Extraordinary And Ordinary

Extraordinary and Ordinary

Luke 2:8-20

Rev. Brian Bill

December 21-22, 2024

How many of you have read or seen the movie called, “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever?” I listened to the audio book earlier this month and found myself laughing and crying. In this classic tale, the Herdman siblings, also known as “the worst kids in the history of world,” not only discover, but also reveal the true meaning of Christmas.

Here are a few excerpts from John Stonestreet’s review of the film…

Abandoned by their father and left unsupervised by their mother who works multiple jobs, the Herdman kids are known for wreaking havoc around town. They are notoriously, even comically, bad: “They lied and stole and smoked cigars, even the girls…and hit little kids and cussed their teachers and took the name of the Lord in vain and set fire to Fred Shoemaker’s old broken-down tool house.”

When the Herdman children learn that the local church offers free snacks at Sunday school, they show up and, to the chagrin of all, “volunteer” for the lead roles in the Christmas Pageant. They take an unusual interest in the nativity story which, to the shock of many in the church, they’ve never heard before. As they hear the biblical account of Jesus’ birth during rehearsals, they see themselves in the characters of Christmas. For example, like Mary and Joseph are turned away at the inn, they too have been rejected.

Our focus today is not on the Herdman children, but on the “herdsmen,” also known as the shepherds, who were rejected by society as well.

Have you heard the saying, “Familiarity breeds contempt?” That basically means that the more familiar we are with something, at best we get bored with it or at worst, we start resenting it. I came across a stunning quote this week from Sinclair Ferguson: “The greatest threat to Christmas isn’t secularism or consumerism but our own boredom with the most thrilling story ever told.” Let’s encounter this account as if we were hearing it for the first time because it’s the best story ever.

For centuries, people have been pleading with God to come down into our world. Listen to Psalm 144:5: “Bow your heavens, O Lord, and come down!” Isaiah 64:1 records a similar plea: “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down…” Isaiah dared to believe that something better was coming even though his culture was corrupt and everything around him seemed so dark. He longed for the Lord to somehow come down into his world to make sense out of school shootings, to bring peace to all the problems, to dispel the darkness and to extricate evil. He’s hungry to have the Holy One enter our whacked-out world in an extraordinary manner.

Here’s our main idea for today: God will move Heaven and earth to reach you.

The idiom “moving Heaven and earth” refers to someone putting all their efforts and abilities into getting something accomplished. In Haggai 2:6, God tells us that He “…will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land.”

Aren’t you glad that the Lord has shaken the heavens and come down? Two weeks ago, in our Christmas Contrast series, we looked at unbelief and wonder. Last week, we contrasted the responses of anger, apathy, and adoration. Please turn to Luke 2:8-20 where we’ll encounter another Christmas contrast, this one between the extraordinary and the ordinary when God’s holy angels appear to unholy shepherds.

Except for an occasional bleat from the sheep, the night was quiet. Luke 2:8 pictures a serene scene: “And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.” In the early pages of the Bible, shepherding was considered a noble profession, but in the first century the career of shepherding had lost its luster. Shepherds made up the lowest class of people, coming in just ahead of lepers. They were not trusted as witnesses in court because they were known as liars and thieves. Living out in the fields away from society made them outcasts. Most of them had foul mouths and were ready to fight at the drop of a hat.

Near Bethlehem, on the road to Jerusalem, was a tower known as Migdal Eder, or “the watchtower of the flock.” This was where shepherds watched sheep destined for sacrifice in the temple. It was a settled conviction among the Jews that the Messiah was to be revealed from Migdal Eder. This fulfills a prophecy from Micah 4:8: “And you, O tower of the flock, hill of the daughter of Zion, to you shall it come, the former dominion shall come, kingship for the daughter of Jerusalem.”

Let’s remember that God moves Heaven and earth to reach the marginalized, the hurting, the discouraged, the outcasts, and the heavy-hearted. The angel appears to smelly shepherds to show that salvation is for everyone.