries. Nobody escaped that. Even Jesus did not escape that. I'm sure you could look at his hands and his feet and his body and perhaps his head. There's all sorts of things that happen when you work in a trade like carpentry. You had to go and fix houses, you had to build furniture, you had to be around, and you faced everything that involved. His father, Joseph, was a godly man, but he was still a sinner. Working under somebody who's a sinner, that takes a toll as well, right? That's not always easy. You work with your dad, and your dad's a sinner. Well, Jesus had to suffer that. He had to deal with unreasonable customers, with unreasonable demands, who were unhappy about quality work and so on. I'm sure he had to put up with people who didn't pay as they should have paid. Perhaps he had to put up with suppliers who didn't deliver as they should have delivered and who tried to trick them, perhaps. And some constructors or contractors, perhaps, who cheated. and competitors who try to squeeze him out and perhaps slander him and so on, and who play dirty. But it's part of our lives, isn't it? It's part of our lives, it's part of our condition and of our situation in this world. But Jesus did not escape this because Jesus was born to this condition of being in a life characterized by sin and misery. And part of the sin is that in the sweat of your face, you shall eat your bread, and that there will be thorns and thistles. This was the curse. But praise God that Jesus was born for this, and that He willingly assumed this, and that this was His willing path that He traveled. Why? Why? Anselm, the medieval theologian, wrote a book, Cur Deus Homo. Why God a man? Why did God become man? Why did Jesus become a man? Why go through all of this? Why did he, as Philippians says, humble himself? Philippians, let me read you that beautiful verse. If I have it here somewhere, otherwise I can look at it. It says that Christ humbled himself, right? He emptied himself. Philippians 2 verse 5. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men." This is the emptying of himself, the humbling of himself. Why? This is how one minister put it, Nevin, in the late 19th century. As a deep humiliation, Christ empties himself. As he became the substitute and the representative of sinners, it was necessary that he should take the humble rank of the guilty. He descended, therefore, from the height of heaven to the humblest condition of earth. Well, a third thing to note here. Christ the carpenter shows us a third thing, and this is just incidental, but it does need, we do need to remind ourselves that Christ here honors the condition of poverty and obscurity and of humble labor. Nothing wrong with being rich. Absolutely nothing wrong. But there's nothing wrong with being poor if that is your station in life. If it's not because of your own laziness or your dishonesty, Then here is an example. Jesus was poor. Jesus was poor. They were so poor that we read in the book of Luke that Mary, for her purification offering, took two turtle doves. That was for the poor people. If you could afford it, you took a lamb, a goat or a sheep. If you couldn't afford it, you took two turtle doves. This is what Mary took. Here was Jesus born in an obscure family. Now, Mary, of course, was of royal descent, and she could give her genealogy, but that's cold comfort to somebody. That was so many generations ago. This was an unknown family, a humble family. Joseph was a carpenter. He wasn't like Paul, a lawyer, right? He wasn't a big businessman. He wasn't a rich farmer. He wasn't a procurator or a governor or some general or some famous person. Here is Jesus born in a very humble, unknown, obscure family. And there's nothing wrong with that, you see. Here's Jesus showing us there's no shame in that. The only thing to be ashamed of ever is sin. Children, sometimes you wish your dad was as famous as this, as famous as that. But here is Jesus born to an insignificant family. In America, people are used to being very mobile, right? And in a way, I mean, it's unthinkable in most countries of the world that somebody like J.D. Vance, who grew up in a trailer park, would become the vice president. In most countries of the world, that never happens. That's almost impossible. Now, in America, there's more mobility, but still, you know, most people that are in high government and so on, have good family connections, and plus you have these dynasties, right, the Kennedys and the Trumps nowadays and so on. So there's a difference. People are not born in an equal station in life, but yet here is God honoring this situation, social circumstances of obscurity, insignificance, poverty even, putting His Son, the Christ, in that condition. Which is comfort to us, isn't it? Those of us who never achieved much in worldly terms. If you are doing what God has assigned you to do, if you are faithful in your calling, what a God-honouring position that is. And certainly we find the Lord Jesus, and again I say it's an assumption that He was a carpenter too. We often speak as if the Bible says that. The Bible doesn't say it explicitly, but it's highly likely that Jesus was a carpenter. But it certainly honors the station of a carpenter, isn't it? of a man, of a working man, what you'd call a working hand. Nothing wrong with working with your hands. Here was Jesus working with his hands and glorifying God in the way that he did it. Honest oil, you see. Working with your hand, that's good. It's God glorifying if you work hard, you labor faithfully, and you're honest. What more Now, of course, we, too, live in a society where, you know, some occupations, some stations are highly looked upon. I mean, that's why it makes the news when Donald Trump serves fries at a McDonald's, right, in a drive-out, because he's kind of condescending, humiliating himself to do this job. But not every position is the same. Not every job, even in our society, some have a certain glory attached to them, which is fine. There's a man here, and we find out he's really a rocket scientist for NASA or something, or a heart surgeon. You'll say, wow, have you heard this guy? He does this and this. Perhaps some of you are like that, and some of your family are like that. People talk, and they admire you when they hear what you do. But many of us, we have rather lackluster positions in life. which doesn't mean that it is without glory in God's sight. Here is, I think it's John McDuff, the preacher, a 19th century preacher who said this. Jesus knows your walk. He will sympathize with and give you grace for the difficulties and discouragements, the temptations and the trials peculiar to your position in life. However obscure your birth, however lowly your calling, however cramped your powers, strive simply to imitate, please, and glorify Jesus. Not totally hidden will then your light be. Trust in God and your resemblance to Christ, the example of your honest industry, your patience, endurance, and virtuous bearing, which poverty cannot crush or obscurity veil, that will influence for good all whose privilege it may be to know, to admire, and to love you. Thus, your light will shine out of obscurity. And humble though your course and limited though your sphere may have been, you will not have lived for God and for man in vain." Encouraging words, isn't it? Well, let me point you to a fourth thing we have noticed now. through dignity and nobility of serving God faithfully in the sphere in which he has placed us, wherever that may be. But see also, in Christ's humility, how we have to look for God's purposes beyond our circumstances, right? Christ did not become a man to just live a life in this sin-cursed world and die and not accomplish much. Christ was born, Christ was made flesh to redeem His people. There was a purpose, you see. There's a purpose beyond this. And the crowning purpose of our Lord's incarnation was beyond humiliation. It involved humiliation. This humiliation was the valley He had to go through. In order to what? To attain something. to save his people by obeying, by suffering, and his suffering started with his humiliation. And all through his life he suffered, but he suffered especially towards the end of his life, right? Until finally he was crucified. That was the height or the low point of his suffering, if you want to put it there. But there was purpose, you see, and this is also our encouragement. That we, like Christ, we imitate Him, we follow Him, He's our Master, we are the disciples. And when we, like Him, are humiliated, we suffer in this life, there will be glory. And He is our assurance of this. Here is how one minister puts this. The purpose of Jesus' incarnation was that He might suffer for the sins of men. He was made flesh so that He might hunger and thirst and suffer the contempt of the people, that he might weep over Jerusalem, might feel the hour and the power of darkness, might agonize in the garden, and die upon the cross, and thus pay the penalty, the rigid satisfaction, death for death, and redeem a guilty world. But this is the hope. Christ didn't suffer that because he could do no different. He suffered that willingly. He said, I am the resurrection and the life. And He said that I lay down my life willingly and I take it up again. So He did lay down His life as He emptied Himself and was humiliated and was humbled to take it up again. And this Lord of life, as He is called, the resurrection and the life, call us His children And we are called, in Luke 20, verse 36, children of God. Children of God. And, note this, children of the resurrection. So this Lord of Life, this Lord of the Resurrection, this Jesus who rose again on the third day and ascended into heaven and is sitting now in glory. Yes, this baby was born in this world like a diamond dropped in the dust, like some precious gold jewellery in the ashes, in the soot, in the muck. And you can dig around and say, look at this piece of jewelry here. It hasn't lost any of its value. There it is, shining bright. The gold being trampled upon in the mud, or the diamond, or the ruby, whatever precious. It is there, as valuable as ever. Christ after becoming flesh. Still his worth, still his dignity, still all his majesty that he has. and the love of the Father that He enjoys, in large measure, this is our encouragement too, isn't it? You too can be true nobility, true royalty like Jesus was, despite His suffering and His humiliation. And you too will, like Jesus, who laid down His life to take it up again, will be resurrected in being called children of the resurrection. This is the hope. This is the hope of Jesus' humility. This is the hope of Jesus' humiliation. This is the hope that it gives us that Christ became flesh and that Christ became a baby. Amen.