Angels & Shepherds

I. Introduction
A. Review
1. Joseph and Mary had traveled to Bethlehem (and it was a little town) but because of the census there was no room for them, so they had to squeeze into someone’s modest house.
2. And Mary’s time came and she gave birth to baby Jesus wrapped him in strips of cloth and laid him in a feeding trough filled with hay.
B. Luke 2:8–21 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. 21 And at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.
II. Grand opening
A. Grand opening (new store, bridge, building, Apple product)
1. Balloons, flashy signs, marching bands, laser beams, spotlights into the sky, beautiful girls, VIPs
2. Well, that’s a little bit like what we have here, only far better, for the One who engineered this show was the one who invented sunsets and volcanoes and auroras, and who makes the sun glisten on the ice-covered branches like He did three days ago.
B. And so, the grand opening of the age of Christ is accompanied by much more spectacular things.
1. An angel of the Lord appeared.
a. That’s already far surpassed the most dazzling human display.
b. Angels were more powerful and more glorious than the greatest super-hero, which, of course, is just something of our imagination.
c. We have a description of an angel in Rev.10:1–3: “I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head, and his face was like the sun, and his legs like pillars of fire... And he set his right foot on the sea, and his left foot on the land, and called out with a loud voice, like a lion roaring. When he called out, the seven thunders sounded.”
2. The glory of the Lord shone around them.
a. When God wants to make His presence known in the Bible, He often does it by the appearance of the Shekhinah, the glory cloud (e.g. Gen.15:17; Exod.3:2; 13:21-22; 14:19-20; 16:10; 19:9, 16-18; 24:15-18; 33:9-10, 22; 34:5; 40:34-38; Lev.9:23-24; 10:1-2; 16:2; Num.9:15; Deut.4:12; 1Kings 8:10-12, 2Chron.5:13-14; Ps.18:7-15; 50:3; 68:4; 97:2; Is.6:1-9; 30:27, 30; Ezek.9:3; 44:4; Matt.17:1-5; Acts 1:9; 7:55; 1Tim.6:16; Rev.15:8).
b. It’s hard to describe these things with human words. It was a combination of cloud, fire, light, and often a little earth-shaking thunder thrown in.
c. When the curtain between heaven and earth opens up so the heavenly realities can be seen by human eyes, it’s unlike anything else we ever see or experience.
3. And then comes the angelic announcement: “I bring you good news of great joy. This day is born a Savior, Christ the Lord.”
a. You might be more interested in the spectacular display, but this announcement is what the display is all about. The display is designed to draw our attention to this announcement.
b. This is the thing which is really the big deal: the promised Christ, the savior, has been born.
c. There were also signals at his death: the curtain in the temple was torn, the sun went dark, there was an earthquake, people came forth from their tombs (Matt.27:51-54).
4. But there’s more. After this, there is a fourth dimension of this dramatic display in v.13...
C. 13 And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God
1. A multitude of angels appear – praising God.
2. How many angels? We’re just told that it was a multitude.
a. We don't know what the angel population in heaven is.
b. In Revelation 9:16, it says twice ten thousand times ten thousand, which is 200 million.
c. We’re not told what portion of the angelic population was sent for this glorious revelation.
d. It may have been all-hands-on-deck, or maybe a few were left to do some other jobs.
e. But I think it’s safe to conclude that there were an awful lot of angels there.
f. When these most glorious of creatures are called out in force like this, you know it must be something very very big.
3. And they spoke or sang, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among the people of His pleasure!”
a. They must have said this with enormous power and sincerity.
b. This is the most exciting thing they’d ever done (and angels do some pretty exciting things).
c. This was the climax of the angels’ ministry. This is the moment these angels had been waiting for.
d. They had been created to serve those who would inherit salvation, and now the One who would bring that salvation had been born.
4. Never before or since has anything like this angel appearance happened.
a. It is very unusual for an angel to appear. Apart from those in the Christmas story, there are only about 28 times in the Bible when an angel appears. On a few of those occasions, more than one angel has appeared. A few appeared to Jesus after His temptation. Two appeared to the apostles after Christ’s ascension. Two or three appeared to Abraham and then Lot before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
b. But there is only one other place I know of which has this kind of vision of a vast multitude of angels, and that’s in the story of Elisha’s servant being given the vision of the angelic chariots in the tops of the trees surrounding Dothan (2Kings 6:17).
c. But this kind of scene where a multitude of angels are praising God had never been seen before.
5. Why such an extraordinary revelation?
a. Because this is the most glorious thing that has ever occurred in history.
b. The living God bringing salvation to mankind by bursting into history in human form.
c. In one sense, this is the moment the world was created for!
6. In this scene we get a picture of how objective, intelligent beings, who have a much clearer grasp of what’s truly happening than any human, because they are not clouded by sin, and do not share the limitations of our existence, react to the coming of Jesus.
a. God ordained this spectacular performance in order to draw our attention to the astonishing event which had taken place in Bethlehem.
b. If these beings can be so enraptured, it must be good news!
D. Let me ask you a question:
1. What does God have to do to get us to realize what a big deal the coming of Jesus is?
2. What more do we need to get us to pay attention?
3. Many of you are basing your lives on the reality of this Jesus, striving to build everything around who He is and what He’s said.
4. But others are not. Others are still living lives which aren’t much different than if there was no Jesus.
5. If this isn’t enough, what’s it going to take to get your attention? What does God have to do to get you to pay attention to Him?
III. A loud combination
A. Now the angels may have been loud, but the loudness I’m referring to is the combination of angels and shepherds.
B. And when I say loud, I don’t mean in terms of decibels, I mean in terms of the loudness of its message. In other words, this angel/shepherd combination ought to speak loudly to us.
C. Shepherds and angels: what strange colleagues, what a mismatched pair!
1. We have very heavenly beings alongside very earthly beings.
2. We have glorious, magnificent beings alongside very ordinary, common beings.
3. What a strange place to find a great assembly of angels.
4. What an unlikely assembly: very glorious angels and very inglorious shepherds.
5. And yet in this scene they are together. And there’s great significance in that.
6. For this is emblematic of the angel’s declaration of peace on earth.
7. They weren’t announcing peace among men, as if Christ came to make mankind one.
8. The peace announced here is peace between God and man, between heaven and earth.
9. And in order to achieve that peace between heaven and earth, there came a person who was a combination of heaven and earth, the God-man Jesus, the One who was rich with the glories of heaven and yet who took on the poverty of earth in order to enrich lowly earthlings with the riches of heaven (2Cor.8:9).
D. The shepherds were told to look for a child wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.
1. If all the babies in Bethlehem were wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger, this wouldn’t have been very helpful. There was clearly something unique about being wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. Both of these were signs of modest means.
2. These weren’t just a sign of which baby was Jesus, they were signs of who Jesus was, and who Jesus came for. He came poor, He came in modesty and humility, just like the shepherds.
3. And He came for the meek, the humble, the persecuted (Matthew 5:3-12)
4. In Luke’s nativity, we’ve seen a lot of attention drawn to the lowly, the poor, the insignificant.
E. That’s what Christmas is all about. The Best of heaven comes down to the lowliest of earth.
1. If you’re looking for Jesus, don’t look in fancy places. Look in modest places, humble places.
2. This is not for everyone. He hasn’t revealed it to all. (Matthew 11:25–27; 1Corinthians 1:18–31)
a. – The ESV says, “on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased”
b. – And there is a textual problem here in v.14.
(1) – Some very ancient manuscripts differ from other very ancient manuscripts, which means that the change occurred very early on.
(2) – Some have a tiny little letter at the end of the phrase which others do not, a letter which could easily be mistaken for a dot.
(a) – With the letter the phrase means, “peace on earth peace among people of His pleasure.”
(b) – Without the letter the phrase means, “peace on earth, goodwill toward men."
(3) – The reason the ESV and most other modern translations prefer the reading with the letter is that it is easier to imagine the letter being mistaken for a dot by a copyist, than the letter being added in for some reason by a copyist.
3. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” – Matthew 19:24
a. And the only rich person who can be saved is a rich person who is poor in spirit (Matthew 5:3).
4. The church history books of heaven will be about little, seemingly insignificant people being transformed by and drawn together by glorious manifestations of the grace of God.
F. We can see the impact this awesome revelation had upon these simple shepherds:
1. We see their zeal to see Him for themselves in Luke 2:15-16- 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.”
2. We see their zeal to tell others about Him in Luke 2:17- “When they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child.”
3. We see the awe and wonder it produced in Luke 2:18-20 - “All who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen.”
G. This event completely changed the lives of these shepherds. Before this their sheep were the most important thing to them. Now they left the sheep without even a thought and ran into Bethlehem.
1. Before they were sitting around tired after a long day ready to get some good rest. Now they are suddenly full of energy running to Bethlehem like their life depended on it.
2. Before they were enduring their mundane responsibilities, they were probably bored. Now their attention is riveted to the highest degree.
3. Before they were isolated. Now they are telling everyone they can about what happened.
IV. Conclusion
A. Brothers and sisters, may our eyes be opened to the significance of what was happening here. May it be given to us to grasp the magnificence of His glory and live in the reality of who He is!
1. Christianity isn’t just concerned about things to help people get by in the hardships of this world.
2. Christianity is about the truth. It is about a Person who walked upon this earth two thousand years ago and who died and who was raised again from the dead.
3. Christianity is the story of the cure of cures who came to solve the problem of problems.
4. The story of Christ is the story about the fulness of fullnesses filling the emptiness of emptinesses.
5. It is the story of the mother of all peaces bringing an end to the conflict of the ages.
6. Not just improvement in our lot, not even just a removal of an eternal torment, but an exchange of eternal torment for eternal blessing.
7. In Jesus Christ the world has been shown the glory of God.
a. And once you are confronted with this glory, the whole world makes sense...
b. ...the things we thought were so important seem ridiculously trivial
c. ...the whole world can be seen aglow with hope and purpose and meaning.
B. It is not wrong to groan. God not only gives us permission to groan but He tells us that it is appropriate to groan.
1. However, however, our groaning is not like the world’s groaning.
2. True Christianity is a singing Christianity more than a groaning Christianity.
3. The road is hard. But the news is very good.
4. Though there is sorrow, there is also great comfort (2Cor.1:5).
5. Christians must be sober and alert, but they must also be joyful – the most joyful people in the world. Who has a better reason to be joyful than we do?
C. We even have better reason to be joyful than the angels themselves!
1. Angels are much closer to God than we are, of course. And they know and see much more than we do. They can see Him as He is. And they are not sinners like we are.
2. But, there is also one gigantic advantage we have over them, which should drive us to be much more full of praise than they are. What is our big advantage?
3. Jesus was coming not to save angels but to save men. Jesus was coming not as an angel but as a man. Jesus was God with us, not God with them. We can call Him Emmanuel. They cannot.
a. Lk.2:10 I bring you good news of great joy THAT WILL BE FOR ALL THE PEOPLE.
b. Lk 2:11 Today in the city of David there’s been born FOR YOU a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.
4. Christ is for us! He is not a Savior for the angels. He is not a Savior for the animals or for the plants. Christ is a Savior for people, common, ordinary people like you and me.
5. In the great song of praise being lifted to our Trinitarian God, joining angelic beings with the saints in heaven and with the meek of the earth, it is only the human voices which can sing, “What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul, what wondrous love is this, O my soul. What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss to bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul, to bear the dreadful curse for my soul.”
D. – Someone might say to this: “But it’s different reading about something like this than seeing it.” Let me say two things in response to that.
1. – When the Israelites saw the glory of God, they begged Moses not to have to do it again: “You go to Him and come back and tell us what He says” (Exod.20:18-19).
2. – When the author of Hebrews is describing what it means to be a Christian, he says, “You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering...” – Heb.12:22