Luke 2:8-20 Angels and Shepherds pt 2
Good morning! Turn with me in your Bibles to Luke chapter 2, verses 8-20, page 857 in the pew Bibles.
We read this text last week and talked about the angels and their message and this week we are going to focus on the shepherds and their response. So let’s look at our text again.
8 And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. 10 And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 12 And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”
15 When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” 16 And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. 17 And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. 18 And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. 19 But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. 20 And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
Let’s pray.
Last time I started off with the reminder from Scripture that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. That’s found in James 4:6, and in 1 Peter 5:5 which are both quotes from the Greek version of Proverbs 3:34.
Our text here shows us that God is serious about his issue. The angel of the Lord, accompanied by the heavenly host of angels was sent to certain poor shepherds in fields where they lay keeping their sheep… They didn’t go to the king of Israel, at the time Israel had no king just a Roman governor, they didn’t go to the High Priest at the temple in Jerusalem, they didn’t go to the Sanhedrin, the ruling class of the Jewish people. They went to shepherds out in the field keeping watch over their flocks at night.
Have you ever wondered why God would choose shepherds to be the first recipients of the Good News of great joy that was for all the people?
I’m not going to pretend to give you a definitive answer as to why God chose shepherds, but it think that there are some things, some common themes that might lead us in the right direction.
I think the first hint is found in Psalm 23:1,
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. 2 He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. 3 He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. 4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
The Lord chose shepherds maybe because He is a shepherd, Jesus said in John 10 that He is the Good Shepherd, 1 Peter 5:4 calls Jesus the Chief Shepherd, and Hebrews 13 calls Jesus the Great Shepherd of the sheep.
Choosing shepherds is also consistent for the Lord. Have you ever heard of King David?
The angel Gabriel told Mary back in chapter one of Luke that the Lord God would give her Son the throne of His father David. Do you remember what David’s occupation was before he was anointed king? He was a shepherd… from Bethlehem… where these shepherds were… in these same fields…
Shepherds were not high on the social scale, it was a trade you were born into not one you aspired to. Shepherds were considered ceremonially unclean and their work kept them away from going to the Temple for weeks at a time so that they could be made ceremonially clean. This was a humble profession and is a clear demonstration of God opposing the proud but giving grace to the humble.
I think God may have chosen shepherds, men of low position, so that we all could identify with them. Paul wrote about that idea in 1 Corinthians 1:26-31:
26 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. 30 And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”
I think probably every Christmas sermon ever that had to do with the shepherds said these same things.
But I’d like to look a little closer at what the shepherds did and if they were really chosen so that we could relate to them in their humility, maybe we can learn to follow their example as well.
First of all, to start out, what were they doing?
They weren’t meditating and plumbing the depths of their understanding of the universe, they weren’t glowing in the dark and levitating, they were just out there doing their job and God shows up. They were doing their daily routine and the angel of the Lord appears to them. Again, there’s nothing mysterious about this, it just reinforces that it wasn’t the wise and the learned and the worthy that God chose to speak to, just ordinary guys doing ordinary things. And if God chose to use ordinary guys like them, then there’s hope for us.
Last week we talked about the angel proclaiming the Good News that the Savior had been born in Bethlehem. Then the heavenly host shows up and declares what the results of the Good News would be: glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among those with whom God is pleased.
And at this proclamation of the gospel, what do the shepherds do?
The very first thing they did was they believed the message. They believed the gospel, the Good News. They believed what the angel said, that a Savior had been born to them in Bethlehem.
Verse 15 says, When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.”
Faith was the first step in their journey, it was by faith that the shepherds sought out the baby in the manger. But they didn’t just have faith, they didn’t just believe the Good News and then just go back to what they were doing. Their faith prompted action.
16 And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger.
They ran into town, found Mary and Joseph and the baby, but that wasn’t their only action. When they got there they told everybody there what the angel had said, they shared their story.
17 And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. 18 And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. 19 But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart.
There we get another glimpse into Mary’s personality. It may have been Mary that told Luke all of these details, she was still alive when this Gospel was written.
Mary, Luke, the shepherds, they are all doing the same thing, sharing their story, how God interrupted their normal with the News of great joy that shall be for all the people. And where the angel was the first evangelist, the shepherds followed in his footsteps.
20 And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
The angel had told the shepherds about the Good News of great joy that shall be for all the people, but how were all the people supposed to find out about the Good News of great joy? It was through them!
The shepherds, just like a baby born of a virgin in a manger, were God’s surprising vehicles of grace. The shepherds went back to their fields, back to their families and friends and told them all that they had heard and seen, they testified to all that God had done, they shared what they had witnessed.
The shepherds are not unlike us. Think about when you came to faith in Christ Jesus. Most of us were going about our ordinary, just doing life when God interrupted. Like the shepherds we believed the Good News that a Savior had been given to us, and like the shepherds we must act on that faith and tell others what we have heard and seen.
That’s how evangelism works! No one is going to hear the Good News of great joy that shall be for all the people if those who have experienced it don’t tell them.
People are not lining up at the door just to hear me preach the gospel, hungry to hear about sin and salvation, but our friends and families, our coworkers and classmates need to hear our stories of how God interrupted our normal with the gospel. If God could use those guys to tell the world about His Son, He can certainly use all of us!
So let’s pray for opportunities to tell our stories, and let’s always be ready with an answer for the hope that we have within us so, like those shepherds, we too can be surprising vehicles of God’s grace.
May his Name be ever praised!
Amen.
