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Luke 2:8-17

December 20, 1998

Rev. Charles S. Mims

The Holy Bible, King James Version

Luke 2:8 through Luke 2:17
⁸And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. ⁹And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. ¹⁰And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. ¹¹For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. ¹²And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. ¹³And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, ¹⁴Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. ¹⁵And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us. ¹⁶And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. ¹⁷And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.

Out of all the things I do as your pastor, the Sunday Morning announcements are what strike fear into my heart and cause my legs to turn to Jell-O. Invariably I will leave something important out, call someone by the wrong name, or give the wrong date or time. Or even worse, I will just flat neglect to mention something at all. Even if I spend several minutes in my office prior to coming into service writing out everything I want to mention it never turns out like I want. The thing is, that most church-goers dread the announcements as well. Announcements are generally perceived as a waste of ten or fifteen minutes of valuable worship time, so why do we make them? Put simply, we make announcements because they are important. Even if an announcement is printed in the bulletin, announced five times from the pulpit, and hand delivered to every home in the congregation, at least one member is going to swear they knew nothing about it.

Some announcements, however, command our immediate attention. Have you ever noticed how the breaking news banner flashing across your television screen just reaches out and grabs you? This just in…Hot off the Wires….Extra, Extra, Read all about it…that annoyingly loud beep that lasts for 60 seconds with the message This is a Test, this is just a test, if this were an actual emergency etc. etc. etc. …all of these things alert us to the fact that an important announcement is about to be made.

It was just this sort of announcement that was made to the shepherds some 2,000 years ago. This announcement which we read in this morning's text held an earth-shattering, life-changing significance. Today as we study the passage, let us look closely at this announcement and see what it means to us.

It Was Personal (v10 " bring you good tidings…")

One reason that this announcement grabs our attention is that it affects us. It is personally delivered to us, to meet our needs. Think how we would feel if the Emergency Broadcast System sounded to tell us in Daytona Beach to take cover because of a mudslide in California! If it happened too often, we would lose faith in the integrity of the system, and not listen to the warnings. What makes the Emergency Broadcast System effective is the fact that when it sounds, it is directed at the very people the announcement is for. The announcement to the shepherds was personal, the angels said we bring YOU good tidings. I can imagine that the shepherds were frankly amazed at what was taking place. After all, night after night they had tended their flocks, and never once before had the sky been illuminated with a heavenly glow, never once before had they heard angelic voices singing great songs, never before had they seen such rejoicing.

The question of course that comes to mind is why them? Why those lowly shepherds? Why was the birth of a King announced to them of all people? You would think that those angels would have marched right down to the First Baptist Church of Jerusalem and made the announcement to them before anyone else. These men probably were not Old Testament scholars, in fact most of them probably couldn't even read. They weren't the wealthy, or they wouldn't have been out at night with the flock. They most likely didn't even own the sheep they were herding. So why them? We may never know. But we do know that they were chosen, and the message was personal to them. We can take comfort in the fact that God chose ordinary men to make this all important announcement to. In fact, it seems that many times God chooses humble, ordinary men to do extraordinary things.

There were only a few shepherds at the first Bethlehem. The ox and the ass understood more of the first Christmas than the high priests in Jerusalem. And it is the same today.

-- Thomas Merton in The Seven Storey Mountain. Christianity Today, Vol. 39, no. 14.

1 Corinthians 1:26 through 1 Corinthians 1:29
²⁶For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: ²⁷But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; ²⁸And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: ²⁹That no flesh should glory in his presence.

Now, centuries later, those angels are still singing with loud hosannas. The fact that hundreds of years have passed and thousands upon thousands have heard the message must not ever diminish the impact of the message. It is still personal to you and me. The angel is bringing to us today a message of good tidings and great joy. The angels are bringing to us today a Gospel that will change our life, and it is personally tailored to meet our needs. Today they are announcing to us the very same event they announced to the shepherds--the Birth of THE KING!

It Was Universal (v 10 which shall be to all people)

Just because this message was to all people doesn't put it at odds with being a personal message. The impact of the message was personal in its impact upon the shepherd's life, and is personal in its impact on our life. It was universal because it was for all people. Everyone is to have the opportunity to respond to God's message of salvation. We cannot claim salvation for us and our kind as a divine right. The tidings of joy that the angels were bringing to the shepherds were to be shared with all the people. God wants, no God commands us to evangelize. He commands us to share this very same message that the angels were bringing to the shepherds.

At the 7:00 service, a little girl came out an pulled on my robe, and I said, "What can I do?" She said, "It's for you, Dr. Harrington." I said, "What?" and she had a little note. I opened it up, and it said, "I love you." Well, it made my Christmas Eve. "It's for you"--very personal. While the love of Christ is for the world, it's also for you and for me.

-- W. Frank Harrington, "The Love That Brought Him," Preaching Today, Tape No. 51.

It Was Timely

An ordinary night with ordinary sheep and ordinary shepherds. And were it not for a God who loves to hook an "extra" on the front of the ordinary, the night would have gone unnoticed. The sheep would have been forgotten, and the shepherds would have slept the night away.

But God dances amidst the common. And that night he did a waltz.

The black sky exploded with brightness. ... Sheep that had been silent became a chorus of curiosity. One minute the shepherd was dead asleep, the next he was rubbing his eyes and staring into the face of an alien.

The night was ordinary no more.

The angel came in the night because that is when lights are best seen and that is when they are most needed. God comes into the common for the same reason.

-- Max Lucado in The Applause of Heaven. Christianity Today, Vol. 41, no. 14.

The truth is that the timing was perfect. We've heard a lot in the last days about the timing of military action in the Gulf, well there are no questions about the timing of God's arrival as a baby on this earth. It was just in the nick of time. That is one of the wonderful things about the Christmas season. We are able to celebrate, or re-live the birth of Christ for the first time again. It seems that people are hungry for the peace and spirituality of Christmas. We need the peace and good will that the angel promises to us. Most of the complaints about Christmas as a holiday have nothing to do with a true understanding of Christmas. Most of the complaints deal with gifts, and gift giving. The complaints deal with crowds, and long lines. They deal with money, and credit cards. But none of this accurately describes Christmas.

The spirit of Christmas needs to be superseded by the Spirit of Christ. The spirit of Christmas is annual; the Spirit of Christ is eternal. The spirit of Christmas is sentimental; the Spirit of Christ is supernatural. The spirit of Christmas is a human product; the Spirit of Christ is a divine person. That makes all the difference in the world.

Stuart Briscoe in Meet Him at the Manger. Christianity Today, Vol. 41, no. 14.

Christmas needs to be special every year in our life, and each year we should come upon a new meaning, a new closeness with that baby which was born in the manger. Christ must be born in us today!

It Was Timeless

The people needed a messiah, they needed a savior.

Did you ever read Bret Harte's story The Luck of Roaring Camp? Roaring Camp was supposed to be, according tot he story, the meanest, toughest mining town in all of the West. More murders, more thefts--it was a terrible place inhabited entirely by men, and one woman who tried to serve them all. Her name was Cherokee Sal. She died while giving birth to a baby.

Well, the men took the baby, and they put her in a box with some old rags under her. When they looked at her, they decided that didn't look right, so they sent one of the men eighty miles to buy a rosewood cradle. He brought it back, and they put the rags and the baby in the rosewood cradle. And the rags didn't look right there. So they sent another of their number to Sacramento, and he came back with some beautiful silk and lace blankets. And they put the baby, wrapped around with those blankets, in the rosewood cradle.

It looked fine until someone happened to notice that the floor was so filthy. So these hardened, tough men got down on their hands and knees, and with their hardened and horny hands they scrubbed that floor until it was very clean. Of course, what that did was to make the walls and the ceiling and the dirty windows without curtains look absolutely terrible. So they washed down the walls and the ceiling, and they put curtains at the windows. And now things were beginning to look as they thought they should look. But of course, they had to give up a lot of their fighting, because the baby slept a lot, and babies can't sleep during a brawl.

So the whole temperature of Roaring Camp seemed to go down. They used to take her out and set her by the entrance to the mine in her rosewood cradle so they could see her when they came up. Then somebody noticed what a dirty place that was, so they planted flowers, and they made a very nice garden there. It looked quite beautiful. And they would bring her, oh, shiny little stones and things that they would find in the mine. But when they would put their hands down next to hers, their hands looked so dirty. Pretty soon the general store was all sold out of soap and shaving gear and perfume and those kinds ... the baby changed everything.

That's the way it is for those of good will. That's the way it is for those who please God. The baby enters into their lives, and he slips into every crevice of their experience, until they say "Hark! Listen, the herald angels sing! God is for us. And Christmas is forever."

-- Bruce W. Thielemann, "Hark! The Herald Angels," Preaching Today, Tape No. 63.

We need a baby to change our lives in just this fashion. What our world needs is that baby that was in the manger. They needed Christ then, we need Him today, and the world will need Him after we are gone, unless he returns before then. Our world is in shambles. People today are accepting grievous sins as common place, children are murdering each other, the rule of law has no meaning any more, integrity is a quaint old fashioned notion, honesty is not expected, parents are not authority figures, marriages are dissolved faster than they are consummated and seem unable to stop the flow. Pick up today's paper and I guarantee that you will find some bad news in there. You will find a murder, or a robbery. You will find stabbing, or a beating. Pick up the Word of God today and you will find GOOD NEWS! Pick up the Word of God today and you will find out about a little baby, born in a manger, that would grow up to be the salvation of the world. What our world needs today is not less greenhouse emissions, instead we need more of Christmas. We don't need less access to guns, we need more access to the Word of God. We don't need to legislate morality, we need to moralize legislators! We don't need more gifts at Christmas, we need to accept the one Gift that changes our life. We need Christ this Christmas. If we want to see conditions change in our world, we need to see our world return to Christ.

It's never enough to just listen to the announcement even if we are listening attentively. It is not enough just to listen, even if we are reverent. We must respond to the angel's announcement. Let us make Christmas last all year, and into the new millenium. Why must we only celebrate Christmas once a year? Our celebration should take place each and every day of the year. Praise God, the King has come! Is He your king today?