Ask a Pastor Column

Q: Matthew tells us that the wise men found Jesus in a house, Luke says they found him in a manger. Why are the accounts so different? Is one more right than the other?

A: Our nativity scenes and Christmas pageants can often portray a condensed version of the Christmas story. They tend to combine the accounts of Matthew and Luke for the sake of simplicity, but this often leads to confusion when we read the Bible to try and sort them back out from each other.

So let’s take the two accounts of Jesus’ early life one at a time. In Luke Chapter 2, we are given an account of Jesus being born in Beth...