The birth of Jesus was an extraordinary event in human history: God became a man without ceasing to be the one and only God. While Israel’s high-born, well-educated elite advanced their status and pretended to seek God’s favour, their Messiah quietly slipped into the world in the unassuming hamlet of Bethlehem. Yet for all their knowledge of prophecy and in spite of their anxious hope for a deliverer, few could see beyond the humble circumstances of His birth to appreciate the immense implications. Ironically, Israel’s outcast and forgotten people had no trouble at all welcoming Him.