The proclamation of the birth of Jesus was not first made to kings or religious elites, but to those outside the community – a group of shepherds watching their sheep at night. This important piece of the Christmas story teaches us that God’s heart has always been for the outsiders, and it still is today.
BIG ANNOUNCEMENTS
Today we’ll talk about the “unlikely characters” who received the very first proclamation of the birth of Jesus. Other than those in the “delivery room” (the stable), the first people to hear that the Savior of the world had come to earth were not exactly who you might expect.
We love big announcements! We make a big deal about being sure everyone assembles to hear the news together at the same time. We make an announcement that there will be an announcement. We let the press know; we send out invitations; we post a statement on a gilded easel outside the palace.
Well – maybe no gilded easel for most of us; but that’s the way the British Royal Family did it in 2013, when Prince George (third in line for the British throne) was born to Prince William and Kate. Reporters had been camping outside the hospital to get the first limpse of the new arrival. Meanwhile, the water in the fountains at Trafalgar Square was turned purple and blue for royalty. People from all over the world gathered outside Buckingham Palace to await the news of the birth.
But at the birth of THE Royal Family, there was no fanfare, no adoring fans, no gilded easels. As we established last week, God chose to do things differently. The birth announcement was first made via an angelic chorus who sang about the birth of Jesus to a tiny audience of lowly shepherds.
We have greatly romanticized this idea of the shepherds, making them part of our tiny nativity scenes we set under our Christmas trees. At the time Jesus was born, however, shepherding was not an exciting career choice. Were shepherds necessary? Absolutely. How else would people have lamb to eat at Passover? Did anyone want to invite shepherds over for dinner? Not a chance!
While the shepherds were a common part of the Jewish culture, they were outsiders. They spent most of their time outside the city with their sheep rather than at home with their families or neighbors. Yet, as we will see, God had reasons for announcing the birth of His Son to the shepherds.
The ANGEL’S Announcement
LUKE 2:8-15 8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, 14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” 15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”
Michelle and I once went to a concert where, at a high point of a song, what I thought was just a dark background behind the band became a wall of the brightest of lights shining out at the audience. It was blinding – shocking – and exhilarating! I remember thinking, “How cool is this?”
In Luke’s narrative, the shepherds’ ordinary night was interrupted by blinding light, the very glory of God lighting up their night sky. As I read this, I realize that my memorable experience pales in comparison with what these shepherds saw! I don’t even remember what concert we were at; but, I guarantee these shepherds never forgot their moment!
What was a typical night for a shepherd?
Because of the constant threat of predators, especially at night, a shepherd could not afford to sleep through the night and hope for the best with his flock. The shepherds took turns sleeping so someone was always awake to keep watch over the defenseless, sleeping sleep.
When did you last try to stay awake through the middle of the night with not much to do except watch the glow of a fire? Imagine this being your nightly ritual. You try to fight drooping eyelids for one more hour until time to wake the crew for their next shift. You try to keep your mind alert, even though it wants to shut down after a long day of traveling the hilltops with the sheep.
AND – BOOM! A bright light shines in the middle of the darkness. An angel appears! I think we all would be as terrified as the shepherds were.
However, the shepherds’ response to the angelic appearance and the singing of angels is much different from Zechariah’s. Last week we saw that Zechariah was “gripped with fear” by the startling appearance. He asked, “How can I be sure?” The shepherds respond with “Let’s go see!”
Rather than doubt and disbelief, these shepherds – these outsiders – immediately accept the announcement of the angels and want to go meet the Messiah in a manger. Perhaps they are thinking, “This is our kind of King!”
The Kingdom of God Welcomes Outsiders
There are many angles to this story, and many connections to be made on this theme of the shepherd. Abraham, Moses and David were shepherds. In prophecy the Israelites waited for a shepherd to gather the lost sheep. I’ll save that for Christmases to come.
Today I want to focus our attention on only one thing – how God so often comes to the outcast and the lowly. God’s Kingdom has always welcomed outsiders. Rather than making an announcement of this royal birth to Herod or the religious elites, God sends His angels to the hillside where the sheep sleep and the shepherds try not to. These guys who go days without bathing – who go weeks or months without going into the city and talking with anyone – are the ones God invites into His inner circle with this important proclamation.
This just sets the table for how the rest of Jesus’s life will be characterized by an affinity to the outsider. When He calls His disciples He includes uneducated men, one of whom is a political zealot and another (Matthew) who is a hated tax collector. He calls Zaccheus down from a tree and eats with him and his fellow sinners and tax collectors at the party he throws. Jesus speaks to the five-time divorcée woman at the well. He welcomes the thief on the cross into paradise. And finally, when He is resurrected, it is people who are widely viewed as “second-class” who first attest to His being risen from the dead – WOMEN. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that God chose to reveal the birth of His Son first to shepherds rather than people of importance or renown.
The fact that God comes first to those outside the city gates or outside the established community relationships points beautifully to the nature of the Kingdom of God, where everybody is invited to the celebration. Your money, your status, or your hygiene habits don’t matter. We all receive an invitation to come and see.
Outsiders in Our Midst
God’s all-inclusive invitation has major implications for our church, our ministries, and how we are going to reach our community. Ministering to those on the outside requires sacrifice! We must sacrifice our expectations, our time, our money, and even our comfort.
We often come to expect a certain type of person in church. We may be tolerant of people who don’t fit the mold, but we also may view them as an exception and not the rule. And sometimes we have expectations we want them to figure out because “that’s how we do things in church.”
I recently had a conversation with a man who was speaking about another church and, in a dismissive way, said he wondered if “all of the town’s druggies and drunks” went to that church. It just wasn’t who he expected to see in a church. While he meant this as a negative evaluation of the church, I instantly wished the same thing could be said of First Baptist! I want our church to be a place where the broken and the broken-hearted can come for physical and spiritual help.
Don’t get me wrong. If you are new and came to First Baptist with a church background, we are so glad you are here! But I also want first-time guests who are struggling with messy lives (drugs or alcohol, or broken relationships) to come to us. I want to be a place where people who don’t even know they need a Savior come wandering in here because they know that what they are doing isn’t working. That’s who Jesus came to save, and I want to be a part of that rescue effort.
I want our pews to be filled with people who don’t have it all together, who don’t yet know the books of the Bible or what the little numbers in the text mean.
I want the opportunity to keep talking to teens about their futures and how even if their parents can’t hold a job and smoke weed every day, that doesn’t have to be their future. God has bigger things in store for them if they are willing to follow Him.
After our new van arrives and we begin Van Ministry, I expect our building will have kids show up who are a bit rough around the edges. They might be dressed in dirty clothes or have dirty hair. They won’t know they shouldn’t run in church. They might use language we wouldn’t allow our kids to use. They won’t be typical church kids.
But these are the very people Jesus came to this world to save!
These are the outsiders, those on the corners of society, those who don’t fit into our preconceived ideas of what church people should be like. Jesus didn’t spend all His time with the religious people who thought they had it all together, No, He came for those who clearly fell outside that subculture. And if that’s who Jesus spent His time with, then that’s who we need to spend time reaching.
I understand this could make some things uncomfortable.
- We might see people behave in ways that don’t line up with the Bible because they don’t know what the Bible says.
- We might have youth coming to church high or youth damaging church property.
- We might have some difficult situations to navigate.
- We might even hear people in the community saying, “I don’t know what happened to First Baptist, but they have all the town’s drunks going there.”
I hope you join me in welcoming those challenges. In fact, will you join me in praying that God would bring these outsiders to our church? I want this message to be more than lip service to what a church is supposed to be. I want us to become the hospital for hurting people that we are called to be.
OUR TURN TO SHARE THIS ANNOUNCEMENT WITH OTHERS
- The shepherds received some incredible news that surprising night; but they believed, and they went, and they saw the Christ child with their own eyes.
- And rather than keeping that information to themselves, they went out spreading the Good news of the birth of the Messiah.
- And this job of spreading the announcement that Jesus came to this earth has become our job. We have heard this incredible news. We have encountered Jesus ourselves, and we have the job of spreading this incredible news to everyone we come in contact with.
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