Pastor Tim continues our series, “the Weary World Rejoices.” This week, we will look at the hope we discover in the Shepherds’ story.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
Well, good evening and welcome to Steadfast. I am so glad to be here with you tonight as we pick up where we left off last night with our Advent wreath lighting. We looked at the story of the shepherds. I think for many of us, it’s one of our favorite stories to go back to at Christmastime to think about the angels appearing to the shepherds to tell them good news. We often refer to the Sunday that we revisit that story as the Sunday of joy because the shepherds had such great joy, and that’s what we’re going to think about tonight: the shepherds’ joy in the midst of a weary world. So let’s come before our God and pray that He would guide us and let us experience His joy, and then we’ll dig right in.
Let’s pray. Father, thank you for this evening. Thank you for your word. Thank you for your love and how you have rescued us, that you have brought your peace to this earth. Lord, would you help us to feel your presence and to feel your joy that we might share it with others? And as we reflect on this story—a story of joy—would you help us to truly feel immersed in that joy? We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
We are about a month away from Inauguration Day here in the United States. That’s one of the few things in this very uncertain political season that I can say for certain: we will inaugurate our next president in about a month. We do that every four years. We always have Inauguration Day on the 20th or 21st of January. When we do that, we assemble the allegedly best minds of the country—the most important people of the country—and they all assemble together so that we can watch as the president is either inaugurated for the first time or renewed for a second term on that day.
In that ceremony, there’s much joy and celebration, there’s pomp and circumstance, and there are all evening balls celebrating what has happened. Notably, a lot of it is about assembling really important people together. We want those who are important and powerful to witness the event. If you think about the little platform where the president will take the oath of office, you always see former presidents and some of the most high-ranking members of Congress all right there, other important dignitaries, so that they can see the event and take part in the joy and testify to it.
In our own lives, we probably think a lot the same way: if we’re going to do something really important, we want the people we think are most important to be around, whether they’re people we’re close to that are important to us or they’re just people in our community or our world that we want to see witness what we’re about to do or accomplish. That’s not how God thinks.
You see, the story of the shepherds is a remarkable one because God could have assembled whomever He wanted to witness the birth of the Savior—God in the flesh. The Father could have called the most important kings of the world together and said, “Come and see as the King of Heaven is born in this world.” That isn’t how God thought, because the joy of Christmas isn’t like the joy of Inauguration Day where it’s for the important dignitaries and the people favored by whoever is elected. The joy of Christmas is for everyone, and we see that very clearly as we dig into this passage tonight.
So let’s turn to Luke chapter 2, verse 8. Luke writes, “In the same region there were shepherds out in the field keeping watch over their flock by night. 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. 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. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.’ The joy of Christmas is for everyone.”
If you think about that moment as the angel appears—as the equivalent of Inauguration Day—here Emmanuel, God with us, has appeared in the world. God doesn’t call the important dignitaries of the world. He doesn’t even call the important religious leaders who maintain the temple and taught His word. He goes to the shepherds. Now, for us, that seems natural, but it’s really quite remarkable because think about the magnitude of what He was proclaiming when He had His angels go and tell the shepherds that Jesus was born, that the long-promised Messiah, the promise of rescue that goes back to the original fall at the very beginning of time, had been fulfilled, that God would now dwell with His people, that peace would come.
He gave it to the shepherds. Even the way that the announcement is phrased is that of a ruler coming into the world—the sort of announcement that would normally go with great pomp and circumstance. Because you see, the Roman world in which this took place would often proclaim that Caesar, Caesar Augustus, was Lord and Savior of his people. But as the angels appeared to the shepherds, they turned that on its head. They said, “Yes, there is a Lord, and yes, there is a Savior.” That’s not who the world says it is. It’s Jesus, this baby wrapped in swaddling cloths. This was an announcement unlike any other announcement that had ever been made. The shepherds were the ones that got to witness it.
And it wasn’t just an announcement. They didn’t get a little telegram from the angels as it were. Notice what happens as we go on into verse 13. It says, “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased.’” If you think again about all the ceremony around a new president, or if you think about other places and times, the ceremony around a new king or a new queen or even an important leader in some organization—there’s all the celebration, all the speeches, and then there’s the choirs and the music celebrating this new ruler. Caesar would often be accompanied by choirs who would sing of his greatness to the people.
Well, the king had come, and the choir sang, but the choir didn’t serenade the important dignitaries. Once again, the choir serenaded the shepherds. And the choir sang of something far more amazing than what Rome could ever promise. Because Rome promised peace. Rome promised what people want in life, but it promised it through a rule of iron that would force people into peace. Historians often call that the Pax Romana, the peace of Rome.
That peace of Rome was a peace achieved by the threat that if you opposed Rome, if you didn’t go along with what they called peace, you would die. That’s not exactly the most cheerful kind of peace. It wasn’t necessarily a peace that fills us with warmth and joy, but it was a peace. Not that many people rebelled because they didn’t want to die, and Rome had the power to back up its threats. If you opposed Rome, you would die.
But the angels proclaimed God’s peace on earth—that those with whom God favored, those who would celebrate the Savior, they would experience peace, but a very different kind of peace. That was what the choirs were singing about as they praised God. It was a song of praise to God and a song of salvation, of joy to those who heard it.
Now, when something like that happens, there were already a few that had an idea of what was going on. Mary and Joseph certainly knew at least a bit of what was going on. But the Bible sets a standard for testimony. You see, the Bible says you should have a demonstration that was dependent on more than one witness that something was going to happen.
For me, maybe it’s a little bit like when I hear a meteorologist forecast a white Christmas. I think most of us love a white Christmas. We play the song “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” every year, and it is beautiful when on Christmas Day you see the snow and all the trees, and covering the Christmas lights they twinkle. But here in St. Louis, at least, we only have about a 20% chance of a white Christmas. It doesn’t happen most of the time. The last time it happened, in fact, was in 2017, so a few years ago. And even then it wasn’t a huge amount of snow. But at least we could say we had a white Christmas.
But when I hear someone forecast that, since it doesn’t happen every year, what do I do? I go and look up other weather reports. I want to know if multiple meteorologists agree that we’re going to have a white Christmas. Is the report true? Now, how much more so if someone says, for example, “We’re going to have a white April Fool’s Day.” Well, then I really want proof because I know more than likely it isn’t true. We question everyone’s character on April Fool’s Day because even the people who tell the truth all the rest of the year often are busy trying to pull our legs. So there’s lots of reason to want proof.
Deuteronomy 19:15 speaks of that call for having multiple witnesses. For example, when someone would be charged with a crime, it says here: “A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established.” Or, for example, when the spies were sent into the Promised Land, there were multiple spies that went in so they could survey and they could testify together. Their testimony was not the most helpful, but they did testify to what they saw there.
Over and over again, the Bible assumes that on something really important, you want multiple people to witness it. And here God had chosen those shepherds to be that secondary witness alongside Mary and Joseph. But He chose shepherds.
Now, for us, we think of shepherds and we think of the Christmas story or we think of how the Lord is our shepherd. We think of shepherds as wonderful people, people who hold lambs in their arms and are a lot like Jesus because Jesus is our shepherd and He watches over us, and He goes after the one lost sheep, and so on and so forth. But you see, in the time that God chose these shepherds to hear this message, they weren’t just normal everyday people. For society, they would have been viewed as less than normal. They were viewed as the riffraff, the troublemakers of society. People looked at shepherds and thought of those who had no regard for property. They’d just wander wherever they wanted to feed their animals, and they didn’t care if they were taking someone else’s land.
Many people accused shepherds of being thieves. There was serious doubt raised as to whether you could even trust the testimony of a shepherd. They were viewed as no good. That’s who God chose. He didn’t just say, “I don’t need the kings of the world to be here to testify to what my Son is doing here.” No, the Father said, “I’m going to take the people who are least likely to be credible witnesses, and I’m going to bring them in, and I’m going to showcase the power and majesty of heaven for them.”
Think about this for a moment. When you think about what Jesus accomplished and how Jesus came and came as the true King—the King that was far more important than Caesar, who was far more important than all the kings in history, who was far more important than every president, who was far more important than any leader we can imagine—we think of the two crucial turning points in that story.
Perhaps—well, every point in Jesus’ life was crucial—but you think about the birth of Jesus, God coming into the world in flesh, and then the crucifixion, Jesus taking on the penalty of sin for us. What do we notice? Commentators note that when we look at the Gospels, what we see is that both at the beginning of Jesus’ life and at the end of His life, He was surrounded not by those who would normally be viewed as heroes or even average people. He was surrounded by thieves—thieves on the cross—and people often accused of thievery who would hear of His birth. Those were the people that God chose to bring around the Savior, the King of the Universe, because God wanted to make very clear in this act, in this coming into the world with God with us, that God with us doesn’t mean God with us for those who measure up, God with us for those who are important, God with us for those who have the right titles or authority. God with us means God with all of us, with His creation, but those who least deserve it. God with us, you, and God with me.
We see in this a hint of the plans that God has—that He doesn’t select even the most important people in His people. No, He takes the least important, and that would speak to then the expansion of Jesus’ kingdom. This was not about merely restoring Israel; this was about restoring all of the world, all of the universe. Listen to Peter’s reflection in Acts chapter 10, as he went and started to proclaim the gospel to those who were not Jewish, who were not part of the original people of Israel. Peter said, “Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears Him and does what is right is acceptable to Him.”
In some sense, our question shouldn’t be, “Why would God choose the shepherds?” Our question, as we reflect on the miracle of Christmas and what God has accomplished, is “Why would He choose us? Why would God choose to share the good news with anyone who doesn’t deserve it?” And one thing I can say is that I don’t deserve it, and that none of us deserve it, but God chooses to share that good news with us anyway.
Paul writes in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, “For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Not many were powerful. Not many were noble of birth.” That describes us, too. As Paul wrote to the people in Corinth, and they had started to feel important because they were part of the Christians—they had the truth—Paul says, “Well, wait a second here. Remember, you weren’t important.”
The importance that we have isn’t something we’ve earned. It isn’t something about our earthly status. What makes us important? The only thing that makes us important is that God loves us, that God has chosen us, and that’s the most important, wonderful thing. But it’s completely an act of God’s. Do we really feel the impact of that?
As we read this story of the shepherds and we think about how they responded with joy to this, do we think about that and think, “For one, wow, these shepherds aren’t really the people that we probably would have chosen. We could probably think of a thousand people that would have been better for God to choose if we only could plan it out for them,” because we’d think of the people that we thought would somehow convey more powerfully what was going on.
But then when we take it further and we think about He did that so that as we see those shepherds, we can look at whatever failings are in our lives or whatever success or lack of success we have and realize that that is irrelevant to the fact that Jesus has come to save us. That’s all the more reason for joy.
Our response to the message of the shepherds should be simply joy. Why do we associate joy with the shepherds? Because they get this, and they have a contagious joy. Take a look as we go on to the rest of chapter 2 of Luke, verse 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.’ And they went with haste and they found Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in a manger. When they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them.”
Now, presumably these shepherds were told that a baby had been born in Bethlehem. Presumably, though, they then had to go and search for that baby. Unlike the wise men that were told and were guided by a star, the shepherds aren’t said to have been guided by anything other than this announcement of the angels. But they heard it, and what do they do? They went with haste—we’re told—they ran to Bethlehem and said, “We need to actually see what the angels have said because this is amazing.” Nothing like this could have possibly ever happened before in their lives. They’d seen the heavenly choir singing, and they’d heard about the salvation that had been promised for hundreds of generations.
They knew what they needed to do. They knew they needed to go. They needed to see that baby and they needed to celebrate what had happened. And so they went with haste, and presumably, they went through Bethlehem. Bethlehem wasn’t a big town, so this is quite possible to do. But they had to go into the different stalls and look and try to find where there was a manger that had a baby in it. And then they arrived. They were so excited. There was the king—not as we imagine a king, not with a royal throne room and attendants all around to celebrate the birth of the heir to the world. No. He was in a lowly manger surrounded by these witnesses that would testify to His birth, who were very lowly themselves.
After the long wait had come, they had heard the angels sing Gloria. Glory to God. We know in St. Louis what it is to have a long wait and to hear Gloria singing, although it’s not quite the same. About a year ago, it felt like everywhere you went you heard Gloria, but it wasn’t Gloria in Excelsis Deo. It was Gloria because we have won the Stanley Cup, and Gloria was playing all over the city when the St. Louis Blues won that Cup. And there was excitement—even people like myself, I know this is almost heresy to admit but someone who doesn’t follow hockey closely—it was exciting. You couldn’t help but be excited.
Here was an achievement for a city that had occurred, and there were fireworks going off and everyone was happy, and you could just drive around for days afterwards and constantly you heard Gloria playing. That was for a long-awaited Stanley Cup trophy. How much more so, though, imagine those shepherds. They didn’t just hear some song Gloria that was supposed to bring luck, that was supposed to allow a hockey championship to occur. They heard Gloria—their Gloria—to their glory to God being sung by the heavenly host. They didn’t have to drive by a car with the window down. They heard the angels proclaiming it from heaven, and they responded with joy—overwhelming joy.
We have their story recorded now in Scripture. As we read it, we’re called to have that same excitement—excitement greater than whatever we had when the Blues won or whatever other team we might root for or whatever other victories we might want in this life. The greatest victory we could ever hope for—the longest-awaited victory—was accompanied by the most wonderful refrain of Gloria.
Let us ask ourselves: are we like those shepherds to those around us? As we go around, just as the people took note that the shepherds were rejoicing and had this joy because they had encountered the angels and they’d heard about the good news of the coming of the Messiah, is that the way that people take note of us? Do people say, “Wow, there’s Tim, there’s you, with great joy because the Messiah has come and we’ve been rescued,” or in this world that does often feel weary, do we just feed our weariness instead? Do people encounter us and see people who are weary because we’re focused on what’s gone wrong and what isn’t the way we want it to be, and the things that we’re agonizingly waiting for—the second coming of Jesus? Or even when we’re weary, do people see the joy that we have because we know that Jesus is coming again?
It’s not always easy. It wasn’t easy for the shepherds. They hadn’t had easy lives. And as they went back, they knew they were going back to those difficult lives. But they went back praising God because they knew what God had accomplished for them. And so even as they went back into the weariness, back into the cold and the dark, back into the uncertainties of a job in which they would continue to be viewed poorly, they went back praising God.
Take a look at verse 20. It says, “The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had seen and heard, as it had been told to them.” That’s what they did. They went, and they rejoiced. May that be us.
As we go into this Christmas in a year in which many, if not all, of us feel weary, let that be us. As we go through the rest of life, let that be us. And let’s take that excitement we feel in a momentary victory in sports or in politics or in our careers or whatever else. Let us take that and let that be utterly exceeded by the amount of joy that we feel when we realize that like the shepherds, we should ask, “Why should the King of the universe proclaim His kingdom and invite us into it? Why should the King of the universe save us and love us?”
As we wrestle with that, let us have that joy—not joy because we’re ignoring what’s hard in this world, because I don’t think that’s what the shepherds were doing, but joy because we know that the one who has come has saved us and that He will come again. May that be the joy that we show this Christmas.
Would you pray with me please? Father, sometimes it’s hard to have joy. Many of us have lost loved ones. Many of us have struggled in jobs or lack a job entirely right now. Many of us don’t know what 2021 holds. We get so focused on that weariness, on our tiredness, on things that pull at us in this world that we read this story, and we think about these shepherds and we think about how wonderful it was for them. But Lord, tonight I pray that you remind each and every one of us of how wonderful this news is for us.
If we feel unworthy, we can be reminded that You came for us. If we’re getting our joy or seeking our joy elsewhere, those joys pale in comparison to the joy that the shepherds celebrated. Lord, the wonderful, amazing love You have shown us, and Lord, as we go into this Christmas season, would You help us to show it? Would You help us to feel it as we recognize that You have sent Your Spirit into the world, that everyone who would confess the name of Jesus can go forward with the joy of knowing that we are citizens of the kingdom, that we are Your children?
We thank You for the joy that You give us, and we pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, thank you for being here tonight. I do hope that you will join us for everything that’s coming at Little Hills over the next couple of weeks as we go into Christmas. It’s going to be a truly wonderful time to share together. Next week, we’ll be digging into the story of the angels themselves as we think about our preparations for Christmas as we wrap up this Advent series. Then we’re also going to have our Advent wreath lighting one more Sunday, this coming Sunday. We have a Christmas Eve service. There is so much coming.
So I do hope that you’ll come back Sunday night for the Advent wreath lighting, that you’ll come back Monday as we go back to the weary world that rejoices because of the message that the angels came and shared with us. I hope that you’ll share this message—that if you’ve appreciated it tonight, that you’d give it a like, that you’d leave a comment, that you would share it on your Facebook or your YouTube or by email or by phone, because I think all of us need to be reminded of where our true source of joy comes from.
You can help just as the shepherds went out and people heard them proclaiming the message that God had given them. We too can proclaim together the message that we’ve been thinking about tonight from God’s Word. Please do let me know if there’s any way I could be praying for you. You can shoot me an email at the email address on screen. I would love to hear from you. You can also leave a comment below in the comments for a prayer request so that others can join you in praying. We can all pray together because as those who have that joy, as those who respond to the message the angels proclaimed, we know that our God is with us, that our God has rescued us.
So please do come back next week. We’ll pick back up; we’ll think more about that joy and we’ll prepare for the Christmas week that is coming. I hope you have a blessed week, and I look forward to seeing you then. Thank you for joining me tonight.