The Bible Study Podcast, episode 105.

Today, the Bible Study podcast continues the study of the gospel of Luke with a second chapter.

Welcome to the Bible Study podcast.

I'm your host, Chris Christensen.

If you're of a certain age,

such as I am, and you grew up watching the Peanuts cartoon and specifically the Christmas special,

this particular chapter will be familiar, although we'll be reading it from the NIV, the new international version, as we usually use instead of the King James version, or KJV, as was used in that special.

But this is the Christmas story, and it's one of two Christmas stories in the Bible.

This is Luke's Christmas story, as we mentioned earlier.

Matthew's Christmas story focuses on Joseph and Angel Gabriel going to Joseph, and Luke's Christmas story focuses on Joseph and Angel Gabriel going to Joseph and Luke's Christmas story focuses on Mary

and Matthews focuses on the wise men and Luke's focuses on the shepherds and the angels.

In those days, Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.

This was the first census that took place when Corinius was governor of Syria,

and everyone went to his own town to register.

So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth, in Galilee, to Judea, to Bethlehem, the town of David,

because he belonged to the house and line of David.

He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.

While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born.

She gave birth to her firstborn a son.

She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger because there was no room for them in the

inn. As Luke sets this story, he sets it firmly in where it fits in current history. And in current

history, Judea, where Jesus is born, is within the Roman Empire.

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