Your New Testaments at Luke chapter 2, and
there to join us as we try to
expound the passage that was read earlier this
morning, beginning with verse 8, and continuing to
verse 20.
Good news of great joy.
It is amazing how Christ is being crowded
out of Christmas.
It seems that the momentum of contemporary life
and trends is such that very few people
are aware in the outside world, and alas,
there are some in the church who appear
to be ignorant of the fact that the
hinge of destiny is screwed into the manger
of Bethlehem.
Christ is Savior.
That is the message of Christmas.
And if He is not Savior, there is
no Savior at all for a lost world
such as ours.
We are therefore focusing in these days, as
we've been studying during Advent, studying these early
chapters, the first chapter and the beginning of
the second chapter in the book of Luke,
we have been focusing attention upon the very
centralities, and I trust that the central issue
may be very clear to us all, and
clear to those that shall come to our
homes and with whom we shall mingle at
this Christmas time.
May the central issue be clear that Christmas
is all about God sending forth His Son
to be the only Savior of mankind.
Now let's see what this wonderful passage has
to say to us.
Now in one sense we need special grace
when we come to this passage because it's
so familiar.
You've heard it many times before, you've read
it many times before, and you may be
saying to yourself, well, there's nothing very much
new that can come out of that old
passage.
So you're going to sleep.
Well, please don't sleep.
I'll ask you to do something far better.
Ask the Holy Spirit to give you fresh
light upon the sacred page, and to enable
you to see this morning, as you never
saw before, the full significance of this remarkable
episode.
And who knows, you may be dancing before
the end of the service.
I hope you will.
Now it all centers then in the announcement
of the fact that, not as the prophets
said, He is going to be born, He
is going to come, but the announcement that
the Messiah, Christ the Lord, has arrived.
And this is the first announcement, the announcement
made to the shepherds abiding with their sheep
on a cold winter night in the regions
of Bethlehem.
We're going to look first of all at
the setting in which the announcement was made,
because it is very important.
Now, in the first place, the announcement of
the Savior's birth was made to the most
humble of people in that ancient world.
Now that may sound strange to some of
us, because we think of the shepherds in
terms of such twentieth century or nineteenth century
shepherds as we may have known.
And when I say that they were somewhere
near the bottom of the ladder, socially, in
New Testament times, it may strike you as
if it were an exaggeration.
Well, now it's not.
There were shepherds living out in the fields
nearby, keeping watch over their flocks by night.
And I want to say to you that
in that ancient society they were looked upon
as the humblest of the humble.
They were, as a matter of fact, at
that stage in history, almost universally despised.
Now you may ask the reason why.
Well, there are a number of reasons for
that.
Generally, only the poorest of people would take
on the job anyway.
Of course, sometimes it happened within the family
that there would be father and sons, and
the children would in turn, perhaps, look after
the sheep and the goats, as young David
did for Jesse.
But if shepherds had to be hired, it
would only be the poorest of the poor
that would take the job.
Then, whilst they were at their post, they
would probably be very—mostly, at any rate—would be
far away from Jerusalem, and would very rarely
be able to visit Jerusalem for the great
festal occasions of the Jews.
For the same reason, because they had to
look after the sheep day and night, summer
and winter, they would not often find a
way to the synagogue in the district where
they might be.
And for this reason, they came to be
looked upon as somewhat of an irreligious crew.
The scribes and the Pharisees especially looked down
upon them because they were not able to
perform some of the ceremonial things that they
required of people— things superimposed upon the plain
teaching of Scripture.
For example, the washing of hands before meals.
It was not a hygienic affair, but it
was a ceremonial affair.
Now, they couldn't do that out in the
fields.
What provisions would they have?
And a whole multitude of other such ceremonies.
They simply couldn't do.
So they became looked down upon, frowned upon,
as a kind of worthless people in society.
Or, let us say, as useful as a
child.
For a child could—a young child could, as
David did—sometimes look after the sheep.
And I think they even helped to make
society think of them in this way because,
for good or ill, be it true, be
it false, they gained notoriety as petty thieves.
Now, I can't tell you whether that is
true, but it was a generally accepted thing
that you couldn't trust the shepherds.
And if they brought their sheep somewhere near
your home—perhaps there was some common land or
mountainside—and if you saw them bringing their sheep,
you'd be on the alert because they put
their hands on what doesn't belong to them.
In consequence, you never accepted the testimony of
a shepherd in a court of law.
If you were charged with a crime and
you were really innocent, and a shepherd knew
that you were innocent, his testimony simply wouldn't
count.
You would stand still on your own.
In other words, what I'm stressing is this.
The shepherds were, for better or for worse,
they were really down at the bottom rung
of the social ladder.
Even so, can't you sense the thrill of
it?
The announcement that the Savior, who had long
been promised, has at last arrived, came from
the lips of an angel—an angel of Almighty
God—to the humblest of the humble, in the
darkness of the wintry night, as they were
about their business.
And they believed it and received it.
That night, some of them were probably sleeping
in the little hut of leaves and things
like that, that they gathered together from trees
and sheltered under them, whilst in turn, three
or four of them would be out watching,
keeping watch over their sheep.
And the angel of the Lord came down,
and the glory of the Lord shone around,
and they heard the good news.
They were the most humble.
Now notice, the announcement of the Savior's birth
was made not only to the humblest of
the humble, but in and through the mediation
of an angel.
It wasn't a prophet that made this announcement,
but an angel.
Now again, we've got to go back to
the New Testament for an understanding of this.
An angel often mediated between God and men.
And when Stephen is addressing the Sanhedrin, he
goes out of his way to say that
the law on Sinai was given by the
mediation of an angel.
Oh, God was there.
The glory of the Lord danced on the
summit of Sinai, and everybody knew that the
great Jehovah was there on Sinai.
The thundering and the lightning bespoke of the
presence of the God of Abraham and the
God of glory.
But, says Stephen, and he seemed to have
the Spirit of God upon him as he
spoke, so he must have been speaking the
truth.
The law was given by the mediation of
angels.
Now for that and a number of reasons,
an angel was looked upon as a singular
being, not an unimportant person.
And an angel of the Lord was dispatched
to make this announcement to the angels.
But that's not all.
Please wait a moment.
Hold your breath.
An angel of the Lord appeared to them,
and the glory of the Lord shone round
about them.
Now, I wish I had the tongues of
men and angels in order to try to
express something of the wonder of that event.
The glory of the Lord shone round about
them.
Again, if I may go back to Stephen,
he spoke of God as the God of
glory, who appeared to Abraham in Mesopotamia.
The God of glory.
When we read of the glory of God
in the Bible, it means that there is
some unspeakable excellence to his attributes that manifests
itself in the sheath of light.
And God was known in the Old Testament,
you see, as the God of light, or
as light.
You remember, for example, Moses, also acting as
a shepherd in the backwoods, and he saw
one bush, and there was something strange about
it.
There was a light in it, a fire.
It was lit, and it was burning, but
it was not consumed.
And Lord, at last, a voice came out
of the bush, and we discover the one
speaking from the bush speaks of himself as,
I am that I am.
The great eternal Jehovah God manifested himself to
Moses as light, as the God of glory,
in a sheath of light.
When you come on in the history of
Israel, you'll find that the same thing happens.
Do you remember how the Israelites moved out
of Egypt, went through the deserts?
How were they guided?
Well, they were guided by night by a
pillar of fire, supernaturally kindled, supernaturally moving, moving
ahead of them when they were supposed to
move, stopping when they were supposed to stop,
guiding them through the pilgrim land towards the
land of promise.
God was the God of glory manifested in
light.
Now you see, this is what we have
here.
These humble shepherds are not simply addressed by
a messenger of God, but by an angel
of God.
Yeah, but wait a moment.
By an angel of God himself speaking in
the presence of God.
For the glory of God shining round about
them meant that God himself was present with
those shepherds.
God was personally there, personally present in the
neighborhood of Bethlehem that night as his angel
spokesman declared that the long-awaited Messiah, the
Lord, had arrived.
And we read that they were terrified.
Well, what do you expect?
There is a natural fear in the human
heart, a dread of the unseen and the
unfamiliar.
Sometimes it's like a snake coiled up and
sleeping, slumbering.
But when something happens, that fear is released,
and we just don't know where to turn.
But it is especially so when the all
-glorious Lord God of the universe manifests himself
to a frail human being and a sinner.
Those who had the vision of God, like
Moses, didn't know quite what to do.
God said to Moses, take your shoes off.
You're standing on holy ground.
When Isaiah saw the glory of God in
the temple, you remember, he said, ah, I'm
smiting my breast because I'm a man of
unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst
of a people of unclean lips.
Mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord
of hosts.
And right on at the book of the
Bible, when John, the writer of the Apocalypse,
the saint John, the man of love and
compassion, when he saw the glory of Jesus
Christ as it is portrayed in Revelation chapter
1, he says, I fell at his feet
as dead, stunned.
I couldn't move.
I couldn't talk.
I couldn't do anything.
Because of the glory of God.
They were terrified.
They're in good company.
Had they not been terrified, we would have
been questioning whether they had really seen an
angel at all.
Certainly the glory of the Lord.
But the very fact of their terror bespeaks
of the reality of the situation.
Have you got the setting?
A humble people.
And an angel comes to them.
And an angel announces to them that Christ
has been born.
But not a bare announcement.
An announcement beneath a canopy of a sheath
of Shekinah glory.
Compelling.
Assuring them that this was no dream.
But real.
The carol puts it so clearly.
While shepherds watched their flocks by night.
All seated on the ground.
I'm not sure whether that's true or not.
But the angel of the Lord came down
and glory shone around.
The setting in which the announcement was made.
Now the subject.
The content of the announcement itself.
I think it divides into an introduction.
And then an addition to the introduction.
Let's take it like that.
First of all.
One solitary angel makes his announcement.
Here he is.
The divine messenger first allayed the shepherds fears.
In these words 210.
The angel said to them do not be
afraid.
Now we take that all too easily.
And too cheaply.
And as if it were but an ordinary
statement.
But you see to somebody who is seeing
the glory of God.
That's not an ordinary statement.
Can a man see God and live?
Can a man drawn near to the Almighty
One.
The Holy One of Israel.
And live?
Part of the good news of great joy
that these angels are bringing to earth is
this.
No longer does sinner man need to cringe
before a holy God.
Because God has provided a mediator.
A Messiah.
The Lord.
The Savior.
His Son.
To stand between us.
And to bring us near.
Fear not he says.
Jesus has been born.
The Savior has come.
You don't need to fear as once you
did.
That is to have a kind of cringing.
Awful dreadful fear of hell.
Opening up for you.
Of course we still need to have that
other kind of fear.
A respect of the Holy One.
A respect for our Creator and our Savior.
But not the kind of cringing.
Soul destroying fear.
That puts us out of our mind.
And the divine messenger gradually affirmed the reason
for the command not to fear.
And he goes on to say I bring
you good news of great joy.
Now can you see the contrast there?
They were terrified.
To a terrified people he announces good news
not bad news.
God is near but God is not near
to judge, to crush, to damn, to condemn.
Good news of great joy to people who
are afraid.
Maybe some people in this very service this
morning who are afraid of God.
And afraid of death.
And afraid of judgment.
And afraid of eternity.
You've never known that there was a provision
whereby your fear can be taken away.
I want to announce it to you.
The first thing the angel said was this.
There's no need anymore to fear if you
believe what we tell you and receive whom
God has given.
God is the only one that can deal
with a basic fear of a sinner.
And he does it through Christ his Son
the Savior.
Now all that's but the introduction.
The angel's amplification of the message continues.
Now let's come to that.
The great event he says has actually taken
place that very day.
Today he says in the town of David
a Savior has been born.
It's a wonder they didn't know.
It's a wonder nobody told them.
How could they be so ignorant of it?
What do the angels know?
Where are they coming from?
What do the angels know what's going on
in Bethlehem?
They're watching their sheep.
They're guarding their sheep in the neighborhood of
Bethlehem.
Not all that far away.
What do the angels know?
Listen my friends.
It takes us an awful long time to
get it in.
To take it in.
Heaven knows more of what's going on down
here on earth than we know ourselves.
And if we could get that into our
thick skulls we would be able to meet
life much better.
Heaven knows more of what's going on down
here than we who live in the situation
actually know.
Heaven knew what these shepherds didn't know.
What no one in Bethlehem knew.
Had they known what was happening I'm sure
they would have found room for Joseph and
Mary somewhere other than in the inn.
But you see no one knew about Mary.
No one had ever heard about Mary in
Bethlehem.
Who knew about Mary of Nazareth?
She was an unknown quantity.
And whoever would have known that an angel
Gabriel had been dispatched to tell Mary that
she was going to be the mother of
the incarnate Lord.
No one on earth knew anything about her.
No one knew anything about Joseph there in
Bethlehem.
But God did.
See?
And God had arranged things just like this.
And he had caused that the whole region
should be taxed.
Using a pagan emperor to organize, I'm sorry,
to be registered, a census.
And he had arranged it just at this
time that Mary should be in Bethlehem.
Just at this time when the baby was
due.
In order that the word of the prophet
Micah should be fulfilled.
That in Bethlehem Ephrata he should come forth
who was to be the deliverer.
God knew all this you see.
God breaks the news to this angel and
to the others that may have been listening
through this angel to the shepherds all around
however many of them were listening.
Do you begin to see the wood for
the trees?
Do you see the emerging picture?
God Almighty has come down to these humblest
of men to stand in the background as
his herald angel announces that the Savior is
born.
And the time for dread, fear of lostness
is over.
The baby born to be Savior was identified
by the angel in these marvelous words as
Christ or Messiah the Lord.
I'm not going to dwell on that this
morning.
Not because it isn't important but you can't
say everything.
You can't dwell on everything that a passage
like this tells you it's too rich.
He was the anointed one.
He hasn't come from nowhere.
God has anointed him as prophet, priest and
king to do his saving work.
His messianic work.
And he's the Lord of all creation.
Destiny is in his hand.
Messiah the Lord has come as a babe.
He's born in Bethlehem.
The setting for the announcement, the subject of
it.
Now the last thing, the certainty or confirmation
offered to the hearers of this glorious news.
If you heard something like this out on
a cold wintry night keeping watch over a
few sheep, how would you feel?
Would you not be skeptical?
Would you not say, oh I must be
dreaming.
The frost is getting into my bones.
We usually say the heat is getting into
my head.
Well this is the other way around.
The cold is getting somewhere.
And we're really dreaming.
This thing's not real.
You know God is so gracious.
He knows our problems before we have them.
Certainly before we're aware of them.
Or can put them into words.
God gave them a sign.
This will be a sign to you.
You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling,
in strips of cloth.
I'm going back to the King James.
Swaddling clothes it says they're wrapped in strips
of cloth and lying in a manger.
Now the sign was as unexpectedly strange as
the glory was unspeakably brilliant.
In the words, unambiguous.
What a sign.
The angel announced, the angel announced that Messiah
had come.
That the Messiah was the Lord.
And here the angel is announcing this under
the canopy or in the sheath of the
outraying glory of God in the blackness of
those of those fields at night.
And yet this is what he goes on
to say.
You will find Messiah Christ the Lord as
a baby.
Doesn't make sense does it?
A baby wrapped up with cloths.
Not one cloth.
But with strips of cloths and lying where?
In a manger.
Christ the Lord wrapped up in strips of
cloths like a baby.
Lying in a manger like an unwanted thing.
Surely he could lie somewhere better than that.
Christ the Lord.
A baby in a manger.
Another thought of such a long-awaited person.
A person of divine qualifications being born as
a child had its own difficulties.
To conceive of his being born in Bethlehem
in that outlandish place was was really it
was unbelievable.
It could hardly be taken in unless you
knew the scriptures.
But to think of him lying in a
manger was something out of this world.
Well this is the sign said the angel.
This is the sign.
This is a sign for you.
I'm giving you a sign says the angel.
Heaven wants you to recognize him.
Heaven wants you to be able to find
him out.
You may find other children born in Bethlehem
tonight for all that.
But you won't find one just like this.
Wrapped in strips of cloth.
Lying not in a little cradle.
But in a manger.
This is the sign.
You won't find any other babe like this.
Lying in a manger.
Yet he is Christ the Lord.
Lying in a manger.
Now notice what happens at that point.
When I can almost see.
My imagination may be running away with me.
But I almost.
I almost hear the the shepherds say.
Oh please don't say any more.
This is too much for us.
And suddenly the lone.
The lone angel is accompanied by a crowd
who bear witness to the truthfulness of his
statement.
Thirteen fourteen.
Suddenly.
Nobody saw them coming.
But suddenly a great company of the heavenly
host appeared with the angel.
Along with the angel.
Praising God and saying.
Glory to God in the highest.
And on earth peace to men on whom
his favor dwells.
And you see what's happening.
Heaven has dispatched now a vast chorus of
unnumbered angels.
To glorify God.
And as it were to confirm the testimony
of that lone angel.
It's all true.
It sounds too good to be true.
But it's true.
Hence they're coming and singing.
After the original announcement by the lone angel
had been given.
You see.
If this great choir had come in the
first place.
It would have been a bit of an
anticlimax for the angel to announce that Jesus
was born.
But the crowd came after the announcement was
made.
And the initial shock had been received.
And the crowd of angels gather.
Oh God orders things so beautifully.
The crowd of angels come and they gather.
And they sing.
And they worship.
And it is all a kind of seal
upon the fact that what this solitary angel
has said.
Even though it sounds too good to be
true.
Is nothing else but truth.
And the angels together continue to amplify just
a little of the message that had been
given.
They've been told a lot already.
Albeit in shorthand form.
But the chorus of angels.
The choir of angels says glory to God
in the highest.
And on earth peace to men on whom
his favor dwells.
The birth of the Savior guarantees the glory
of God.
Not only demands that we give God glory
on account of it.
But the birth of this person guarantees that
God will be glorified.
Oh my friends this thrills my soul.
See wherever Jesus is preached and received and
obeyed.
There God will be glorified.
And since one day the whole universe will
receive him.
God will be glorified.
North to south.
East to west.
And there will be nothing in this universe.
But that it will dance to the glory
of God.
The coming of the Savior guarantees that men
who have given themselves to trivialities and to
sin will be redeemed.
And made anew.
And the feature of their new creation and
regeneration will be this.
They'll begin to give glory to God.
And at last they will do so forever
and ever.
Peace on earth.
On earth peace to men on whom his
favor dwells.
There was a kind of peace that they
made much of in those days.
The Pax Romana.
Because Rome made it impossible for one part
of the empire to rise up against another.
Very much as it is in Poland this
morning.
By sheer power.
Kept down any trouble.
Kept it under the mild might of Rome.
Kept down all turbulence and rebellion.
That was the Pax Romana.
But even the pagans like Epictetus wrote in
that very first century.
I quote.
While the emperor may give peace on land
and sea, he is unable to give peace
from passion.
Peace from grief.
Peace from envy.
He cannot give peace of heart for which
man yearns more than for outward peace.
But you see, Jesus brings us peace of
heart.
We need not fear.
And not only peace of heart.
One day his peace shall cover the earth
as the waters cover the sea.
When he returns to reign and complete what
he has begun.
The sign of which the angel spoke.
The song with which the heavenly host underscored
what the lone angel had announced.
And lastly, the summons that was implied in
that announcement.
It's not written here in so many words.
But it is clearly implied.
And what the lone angel announced.
And what was confirmed by the chorus of
angels was virtually an invitation.
To check and see.
Why do you think God gave them a
sign?
Why did God announce through the angel.
Look, this is a sign to you.
You shall find the bed wrapped in strips
of cloth lying in a manger.
Why did God say that?
We see God wraps up his invitation sometimes.
And we've got to pause and see what
he's getting at.
He wants us to think.
You shall find the bed.
Well that means that God was expecting them
to look for him.
It was an invitation to look and to
check up and to see.
Is the angel telling the truth?
You see, God wanted them to discover the
thing for themselves.
So we read in verse 15.
When the angels had left them and gone
into heaven, the shepherds got the point.
And they said one to another.
Let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing
that has happened.
Which the Lord has told us about.
Let's go and see.
Let's go and check whether this sign is
really divinely given.
Is it genuine?
Is it true?
They not only found a baby there.
We read they hurried off and they found
Mary and Joseph and the baby who was
lying in a manger.
But they not only found a baby, but
a baby born that very day.
A baby clad as the angel had said
and laid, laid, believe it or not, in
a manger.
And this was the sign.
Nowhere else in Bethlehem could they find a
baby laid in the manger born that day.
But here they found one.
And that's exactly what the angel had said.
That was the sign.
And so we read in verses 17 to
18.
When they had seen him, they spread the
word concerning what they had been told.
Or what had been told them about the
child.
And all who heard it were amazed at
what the angel said to them.
Of course.
See, having recognized that this is true and
the sign was genuine.
And it was exactly as the angel had
announced.
And as the chorus of angels had confirmed.
And as the glory of the Lord around
the whole seemed to underscore as being right
and proper and true.
They found it just as the announcement had
been made.
The sign was genuine.
Jesus was born.
Christ Messiah has come and he's Lord.
In verse 20, the passage ends like this.
Not only did the shepherds tell everybody about
what they had seen and what they had
heard and how they had proved the sign
to be genuine.
But the shepherds returned home now.
See them going back to the fields.
The shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for
all the things they had heard and seen.
Which were just as they had been told.
Just as they had been told.
The sign was genuine.
Just as they had been told.
Now I'm closing.
Everything that is of God ultimately leads men
who recognize and accept the fact to worship
him.
To worship him.
Genuinely divine action kindles devotion and a spirit
of worship when it is recognized.
And notice in this case the transformation is
considerable.
We see it in the shepherds.
The shepherds first appear as terrified.
Terrified.
Then we see them as inquisitive inquirers into
the sign that had been given them.
Into the truthfulness of the announcement and the
real significance of the sign.
When they found that to be true then
they become witnesses and heralds and they told
everybody they met about it.
But now they go home worshiping.
Singing.
Not for others to hear but for God
to hear.
Praising neither men nor angels.
But the Lord God almighty.
The architect of it all.
He who planned it all.
He who conceived it all.
And he who out of sheer unadulterated love
for a lost benighted world sent forth his.
Hallelujah.
Where are you this morning?
Terrified?
Still wondering whether the sign is true?
Never seen how they checked up?
Never appreciated their testimony?
They even left their flock that night.
Shepherds don't often do that.
They left their sheep.
And they went to see that this thing
was true.
And they found it was.
And it made worshippers of them.
The truth transformed the men.
And the humblest of the humble joined the
angels.
In spirit of worship and praise and glory.
You belong to that choir.
Are you in this choir this Christmas time?
What's in your heart?
Oh mighty God gather us in under your
baton.
And make us dance and make us sing
and make us worship.
Give us such a knowledge of the Christ.
That we shall know him.
Whom to know is life from the dead.
Let us pray.
Father we come in the name of your
dear son to ask that you will bring
us along the way to such a an
experience and such a knowledge of yourself as
will make worshippers of us.
Men and women boys and girls who have
lost ourselves in you.
In the praise of your name.
In the declaration of your glory.
In the expression of your grace.
Because we have found you.
In the Christ who has found us.
Go with us into this new week we
pray.
And help us to see that your glory
is undimmed wherever our pathway may lead us.
Into places that are lonely and dark and
difficult.
Or wherever.
God of glory shine round about us.
And let your angels assure us of your
will and your purpose.
May the confirmation to our souls of your
presence with us.
In Emmanuel be such as will keep the
song in our hearts and in our souls
forever.
Amen.