Original Christmas Announcement - The Angel Series

Original Christmas Series #4

The Original Christmas Announcement

LK 2:8-15

I invite you to find Luke Chapter 2 this morning.

It was a chilly December morning as an elderly woman entered her small town post office and made her way to the counter.

The clerk asked her

"How may I assist you?"

She told him that she had all of her Christmas cards now completely filled out and addressed but she was in need of stamps.

The clerk asked

"What denomination would you like ?"

The woman said

"Has it really come that...

well then give me

10 Baptist

10 Catholic

and 20 Methodist."

I think he simply meant how many stamps did she want.

Christmas is the largest card-sending occasion in the United States, with approximately 1.9 billion cards sent to friends and loved ones every year.

Things have come along way in the announcing of warm wishes for the season of the Saviors birth.

It was 1843 when Englishman Henry Cole gave way to the idea of Christmas cards.

Since Cole was too busy to write a personal holiday greeting, He hired well-known London artist

John Calcott Horsley to design a card he could send to all his acquaintances.

Louis Prang, a German immigrant, is credited with bringing the idea of Christmas cards to America in 1875.

Then perhaps the most well known of all card-makers, Hallmark introduced its first Christmas cards in 1915.

Each year Hallmark provides more than 2,200 Christmas card designs....and yet many of them fail to communicate what Christmas is really all about.

You see you could get a beautiful Christmas card, even a Hallmark and still if it has not announced the real meaning of Christmas then someone has come short of sending the very best.

The best Christmas announcement is the one that reminds us all, of that first Christmas announcement on the night Christ was born.

The original Christmas announcement was sent by God and delivered by His angel.

Are we sending that same announcement this Christmas?

(Play the angels clip)

I want us this morning to be challenged and even perhaps changed by God’s Word in understanding that we are to be the angel.

What do I mean when I say we are to be the angel?

The answer is simple, we ought to be doing the same three things the angel did in that very first Christmas announcement.

The angel gave an announcement that did 3 things for the shepherds that night.

The announcement -Calmed Fear

It Created Hope -and-

It Called Others to Worship

The best Christmas announcement we could give this year would be nothing less than this:

To calm fears, to create hope and to call others to worship Christ.

Let’s receive to our hearts this morning the reveling of Scripture in LK chapter 2 and pay careful attention to the original Christmas announcement the angel brought from heaven.

LK 2

8And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.

9An 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 of great joy that will be for all the people.

11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ 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, and on earth peace to men 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."

We can notice that at the start of this Christmas announcement there is a message of

I. Calming Fear

The angel’s announcement included a desire to calm the fear of those who were the recipients of God’s message.

The angel said in verse 10 "Do not be afraid."

Is there a need for calming fear in people’s lives today?

Most assuredly there is.

For as much as I wish it were not so, the truth is that we live in a society where people fear many things.

Some fear for- personal safety...

(how many of you lock your doors at night)

We would amazed at the number of people who sleep each night with a weapon of defense

( a bat or even a gun) within their immediate reach

of where they sleep.

People fear personal safety

People fear also for their provisional security- or to put it quite plainly many people are fearful that there basics needs of life might go unmet.