“Overcoming The Confusion of Christmas”
Luke 2:7-20 (key verses 17-20)
A Kindergarten teacher asked her class which Christmas Story they would like to hear her read. One little boy shouted out, “Tell the one about where the father saw Santa Claus and got sick.” Mystified, the teacher kept probing and finally determined that the little boy wanted to hear “Twas the Night before Christmas” and that what he was remembering was the part where the father flew to the window and “threw up the sash.”
Things sure can be confusing at Christ-mas time, in the hustle and bustle of this season we can become confused about what Christmas is all about.
In the popular Hi and Lois Cartoon Strip, the writer often puts into words what is in the mind of the little girl who is the pride of the family. During a comic strip which appeared during the Christmas season, the little girl is pictured as thinking, “I sure do love Christmas. I don’t know what it’s all about yet but, I sure do love it!” Many people in our world find themselves in the same situation. They love Christmas, they just don’t know what it is all about, just think how much more enjoyment they would receive if they understood the full signific-ance of Christmas.
“And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. (8) Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. (9) And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. (10) Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. (11) For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. (12) And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.” (13) And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: (14) “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!” (15)So it was, when the angels had gone away from them into heaven, that the shepherds said to one another, “Let us now go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has come to pass, which the Lord has made known to us.” (16) And they came with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the Babe lying in a manger. (17)Now when they had seen Him, they made widely known the saying which was told them concerning this Child. (18) And all those who heard it marveled at those things which were told them by the shepherds. (19) But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. (20) Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told them.”
It is amazing if you stop to realize that in our day almost everyone in this nation with the exception of orthodox Jews, devout Muslims and adherents of Jehovah’s Witness celebrate Christmas. What is even more amazing is to realize that very few have any intention of honoring the person of Jesus Christ nor recognize any allegiance to His cause. Christmas has provided a holiday even for those who refuse to worship Him!
The response to Christmas in our day, even of church goers is nowhere near that of those who witnessed the first Christmas. As Christians our celebration of Christmas should be different from those who do not know Him, but how do we demonstrate this difference to an unbelieving world. I believe that Luke 2:17-20 holds the answer of how to celebrate Christmas in a truly Christian way.
First, We Can Truly Celebrate Christmas By Proclaiming The Good News Of It. (v. 17)
“Now when they had seen Him, they made widely known the saying which was told them concerning this Child.”
These first witnesses of the birth of Christ had good reasons to share what they had heard and seen.
• They needed to share the good news because they knew something worth telling.
Because the Shepherd were “greatly afraid” (v.9) the message that the angel brought from God first spoke to their most immediate need when the angel said, “fear not”(v. 10). When the angelic messenger suddenly appeared the shepherds reacted as any normal human would they were terribly afraid.
It is easy in this time of national and international uncertainty to allow your heart to be filled with fear this Christmas. Fear about; your health, your family, your job security, the economy, or the conditions in the world. But we need not fear, we have “good tiding of great joy” because the Savior was born, because scripture has been fulfilled, because Christ is LORD over all.
Notice too that this news “will be to all people.” This news is not just for a privileged few. The invitation of Scripture is, “Whoso-ever will let him come.” Jesus came to pay for the sins of all sinners. He is available to all.
After the angel’s reassurance that they need not be afraid verse thirteen says, “And suddenly there was with the angel a mult-itude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: (14) “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!” There was a heavenly flash and then the shepherds, who are already bewildered, are surrounded by angels! The words, “a mult-itude,” is not fifty, not 150, not 1,500 – but beyond counting. It is amazing to consider that heavenly host stretched from horizon to horizon to witness the most amazing event in the history of the universe. Then the heaven-ly host began to sing praises. Scripture says in Job 38:7 that at creation the angels “sang together and all the angels shouted for joy,” now they join voices again to welcome the birth of the savior of mankind.
The angel tells the shepherds that the sign to them is that they will find the Christ child lying in a manger. Probably no other child was born in a cattle stable that night, no other child’s first resting place was a crude feeding trough designed to feed cattle.
They needed to share the good news because they knew something the world desperately needed to hear.
•It was a lost world – because it lacked direction.
•It was a confused world – because it lacked revelation.
•It was a dying world – because it lacked a Savior.
Later Jesus would speak of himself as the exact solution to the world’s condition in John 14:6 when He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
•He is the Way – for the world was lost.
•He is the Truth – for a world that was confused.
•He was the Life – for a world that was dying.
We are to celebrate Christmas by Proclaiming the Good News of It and..
Secondly, We can truly celebrate Christmas by Remaining Amazed By It. (v. 18)
“And all those who heard it marveled at those things which were told them by the shepherds.”
We need to stay in perpetual amaze-ment of the facts of Christmas. We are told that the people “marveled” at the message they had heard from the shepherds. This indicates that the people took the shepherds seriously, although they did not know exactly what to make of the events described. So consider that this message came through Shepherds who were not considered the most reliable of sources, what made the story that the shepherds told so believable?
Well, one thing might have been the enthusiasm with which the shepherds told the story. The shepherds came directly from a supernatural encounter and that had to be exciting. The encounter with the Christ-child was something they never could and never did forget.
Another key to their effectiveness was that they were credible because the were so obviously changed. They had actually had a first-hand experience. It wasn’t that they had heard a rumor, this is not merely something that had happened to someone else. They had been there. They had experienced it themselves.
John Newton was an English preacher and song writer of the eighteenth century. In his early life he was a thoroughly bad man. As a young man he had joined the English Navy only to desert it. He then became a slave trader, tearing Africans away from their families without mercy, forcing them into inhuman conditions on board ships and carrying them away to be auctioned to the highest bidder. Then a fierce storm brought Newton to end of himself and he called upon Christ to forgive him. Newton then penned the words to the famous song “Amazing Grace.” Newton recognized that it was not simply grace, but amazing grace, that had saved his soul and rendered him a changed man.
Have you ever just stood and enjoyed the amazement and wonder of children on Christmas morning? It is a delight to watch children who are just caught up in the wonder of it all. True, children are most often more caught up in the wonder of the decorations and the presents than the meaning of Christmas, but their wonder is not inappropriate. From these children we face a two-fold challenge. First, our task as adults is to channel their wonder to Jesus and into what Christmas is really all about. And secondly, we need to learn from them and recapture our amazement at Christ at Christmas.
We are to celebrate Christmas by Remaining Amazed By It...
Third, We Can Truly Celebrate Christmas By Pondering The Significance Of It. (v. 19)
“But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.”
Have you ever had something happen in your life that is so dramatic, so life changing that you cannot get it out of your mind? In fact occasionally you go back to in your mind, even though years have passed since it happened. It might be the memory of your first date, or perhaps your wedding day. It could have been the birth of your children. Hopefully there are also things of a spiritual nature, like the day you were saved.
So much had occurred in Mary’s life in just a few months that she has hardly had time to sit down and reflect. Now at last she takes the time to reflect on everything that she has seen, heard and experienced. Verse nineteen says that Mary “pondered” these things – the word ponder means “putting one thing with another in her mind to consider the meaning.” It will involve memory – “she kept these things.” It will involve affection – “she kept them in her heart.” It will involve intellect – “she pondered them” which means “to consider mentally.”
Think for a moment about all that had occurred in her life. She truly heard and witnessed a lot of amazing things in the course of less than a year prior to the birth of her firstborn son. She had been visited by an angel – and told she would become pregnant by the power of the Holy Spirit.
She was told this baby would be the Savior of the world. Among all the women in the world God had selected her to bear His Son. She saw God’s word confirmed to her by her cousin, Elizabeth (Lk 1:42). Mary also saw her marriage saved - (Matthew (1:19) says that Joseph intended to divorce her when he heard she was pregnant, because Joseph knew he wasn’t the father) but the marriage was saved when another angel told her husband-to-be that she was pregnant by the Holy Spirit, not by another man (Matt 1:20), as Joseph must have supposed when she told him her impossible news.
Then, she traveled far from home, only to find that there was no place for them to stay, her baby would have to be born in a stable. But after the birth of this baby Jesus, she was visited by shepherds who told her angels had visited them, too, and told them where to find the baby Jesus. What a year, huh?
She thought about, pondered these things, these events, these seeming paradoxes. And instead of causing her to dismiss these things as wild fancy...it brought to her a sense of wonder...and a sense of thanksgiving, gratefulness for the blessing God had given... the NASB says the “she treasured up these things.” (v. 20)
Surely Mary must have again pondered as she stood at the foot of the cross, as she witnessed her son dying for the World’s sin. As far as we know Mary was the only person present at His birth who was also present at His death. Do you suppose she thought of the first time in the stable that she held Him in her arms and kissed the face of God? She saw Him arrive as her baby son and she watched Him die as her Savior. Or she thought of the hands with spikes now driven through them, that she had held in her own when he was a boy.
I would propose that there is adequate reason for each of us to stop and to consider that the God of Heaven would deem us worthy to step down from glories of Heaven and take on human form in order that He might go to the cross of Calvary and pay the debt for our sin!
We are to celebrate Christmas by Pondering the Significance of It...
Fourth, We Can Truly Celebrate Christmas by Glorifying God For It. (v. 20)
“Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told them.”
As the first evangelists they did not emphasize what it was like to see an angel, or to hear the angelic choir. Nor did they dwell on how frightened they were. Their main interest was in reporting, “which was told them concerning this Child.”
Every individual is important. It is impossible to live, even for a few moments on this earth and not influence somebody in one way or another. We are always influencing someone, either for good or for bad. Our challenge is to influence people for good and for God.
Verse twenty says, “… the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God…” A clear evidence of conversion is always worship. Someone has observed that many “worship our work, work at our play and play at our worship.” Often we are so casual about our worship, we can take it or leave it. It does seem to really matter that much. But a manifestation of one being truly changed is that he or she will desire to worship.
Let’s remember who these shepherds are, they are real men, which means that they were crude, and tough, and you probably wouldn’t want your sister to date one. The celebrating that these shepherds were doing was not the artistic praise spoken by the cultured, nor the quiet reflection of the scholar. When the Bible says that they were “glorifying and praising God” (v.20) it is describing something like the last second of the play-off game in seventh overtime when your team finally wins. That’s when the whooping and hollering starts. It is likely that is the only kind of praising and glorifying they knew and I think it brought a smile to God’s face.
They returned to the hills, to their friends and neighbors and told them of seeing the Christ-child, telling all of what they had heard and seen and experienced!
What this world needs is not some new method, but men and women whose lives have been changed by Christ who will go back into the world and tell what they have experienced.
Conclusion
So what happened to the shepherds? Did they stop being shepherds? Yes and No. They were still shepherds but they were not the same shepherds? In fact they would never be the same shepherds again. What’s cool here is that the shepherds went back to their same boring jobs but they weren’t the same on the inside. Notice that they didn’t write a book or go on a speaking tour or launch a ministry called “A Shepherd’s Story.” After Christmas we have to go back to the same routine but now we can do so with rejoicing.
"Overcoming The Confusion of Christmas”
Luke 2:7-20
Luke 2:17-20 holds the answer for, how to celebrate Christmas in a truly Christian way.
First, We Can Truly Celebrate Christmas By ___________ The Good News Of It. (v. 17)
They had good reasons to share what they had heard and seen.
•They knew something _________ telling.
•They knew something the world desperately _______ to hear. (John 14:6)
Secondly, We Can Truly Celebrate Christmas By Remaining _________ By It. (v. 18)
Considering the source, what made the truth that the shepherds told so believable?
•their ______________
•they were so obviously _____________
Third, We Can Truly Celebrate Christmas By Pondering The ____________ Of It. (v. 19)
Fourth, We Can Truly Celebrate Christmas By ___________ God For It. (v. 20)
