How silently, how silently,
the wondrous gift is giv’n!
So God imparts to human hearts
the blessings of his heav’n.
No ear may hear his coming,
but in this world of sin,
where meek souls will receive him, still
the dear Christ enters in.

You have likely heard or sung these very lines over the course of the last few weeks. They are a verse from Philip Brooks' 1868 Christmas hymn O Little Town of Bethlehem. 

Bethlehem. It means "house of bread." It is called the "city of David" and is the birthplace of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, prophesied as Immanuel, God with us, the star of Jacob, the sun of righteousness. 

Bethlehem is a fitting name for the place where the very bread of life Himself would come into the world as an infant, as a man, for man. The One who made the stars with the breath of His mouth drew his first infant breath under the starry skies of a lowly Judean province. As Charles Wesley's famous 1739 Christmas hymn proclaims:

Mild He lays His glory by
Born that man no more may die
Hark! The herald angels sing
Glory to the newborn King!

On part two of our discussion about the star of Bethlehem, we discuss more of the Scripture, background and history of what the star the Magi saw in the east may have been. 

Though another Christmas has come and gone so quickly, let us never forget that the real star of Bethlehem was not the star itself, but the bright and morning star (Rev. 22:16, the star of Jacob (Num. 24:17), the Creator of the stars and the entire cosmos (Gen. 1:1,14; Col. 1:16-20; John 1:1-14), incarnate as a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger (Luke 2). 

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