Luke 2:8 And in the same region there were some shepherds staying out in the fields, and keeping watch over their flock by night.
The region Luke mentions in verse eight is the region of Bethlehem. Bethlehem, Bethlehem was about six miles directly south of the city of Jerusalem. It's just a small village, certainly not a city
Down in that region, "There were some shepherds." In the Greek there is no adjective for these shepherds. It literally says, "There were shepherds," just shepherds and this was the most unlikely group to which God's angel proclaims the good news of the Savior.
I wish there was a group in our culture to compare the Shepherds to but I couldn’t think of any. Maybe if you ever were in school and you had to right a paper on what your parent did for a living and some kid wrote a paper on his father who was a surgeon and another kid wrote a paper on her mother who as a lawyer and when it was your turn you felt a little ashamed having to write a paper on a father who was a trash collector.
The shepherds were among the low class and this was exactly the group that the prophet Isaiah prophesied the Messiah would come to. In Isaiah 61, the pre-incarnate Christ speaks about His arrival as Messiah and says “The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon Me, Because the LORD has anointed Me To preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives, And the opening of the prison to those who are bound…”
These words are actually repeated in Luke 4:18 when Jesus is on the scene in His earthly ministry. When the announcement is made to the shepherds this prophecy is beginning to be fulfilled as the Messiah Jesus is not coming for the “movers and the shakers;” He is not coming for the aristocracy and the elite---He’s coming to the poor; He coming to those who are brokenhearted; the ones who are captive and bound.
Proof of this is seen when He came. He hung around the kind of riff-raff you the average man or woman in our time does not pride themselves with associations. He hangs around the sinners, the prostitutes and the adulterers, the “rip you off” tax men and the drunkards.
In Luke 5:30 the scribes and the Pharisees complained against Jesus’ disciples, saying, “Why do You eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus answered and said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance."
The announcement is made to the lowly, the outcasts, the dregs of society and that certainly described the shepherds. It is the same today. Research shows a higher rate of belief in Christ among those who are at the lower rung of the societal ladder. It still is “easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." (Matthew 19:24)
Luke 2:9 And an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them; and they were terribly frightened.
It was just like any old night for the shepherds. They were out in their fields, literally “taking care of their business.” Our passage says it was “night” and all of a sudden (vs. 9) the sky lit up. The sky lit up with the glory of the Lord.
In order to understand what is going on in this passage we need to go back to the Garden of Eden.
In the Garden, after God has created Adam and Even there is no sin. The is a pure fellowship with God and His creation. Since there is no sin, being in the presence of the Lord is not instant death but pure joy.
Genesis 3:8 lets us know that Adam and Eve were accustomed with walking with God and because there was no sin, this was not God veiling His glory so they would not be killed but God’s gloriously shining Shekinah manifestation.
The Bible tells us that sin entered the picture and God could not fellowship with His creation anymore and puts them out of the Garden—not because He didn’t care for them but because He loved them too much for them to be destroyed by His blazing presence (Gen. 3:24).
In Exodus chapter 40 we find instructions to Moses to build the tabernacle. The tabernacle was a tent where God would visit the children of Israel and guide them through the wilderness.
After Moses was finished setting up the tabernacle and putting within it all the articles required by the Lord, Exodus 40:34-35 says, “Then the cloud covered the tabernacle of meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the tabernacle of meeting, because the cloud rested above it, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle.”
Exodus 40 goes on to let us know that “Whenever the cloud was taken up from above the tabernacle, the children of Israel would go onward in all their journeys. But if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not journey till the day that it was taken up. For the cloud of the LORD was above the tabernacle by day, and fire was over it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys.” (vs. 36-38)
The same kind of thing happened when Solomon's temple was built.
2 Chr 7:1 When Solomon had finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices; and the glory of the LORD filled the temple.
2 Chr 7:2 And the priests could not enter the house of the LORD, because the glory of the LORD had filled the Lord's house.
2 Chr 7:3 When all the children of Israel saw how the fire came down, and the glory of the LORD on the temple, they bowed their faces to the ground on the pavement, and worshiped and praised the LORD, saying: "For He is good, For His mercy endures forever."
Now later in history, God’s people Israel would sin and turn against God and His ways. In Ezekiel chapter 8 through 11 the glory of God departed from the temple.
Ezekiel watched as the glory of the Lord lifted up from the cherubim (plural of cherub) over the Mercy Seat in the Holy of Holies, and moved to the threshold of the Temple (also 10:4), and then to the East gate of the outer court (10:18-19), and finally to the Mount of Olives (11:23).
Here’s the connection…the glory of the Lord never came back until this night. The glory of the Lord doesn’t appear on earth again until it appears to some shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night.
Back in the Garden of Eden, the glory of the Lord, the Shekinah glory was manifested in the presence of the Lord.
In the tabernacle, when the cloud descended into the tent and guided the children of Israel by the cloud and the pillar of fire, it was the manifested presence of the Lord.
In Solomon’s temple, when the glory hovered over the cherubim of the Mercy Seat, God was present among His people.
When the glory of the Lord shone around the terrified shepherds in the field at night it only did so because of the manifested presence of the Lord—but this time it had not come in tent or in a building, this time it had come in human flesh in the babe born in a manger!
Luke 2:10 And the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which shall be for all the people;
Some time ago my family and I were sitting together watching TV when all of a sudden we saw a flash of light and heard a loud explosion powerful enough to shake our house. Needless to say it really frightened us.
Can you imagine living in the first century over two thousand years ago. No electricity, no incandescent lighting, no fluorescent light, no bright LED lighting—no artificial lights—only the moon lit up the sky if it wasn’t cloudy and only a fire or torch for immediate lighting.
It is at night now—it is dark and all of a sudden, the glory of the Lord shines around you.
If you go back and study the glory of the Lord. That is simply defined as the manifestation of the presence of God in light. Now God is not corporeal, He doesn't have a body, He doesn't have a form, a physical form. He's the invisible God. But when He reveals Himself He reveals Himself as light, some kind of...some kind of glowing, brilliant, shining, incomprehensible manifestation of light. In fact, if He revealed Himself fully in light, in Exodus 33 it would be enough to incinerate anybody. And that's why God said to Moses, "I can't show you My full glory, you'll go up in smoke." So God tucked Moses in a rock and just let a little bit of His afterglow shine so that Moses could see it.
Notice with me the reaction of the Apostle John when seeing the resurrected Christ in all His glory:
Rev 1:12 Then I turned to see the voice that spoke with me. And having turned I saw seven golden lampstands,
Rev 1:13 and in the midst of the seven lampstands One like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band.
Rev 1:14 His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire;
Rev 1:15 His feet were like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, and His voice as the sound of many waters;
Rev 1:16 He had in His right hand seven stars, out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and His countenance was like the sun shining in its strength.
Rev 1:17 And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. But He laid His right hand on me, saying to me, "Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last.
It is easy to pass by this section of Scripture because of its familiarity. But we need to park here for a moment in our imagination and ponder what our reaction would be if we were in the shepherd’s sandals.
My daughter Rosie gets a kick out of sneaking up on me in the house. When I come down the stairs, she hides herself at the bottom and then jumps out. If you ever startled yourself when looking at a coat rack in the dark or from something hanging on your door you wouldn’t make it through an angelic encounter.
Each time an angel visits someone in the New Testament, the visitation is accompanied by the greeting, “Fear not,” or “Do not be afraid.”
You need to know that something is going on here that is special. The visitation by the heavenly host that is accompanied by the shekinah glory of the Lord is an extraordinary event. The glory of the Lord hasn’t manifested for _____________ years and now it appears.
Luke 2:11 for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.
This obviously is no small event. We have already seen that the glory of the Lord has reappeared.
Even though God chooses to make the announcement of this event to people who almost were in obscurity, this event was one of the biggest in the history of mankind.
When examining sentence structure in the English language you must look for the main subject. In literature, there is the protagonist, or the main character (the central or primary personal figure) of the literary work.
Here in Luke, the shepherds are playing a supporting role. The angels, though important, are still in a supporting role. The central and main character in this account is the Savior who has been born.
Giving the announcement of Luke 2:11 more of a context, we would have to include verse 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.”
The KJV and NKJV says, “I bring you good tidings.” While I greatly respect the KJV and would encourage anyone to use it for personal study, no one talks like that today.
If you were going to call me to tell me that I had won a million dollars in a contest and started the conversation with the words, “I bring you good tidings…” I would say, “Ah… ok.”
But if you told me that you had some “good news” I would say, “Come on…tell me!” So the angel tells the shepherds, “I have some good news of great joy that will be for all the people.”
The “good news” is that One has been born who will save people from their sins and thus deliver them from eternal condemnation!
Pastor John MacArthur says,
“From the very beginning the child born was not just any child, this was the long-awaited Savior of the world. This is the one who finally would save His people from their sins. This is the one who would finally be the lamb who would offer one sacrifice that would perfect forever those that are sanctified. This is the one who would come and pay the penalty for sin; offer the final sacrifice with which the entire sacrificial system would go away...the endless, literally millions of lambs that had been sacrificed had never been able to take away sin.
Jesus Himself in Luke 19:10 said, "The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." In John 4:42 He is called "The Savior of the world." In 1 John 4:14 we find the words, “And we have beheld and bear witness that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.”
Jesus came to save the world, He didn't come to be an example of nobility and morality and integrity. He didn't come to be an example of passivity. He didn't come to demonstrate patience and kindness and mercy and tenderness. He did all of that but He came to be the Savior of the world.”
Again, this was a major event—it was a scheduled event. This was something that God had planned before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1). In Galatians 4:4 Paul writes, “But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law…”
Paul is saying, “At God’s appointed time He sent His Son Jesus the Christ.” We find the setting for this appointed time in Luke chapter two, verses 1-3. “Now it came about in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth. This was the first census that was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria and all were proceeding to register for the census, everyone to his own city.”
As a result of this decree, Joseph and Mary go to Bethlehem to register for the census. This was no coincidence. This census was ordained by God so that Mary would be in Bethlehem when she would give birth to Jesus and the prophecy of Micah would come to pass.
(Micah 5:2 NKJV) "But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, Though you are little among the thousands of Judah, Yet out of you shall come forth to Me The One to be Ruler in Israel, Whose goings forth are from of old, From everlasting."
Little did Caesar Augustus know that he was being moved by the Spirit of God to do exactly what he did, on time, on schedule, to affect exactly the result that God desired. There was a specific period of time in which Joseph and Mary had to be in Bethlehem—right at the very moment of the birth of the Christ child. God knew exactly when that day was; down to the exact moment.
MacArthur comments:
“God knew when they had to be there and He had planned for that to happen under the authority and the power of a Caesar who was far removed from the little village Bethlehem and utterly removed from the purposes of God and utterly ignorant of the Word of God. But nonetheless he was a main player in bringing the prophecy to pass, which shows the mighty, incomprehensible, providential work of Almighty God.” (MacArthur)
So you see, Jesus’ birth was a scheduled birth. Our women will appreciate this fact more because scheduling a natural birth is hard to do. When the baby says “I’m outta here!” it doesn’t matter where you are.
One year I preached on this topic a woman named Tiandra Porter, 24, gave birth to her son at a Wendy's. When one of the workers and his boss entered the bathroom, Tiandra Porter was on the toilet and the baby was submerged in the water. The employee fished the baby out with gloves and towels. He then used a mustard squeeze bottle to clear fluid from the baby's nose and mouth.
Then there was a young woman named Lisa Hall who was taken by surprise when baby Roy arrived during a packed karaoke session at a club. An area of the bar was screened off with blankets and Lisa gave birth to the sounds of "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas".
A Gold Coast woman whose own birth was in the back of a taxi, gave birth in an ambulance on the roadside - after the vehicle broke down on the way to the hospital. She said it was fate.
The birth of Jesus in a Bethlehem stable was no coincidence. God ordained that the birth of His Son would take place at a time when the world was ripe for the proclamation and dissemination of the Gospel. This is what Paul meant by “the fullness of time.”
God sent His Son as a baby who was born in the most humble of means. The Bible tells us there was no room in the inn, so Mary gave birth to Jesus, the Son of God in a lowly manger; a common feed box for animals—this occurred in the “fullness of time.”
Ephesians 1:4 tells us that God “chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world…” We find evidence of this in Genesis shortly after Adam eats the forbidden fruit and plunges humanity under the condemnation of sin:
Gen 3:15 And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel."
Genesis 3:15 is known as the Proto-Evangelium. Many call it this (proto-evangelium means “first gospel) because it was the first time God revealed something about his plan for the salvation of the world- Jesus Christ, Son of Mary (“”her Seed”) who would bruise the head of the devil (the serpent).
The wound to Jesus’ 'heel' would not be ultimately fatal, (this hints that Jesus would rise again) whereas the blow to Satan would indeed destroy him in that mankind would have a ready remedy for sin through the Cross.
Other theologians call the true “proto-evangelium” can be found a few verses later in verse 21:
“ And the LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.”
The garments of skin were God's provision for restoring Adam's and Eve's fellowship with Himself and imply slaying of an animal in order to provide them.
The point of all this is that “there has been born for you a Savior…” This is the high point of redemptive history. This is the greatest moment in the history of the world. A Savior would come and He would take on the judgment of God for sinners. He would be punished in our place. As symbolically the lamb died in the place of the sinner in the Old Testament, sacrificial system, this Lamb, the perfect spotless pure Lamb of God would die for sinners and He would die such a perfect death and bear sin so perfectly that never would there be another sacrifice. Jesus would be the Savior of the world by taking on the punishment for sinners. He would die under the execution of God's wrath. God literally would execute Jesus for your sins and my sins. And since the penalty was fully paid, God would be free to forgive us and take us to eternal heaven and not send us to hell to bear the punishment for our own sins because Christ had bore it for us. (MacArthur)
Three titles were given to Jesus in the angel's announcement: Savior, Christ (Messiah, anointed One), and Lord (Yahweh, or God). He was both God and man.
Luke 2:12 "And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths, and lying in a manger."
Luke 2:13 And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
Luke 2:14 "Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased."
Luke 2:15 And it came about when the angels had gone away from them into heaven, that the shepherds began saying to one another, "Let us go straight to Bethlehem then, and see this thing that has happened which the Lord has made known to us."
Luke 2:16 And they came in haste and found their way to Mary and Joseph, and the baby as He lay in the manger.
Luke 2:17 And when they had seen this, they made known the statement which had been told them about this Child.
Luke 2:18 And all who heard it wondered at the things which were told them by the shepherds.
(1 Cor 10:31 NKJV) Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
The context here is Christian liberty. The early Christian church was composed of both Jews and Gentiles. The Jews were being offended because the Gentiles were serving ribs and pig feet at the Agape Dinner.
Paul was saying that while the food was ok if received with thanksgiving the best way to keep from offending your brother was to glorify God in all that you eat, drink or do.
The word glory is doxa, dox'-ah; from which we get our English word doxology. It means glory (as very apparent), dignity, glory (-ious), honor, praise, and worship.
The verb thus often comes to mean, “give weight to, honor”
