And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger." Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests." 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." So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.
I absolutely adore this well lit part of the Christmas story! Every year I agonize over this precious Scripture text, trying to think of betters way of bringing it to life. I’ve preached it from the first person perspective of a superficial advertising executive trying unsuccessfully to sell a glitzy Christmas marketing strategy to God. I’ve explored what it meant to be these outcast shepherds whom, interestingly enough (contrary to our stereotypical ideas), may well have been young women. I’ve looked at this passage from all sorts of angles over the years. I’ve tried everything I can think of to make the glorious, gorgeous, staggering significance of this shining, shepherd moment more real, relevant and powerful. This moment defines our faith. This is truly a shining moment to meditate on. I am powerfully struck by several rays of light…
First of all, I am struck by the fact that the most important angelic announcement in all human history was made to normal people. There was nothing fancy, complex or special about these folks. We don’t even know their names. We don’t know anything about them. We don’t know where they came from or what happened to them later. They are just plain, simple folks.
While the light of Bethlehem last week reminded us how much God truly cares about all places, the shepherd light carries things much further along. Here we learn God cares about all places because He cares about all people. These are just folks. These are people like us.
That is perhaps the biggest point of the story...
But there are also rays of genuine fear in this moment. When human frailty comes into any sort of contact (even reflected or radiant), with the breath-taking holiness and perfection of Holy God, there will always be some fear involved. Scripture is filled with the stories of people melting in fear as they encounter the LORD or His messengers. Our sin just can’t stand in the presence of holiness without seeing itself for what it is. If any of us have never experienced the fear of the LORD, then I would question whether we have truly experienced the LORD.
Yet there is good news here also. The fear is not allowed to remain for very long. As always, the LORD’s angelic messengers intervened to calm fears and replace those fears with joy, just as we too replace fear with shining Good News. We are always, always, always to be about the business of calming sinful fears and sharing hope. There must constantly be joyous, good news shining brightly around here or we are not functioning as the body of Christ.
There is inspired worship in this story. God is gloriously praised in this shepherd story. There is joy, worship and wonder in this Christmas story. There is falling on our knees beside the manger in this story. There is wonderful worship and praise! There will always be hearts shining full of worship in the community of Christmas our LORD is building in this place. Not weekly ritual, stale liturgy or dead religion, but genuine, full-throated, soul-baring worship.
There is passionate obedience in this shepherd story. These shepherds were never told to go to the Bethlehem stable to see the baby Jesus. It was simply assumed they would go. And they did go! Going is just what they were supposed to do! It seems they went because they simply couldn’t stop themselves from doing so. They obeyed the LORD and did all the right things in this story because they wanted to. They left their sheep behind for a moment and risked looking foolish because they felt compelled. They were excited to obey and so they did obey. That is what obedience should look like in the genuinely Christmas community.
There is also some wonderful storytelling in this shepherd story. These shepherds had absolutely no interest in keeping this shining Christmas stuff as some sort of religious secret to themselves. Luke makes it abundantly clear these shepherds apparently told everybody they met what happened that night. Without benefit of Bible school or seminary, they became early church evangelists without even knowing the full word or learning some slick system of spiritual laws. There is always story telling and happy testimony shining from the community of Christ.
And then they returned to work. There is honest responsibility in this shepherd story. They didn’t wander off into some religious fantasy, some pipedream; too spiritual and too important to continue to serve as they always had. These simple folks returned to the same job they were doing before, bringing their story with them as they went. They responsibly took their Christmas experiences right back to their workplace, talking and praising God the whole way. And that is exactly what we are all supposed to be doing with our Christmas experience.
These shepherds were normal folks with normal fears. They heard the Good News and participated in some inspired worship. They were passionately obedient and they faithfully told their story to everyone they met as they responsibly went right back to the workplace God had found them in and called them to. These things are the stuff and substance of every healthy Body of Christ. I adore these shepherds and this story because of these stunning things.
But there is something more important and more transcendent than all of this. There is one shining Christmas truth woven deeply into this shepherd story that absolutely drives all the other truths. Folks, these wonderful shepherds personified all these wonderful qualities of any good, Christmas community only because they had an experience of God. Everything good in this shepherd moment occurred only because somebody genuinely experienced God.
Think about it! The angels never really told the shepherds to do anything. They didn’t tell them to be properly fearful, didn’t tell them to risk leaving their costly sheep behind to go see the baby, didn’t tell them to worship and rejoice, didn’t tell them to share their story with everyone they met as they responsibly went back to work. All that glorious stuff was assumed! That stuff was assumed because of the glowing experience of God the shepherds enjoyed!
I can preach for years about how God invites normal people like you and me to the Banquet. I can give all sorts of good illustrations of a healthy and holy fear of God. I can explain the Good News in hundreds of different ways. We can work hard to produce the most inspirational worship imaginable. I can explain the countless, rational reasons for obedience and good story-telling as we faithfully return to whatever work we’ve been called by God to do. I can polish it all up and present it to you in the most interesting, passionate way I know how.
But until you and I have a genuine, life-changing experience of God, until it becomes personal for us, we’re never going to become the shining, brilliant Christians God intends for us to become. Until we see God show up in some noticeable way in our lives, until we have our own burning bush or shepherd hillside moments, we’re simply never going to properly become all we were born and brought together here to become. It is the vivid experience of God in the story that matters more than anything! It is our experience of God that always matters!
Do you see? I can brag about these wonderful, humble shepherds all day, but the little shepherds aren’t the story! Almighty God is! God Incarnate is the story. Until you and I get to see the glorious angels like they did, until we have our own vivid, angelic moments with God, we’re never going to live up to their brilliantly shining, exemplary behavior. Until we experience Almighty God for ourselves, we’re never going to shine forth the Gospel as wonderfully as God helped these shepherds shine. We must have our own experience of God.
So how do we do that? Realizing we need an experience of God is everything is only the first step – having one is what matters. How do we do that? It’s actually pretty simple…
As we begin our second year together as a community, it is my passionate hope we will all embrace one simple, important promise our LORD made to us. In James 4:8, the dear letter writer James told his early church friends to “come near to God and he will come near to you.” The most wonderful secret of this entire conversation is that Almighty God longs for each of us to experience Him! Come near to His Word! Come near to His people! Come near in prayer!
Come near to God and He will come near to you! He really will!
The best news of all, from this shepherd moment of the Christmas story, is that our LORD does give these humble shepherds an experience of Him. An experience of God is not “easier said than done!” It really isn’t! Almighty God longs to reveal Himself to us! Our LORD wants us to experience Him! If we will genuinely come near to Him, He will come near to us!
As I close, I remember something old Billy Graham once said about all this experiencing God stuff. It is a constantly lingering thought I think I’ve shared with you before. He said, “It could easily be said that one of the greatest hindrances to evangelism today is the poverty of our own experience.” Amen, my brother! We aren’t lousy evangelists or mediocre, lukewarm Christians because we’re stupid, rotten, lazy or lousy people. The biggest reason any of us are weak in any area of our Christian lives always boils down to the simple fact that we just haven’t experienced enough of God ourselves! When shepherds like us truly experience the Living God, when Light shines on our hillside, we know exactly what we’re supposed to do.
Come near to God and He will come near to you!
Popular pastor and author Lloyd Ogilvie once said something very similar about all this. He said, “The institutional church in America today is filled with good, religious people who desperately need an experience of the living, holy, forgiving and gracious God.” Just like the humble shepherds all those years ago, we need to experience the living, holy, forgiving and gracious God for ourselves. Come near to Him and He will come near to you!
May we experience God! May God give us our own shining shepherd stories to tell! May the shepherd Light shine gloriously on us! May Almighty God make Himself very real to each one of us in some perfectly precious and unique way this Christmas!
Amen.
