(Note: This message is based on a sermon preached at First Baptist Church of Chamois, MO on December 11, 2022. This is not an exact transcription.)
Introduction: This is the third Sunday in the Advent season. Today’s focus is on joy, and if there was ever a need for joy, it’s these days! In fact, I looked up the word “joy” on one of the on-line dictionaries and oddly enough, there aren’t really any good definitions. The common thread, if you want to call it that, is an ecstatic feeling or an emotion coming you didn’t expect. I guess.
Well, I didn’t find much of anything there so I read some of the quotes from various authors and to say the least, some are colorful and some are downright odd, in my opinion! Here’s one, and since we have a baseball player in our congregation today (a teen ager), it makes sense: “Joy is like pitching a shut-out”. Another that I think is strange goes like this: “Joy is like a young pigeon too full to fly.” And there are others, too. We can agree with the Scots that, as their saying goes, “It’s better telt than felt!”
Now, the problem for today’s message isn’t finding a text; it’s finding which text to choose! Joy is mentioned many times in the Bible—and every time, it’s good!—but there was one that I kept coming back to. It’s from Luke’s gospel, chapter 2 beginning at verse 8. The Word says,
(Text: Acts 2:8-20, NASB): 8 In the same region there were some shepherds staying out in the fields and keeping watch over their flock at night. 9 And an angel of the Lord suddenly stood near them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them; and they were terribly frightened. 10 And so the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; 11 for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 12 And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” 13 And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly army of angels praising God and saying, 14 “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace among people with whom He is pleased.”
15 When the angels had departed from them into heaven, the shepherds began saying to one another, “Let’s go straight to Bethlehem, then, and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” 16 And they came in a hurry and found their way to Mary and Joseph, and the baby as He lay in the manger. 17 When they had seen Him, they made known the statement which had been told them about this Child. 18 And all who heard it were amazed about the things which were told them by the shepherds. 19 But Mary treasured all these things, pondering them in her heart. 20 And the shepherds went back, glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen, just as had been told them.
<prayer>
Here in this passage we can see three different groups and each of them experienced joy at the birth of our Lord. The shepherds were out in the country, watching the sheep; the angel and later the “heavenly host” made news and shared news; and the family themselves, with Joseph, Mary, and the Baby. Let’s look at the shepherds first.
By the way, if any of you get the chance, please read Phillip Keller’s book “A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23” as it gives a lot of application from a brother who had a lot in common with David. Way back in the early 90’s, also, I was stationed in southern California and one of the folks who attended our church there had raised sheep for a while.
I have to confess that I didn't and still don’t know very much about sheep but this man told us some things that just about made my head spin. He told us that sheep are about the stupidest animals to ever walk the earth! They’ll put their heads down and nibble grass down to the earth itself if nobody stops them, he said, and they’ll get lost, not knowing where they are or how they got there. If a shepherd doesn’t find the sheep, he added, that sheep’s done for. And worst of all, he continued, if a sheep falls down, it’s nearly impossible for it to get back up on its feet.
Is it any wonder the Lord calls us, “sheep”?
These shepherds, mentioned in the text, are some of the unsung heroes of the Christmas story. After all, they didn’t have an easy job; sometimes they’d be gone, with the sheep, for weeks if not months at a time. They had to find grass for the sheep, water for the sheep, and sometimes the sheep themselves all the while watching out for enemies—two-legged and otherwise. Note that it’s night time, and they’re still watching the flock. Some folks think this means they took turns watching while some caught some rest. At any rate, they were taking care or business—literally—when they received the surprise of their lives!
They saw an angel! Now, only a few people have ever knowingly seen these beings. We’re not talking about “angels unawares” as Paul wrote in Hebrews 13, but when a heavenly, angelic being made his presence known to a human being. This was one of those times!
And not only did these shepherds see the angel, they were terrified! The King James Version says they “were sore afraid”, New American Standard has “terribly frightened” and other versions all say pretty much the same thing. The common idea is that these men, no matter what they had previously seen, had most likely never seen anything like it before. And they were scared stiff, to say the least! No wonder the angel told them to “do not be afraid” or, “Stop being afraid—it’s all good (to use a phrase of these days)”.
I doubt they ever did stop fearing after they saw something like this! Think about it: let’s take a look at the center aisle. Is anybody there? No? Okay, I didn’t think so, but if somebody DID appear, right there, and we know they had not come in through any of the doors, my guess is that we’d be just as scared as those shepherds! I know I’d be!
Well, eventually, these shepherds did get calmed enough to hear what the angel had to say. And oh, did this angel have some very good news for them, and for us, too. Besides saying, “Don’t be afraid, guys, it’s all good”, I have good news of great JOY for you! There in Bethlehem (not too far from where they were, by the way) you men will find a Savior, Who is Christ the Lord!”
That would bring joy to me, I’ll tell you, especially if I had been waiting for the Messiah just as these men had apparently been doing. They didn’t say a word, didn’t ask a question, didn’t even say, ”Yeah, right” or anything like that. They just listened.
And it’s a good thing they did, too, because the angel wasn’t finished yet. He said, in addition, “here’s the sign—here’s how you’ll know which baby is the Messiah. He’ll be wrapped in cloths (“swaddling clothes” in the King James) and lying in a manger.” There is some discussion about just where Jesus was born and under which conditions and I’m not going to get into that now. It’s enough to say that He, our Savior, was born in probably one of the worst places ever for a baby to be born. Tell you what, on Christmas Day Sunday I’ll read part of Martin Luther’s Christmas Day message about this text. It’ll make us think.
A word about a “manger”, too: some of us may have been to one of the Holy Land replica villages here in the USA. Some years back, my wife and I took a “mini-moon” to Eureka Springs, Arkansas and took a tour of their version of a Holy Land village. What a sight! One of the things I’ll never forget was their “model”, I can’t think of any other word, of a “manger”. It was a block of stone, about 2-3 feet long and about six inches or so wide (I honestly don’t know). There in the middle, someone had chiseled or hollowed out a spot that left a couple of inches margin on each side and the “cavity” or hole was a few inches deep. The guide said that hole was where they put hay or feed for the cattle.
Think about that for a moment. This is where our Lord made His entry into this world, where He was first laid after He had been born. Amazing.
And it was amazing for the shepherds, too, as they were still in the field, trying to digest what this one angel had told them, when they were startled again. This time, it wasn’t just one angel, it was “a multitude” of them! There’s a verse that mentions “ten thousand times ten thousand” angels so there may have been over 100 million of these angels! All of these beings were praising God and saying (chanting? Singing?) “Glory to God in the highest! And on earth peace, among people with whom He is pleased.” Oh, what a choir that had to be! And this, their one and only earthly performance, was to a bunch of shepherds, the outcasts of society, the nobodies, but some of the most blessed men in history. They saw something nobody else ever has!
But they were about to see something even more special than the “heavenly host”. As impressive as that had to be, nothing was going to compare with what they would see next.
They were about to see the most special Baby ever born!
Now, I take it that the angel and all the others disappeared as quickly as they had appeared to the shepherds. When anyone saw an angel in the Old Testament times, generally the angel spoke his message and left. That’s my guess as to what happened here: they came and vanished before those poor shepherds even figured out what was happening.
But it didn’t take very long for them to decide to go and find or “see this thing . . .which the Lord has made known to us (proving there was more than one shepherd, by the way)”. They said, in so many words, “Let’s get over to Bethlehem ASAP!” You’ll recall the angel gave them only one clue or suggestion where Baby Jesus might be—He would be wrapped in strips of cloth and lying in a :”manger” or feeding trough for animals. They got there in a hurry, all right, and found Mary, Joseph, and the Baby—just as the angel had said (an illustration about a plaster-
of-Paris Nativity set omitted to save space).
We’re not told anything more about how many shepherds but there probably weren’t very many. Luke doesn’t tell us how long these shepherds stayed or how or even if they worshiped the Child in the manger. But we do know that after they left, they “made known the statement which had been told them about this Child.” Estimates vary but most commentators agree that Bethlehem was nowhere near the size of Jerusalem in terms of population.
These shepherds may have been the first house-to-house evangelists but we can’t be sure. The point is that they didn’t keep this glorious news about the Birth of Messiah Jesus to themselves—they shared this news!
Sadly, then as now, so many allowed themselves to think, “So what?” to this news. All who heard it were “amazed”, as Luke puts it, but for too many, that seems to be as far as it went. Mary, though, “treasured” all these things and pondered—thought deeply, one might say—about all of this in her heart.
The shepherds, though, went back to their sheep. As we recall, sheep need a lot, A LOT, of attention and shepherds had their jobs to do. Even Martin Luther in one of his messages said that the shepherds went back to the sheep, as they’d be in a mess if the shepherds stayed away.
So in conclusion, we’ve seen how the shepherds were in the field, keeping an eye on their flock even at night. They weren’t expecting anything different, I suppose, but they received the surprise of their lives when they saw an angel, then a host of them, and finally saw the Baby Jesus, The Messiah, God in flesh, right before their eyes. If that didn’t bring joy, I don’t know what would!
You too can have this joy! Accept God’s gift of salvation today and you’ll have everything the Lord wants you to have—including “joy unspeakable, and full of glory!” Do it today!
Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Version of the Bible (NASB).
