The Faith of the Shepherd
Luke 2:8-18
Last week, we looked at Mary, an engaged teenager whom God had chosen to carry His child to full term and give birth to Him. Today, we’re talking about the shepherds who were just tending their sheep as they do every day and suddenly God shows up. What we’re talking about is a God encounter. A God encounter is not something you’re looking for, yearning for, expecting or even thinking about and then God shows up. A God encounter is not you going to look for God. It’s when God comes looking for you and supernaturally makes an appearance in your life. And calls you to him.
George Alves writes, “I had 101 excuses why I didn’t need the church – in my early twenties I stopped coming to Olivet Baptist Church for a brief period. I thought church was boring, I had more important things to do on my weekends – I was working to pay for my college tuition, my books, and clothes, I could work better shifts at the restaurant I was working at. But then one Sunday morning at 11 AM a couple came into the place I worked at. They sat down and looked to the dock and the bay outside with fond memories. I asked them what they were talking about, “Oh, this used to be the place we came as children every summer to catch a boat which took us to Niagara-on-the-Lake for our annual Church picnic.” I had heard about such an event. I questioned them further, “What church were you with?” The lady responded, “You wouldn’t know, it a Baptist Church in west-end Toronto.” Now my curiosity was peaked. “What’s the name of the church?”, I asked. “You wouldn’t know it, we’re not even sure it exists”. “Please, tell me.” I insisted. “Olivet Baptist Church.” I had goose bumps all over my body, the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. In that moment, I knew God was calling me back home to my family. I said to the lady that I was a member of that church. We became like long lost friends. I mentioned names like Gow, and Finlayson, but they had never heard of them and then I said, “How about Mr. Devlin.” Suddenly the man blurted out, “Mr. Devlin, Mr. Roy Devlin?” “Yes,” I answered. “Mr. Devlin was my father’s barber and my barber. He’s the reason why we started going to Olivet. Every Sunday he’d knock on our door, as he did on many others on his way to church to bring people to church.”
And then he writes, “I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that this was an encounter planned by God because Mr. Devlin was an important person in my life. Every single Sunday he made sure he found me and called me by name. He always asked me how I was doing, he took an interest me and I loved him very much. That evening I went to my manager and said, “Gus, if it means loosing my job then I’m prepared to lose it. You see, I can’t work anymore Sundays, I have to be in church with my family.” My manager respected my commitment and said there was no way I was going to loose my job. It was great to see Mr. Devlin that following Sunday!
The thing about a God encounter is that it doesn’t happen when you’re looking for it, asking for it or even expecting it. It’s not you seeking God but God seeking you. God just shows up. How many of you have had some kind of God encounter like that? Here’s the thing about God encounters: alot of God encounters happen in the middle of ordinary circumstances and in non-religious places. For George Alves it was in the restaurant he worked at. For the shepherds, it was in the middle of a field. God encounters us in the midst of our ordinary lives.
And God often speaks to people who are not that particularly religious. Because the thing about a God encounter is that He is calling you back into a relationship with him. Luke doesn’t tell us anything about the shepherd’s own religious beliefs or spiritual journey. But this much we know about shepherds: their lifestyle prohibited active participation in the religious life of the day. Their livelihood depended on the safety and well-being of their sheep. It wasn’t like they could clock out at 5 o’clock. If you were to go home, then that’s when the coyotes and wolves come out for dinner. So shepherds actually live out on the range with their sheep. They not only had to work weekends but all night to protect their sheep.
Do you remember your first encounter with God in your life? The first God encounter I had was when I was seven. I was asleep and like all children I had a fear of what hid under my bed in the darkness and what lurked in the closet. Fear gripped me every night, so much so that I asked my parents to leave the door of my bedroom cracked open so some light could stream in. One night I was awakened and saw a figure standing over my bed protecting me. I was terrified but not afraid. No words were exchanged. The next morning I actually asked my parents if they had come into my room before they had gone to sleep and stood over my bed and they both said no. But thinking back on that, I now know it was at that moment when God revealed himself to me that I knew I was chosen and God had something planned for me to do. When was your first encounter with God?
But that’s not the only way God encounters us. God uses different means and different times in people’s lives. For some, it’s an audible voice like with Samuel in the temple of God. For others God speaks through a dream like for Joseph in escaping to Egypt from Herod who was wanting to kill the Christ child. In fact, there are more than 25 recorded dreams in the Scriptures where God speaks to his servants. For Mary it was the appearance of an angel. For Paul, Jesus encountered him on the road to Damascus. He was blinded by the light. And Jesus convicted him when he asked, Paul, why are you persecuting me? Another God encounter is a Jericho Road encounter. There was a man traveling on a business trip and was mugged and left for dead. A bunch of religious folks passed this guy who was begging and pleading. They said things like isn’t it a shame that bad thing happen to good people. And, “I’ll pray for you.” And then they went on their way to church. Then a Samaritan, the kind of folks that religious people looked down on, saw this man, picked him up, took him to the nearest town, paid for his motel room and provided for his food and medical care, whatever it costs. I believe a lot of people first encounter Christ through serving broken people. Here’s the key: there are many different experiences of the Savior. There is one Savior but there are many different ways to experience and encounter him. Have any of you had a Jericho Road experience where you experience Jesus through being served by other people? Have any of you had a Damascus Road experience? Have any of you had an angel appear, heard an audible voice or even a thought or impression you knew was from God?
When you have a God encounter that becomes a transition point in your life. It can’t help but change you. Erwin McManus tells a story of Sue Cho a first-time guest at his church. She had come with her sister, who, unlike her, was a follower of Jesus Christ. When she was growing up in China, she was both an accomplished athlete and intellectual. After the close of the Sunday worship experience, she expressed appreciation for the teaching and asked if there was an Internet dialogue she could engage in. She added that she had many questions about the existence of God and would like very much to pursue them. In the midst of our conversation, I ventured into the mystical. I suggested to her that I knew something about her, though we had never met. And she asked me what that was. I stated that during the worship experience that night God had revealed himself to her and that this disturbed her, since she had no intellectual validation for His existence. And I told her it was my sense that beyond revealing himself, God had spoken to her and told her that Jesus was his name. There was no small awkward silence after that moment. Her lack of eye contact let me know she was considering her response carefully. She quietly looked up and said yes, that was exactly right. And I asked her if what she needed through the Internet dialogue was the intellectual validation to support what her spirit already knew to be true. She gave me a resounding yes. I assured her we would be more than happy to help her brain catch up with her heart or her mind with her soul. It was hardly days after this encounter when her emails began to read like the female version of the apostle Paul, expressing a vibrant, dynamic, and passionate relationship to Jesus Christ. And then Erwin McManus writes, God is important and is knowable, because God has made himself knowable. And when you not only know Him ….. it (will) transform you, it will create a passion in your heart that will make you glad you are alive to pursue a relationship with Him.
Now listen to how the shepherds responded, 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." Now here were men who were consumed with the protection of their livelihood and now their sole desire is to pursue a relationship with Jesus. They want to go on a spiritual pilgrimage? What is the difference between passive belief and active pursuit? Once you have a God encounter, you move from religion, that is a boring participation in the actions of faith which don’t connect or speak to you, to a vital relationship. It changes who you are and what you are about. When I had my call to ministry, suddenly I oriented my whole college education to best preparing me for seminary, including the major I chose and the classes I took. Or it’s like when you meet the great ove of your life. After I took Giovanna out the first time, she didn’t expect me to call. But I did. And we went out just about every night for the next three months. That’s called active pursuit of relationship. Some people have religion but after a God encounter it becomes an active pursuit of relationship. Suddenly your time and energy go toward developing this passionate relationship with Jesus Christ. There’s a growing hunger for more of Him in your life.
Tommy Tenney tells of when God spoke to him in worship and said, “You know, Tommy, your favorite worship services and My favorite services are not the same. You leave your services full and satisfied, but when you leave, I’m still hungry.” He writes, “God whispered this to me during a life-changing Sunday morning service. It was a divine encounter that forever imprinted itself with indelible ink on the pages of my memory. There were tears in my eyes when I whispered to my wife, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been this close to Him before. I wish I knew then what I have discerned since- that God will leave our meetings full and satisfied only when we begin to leave them feeling hungrier for Him than when we first came.” That’s what happens in a God encounter. “The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.” Do you think these rough men of the wilderness did this while they tending their sheep before this encounter? When you have a God encounter, it leaves you hungrier for more of God in your life.
Lastly, it moves you to reach out and share it with others. “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.” Faith is personal but it is never private. Now that’s not what our culture says. It says faith is personal and private. Let me tell you something. When you fall into the trap of believing that, then the evil one has triumphed. The worst thing you could ever do for the kingdom is to never share your faith. Jesus is made real to you so you will make him visible to others. Your experience with Jesus is something which is meant to be shared with others. It’s not talk and condemnation, it’s show and tell.
When God reveals himself, it’s so that you will share that experience with others. Christians aren’t chosen for salvation while others are condemned to hell. You’re chosen to become a witness, to make heaven visible here on earth, so people will be amazed at what they see and hear. When you’re passionately pursing a relationship with Jesus Christ and becoming like him, you don’t have to convince or argue someone into faith, they will look and see. The doubts about the resurrected Jesus are resolved because those around us can see in our lives and our words and our actions Him who is alive. The only reason God appears to you is to make Jesus visible on earth.
Jim Alter writes, It was only five days before Christmas. The spirit of the season hadn’t yet caught up with me, even though cars packed the parking lot of our Houston area Target Shopping Center. Inside the store, it was worse. Shopping carts and last minute shoppers jammed the aisles. Why did I come today? I wondered. My feet ached almost as much as my head. My list contained names of several people who claimed they wanted nothing, but I knew their feelings would be hurt if I didn’t buy them something. Buying for someone who had everything and deploring the high cost of items, I considered gift buying anything but fun. Hurriedly, I filled my shopping cart with last minute items and proceeded to the long checkout lines. I picked the shortest but it looked as if it would mean at least a 20 minute wait In front of me were two small children a boy of about 10 and a younger girl about 5. The boy wore a ragged coat. Enormously large, tattered tennis shoes jutted far out in front of his much too short jeans. He clutched several crumpled dollar bills in his grimy hands. The girl’s clothing resembled her brother’s. Her head was a matted mass of curly hair. Reminders of an evening meal showed on her small face. She carried a beautiful pair of shiny, gold house slippers.
As the Christmas music sounded in the store’s stereo system, the girl hummed along off key but happily. When we finally approached the checkout register, the girl carefully placed the shoes on the counter. She treated them as though they were a treasure. The clerk rang up he bill. "That will be $6.09" the clerk said, as the boy laid his crumpled dollars atop the stand while he searched his pockets finally coming up with $3.12 "I guess we will have to put them back, " he bravely said. "We’ll come back some other time, maybe tomorrow." With that statement, a soft sob broke from the little girl. "But Jesus would have loved these shoes," she cried. "Well, we’ll go home and work some more. Don’t cry. We’ll come back," he said. Quickly I handed $3.00 to the cashier. These children had waited in line for a long time. And, after all, it was Christmas. Suddenly a pair of arms came around me and a small voice said, "Thank you, Sir." "What did you mean when you said Jesus would like the shoes?" I asked. The small boy answered, "Our mommy is sick and going to heaven. Dad said she might go before Christmas to be with Jesus." The girl spoke, "My Sunday school teacher said the streets in heaven are shiny gold….just like these shoes. Won’t mommy be beautiful walking on those streets to match these shoes?" My eyes flooded as I looked into her tear streaked face. "Yes," I answered, "I am sure she will."
Silently, I thanked God for using these children to remind me of the true spirit of giving. Christmas is not about the amount of money paid, nor the amount of gifts purchased, nor trying to impress friends and relatives. Christmas is about the love in your heart to share with those as Jesus Christ has shared with each of us. Christmas is about the Birth of Jesus whom God sent to show the world how much he really loves us.
