President Franklin D. Roosevelt made an important speech before Congress on January 6, 1941. After the war was over, he shared his vision of all people enjoying four basic freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Warren Wiersbe, conference speaker, author and pastor, adds a fifth freedom that he is convinced the world needs: freedom from self. We need to be free from our sinful nature and the tyranny of evil.
Freedom from the tyranny of evil came to us in the Person of Jesus Christ! God did not save us when Jesus died on the cross. He saved us when Jesus was born. The familiar words of our Lord who said, “It is finished” in his last moments of the infamous crucifixion spoke not only of Calvary’s moment, but echoed through time that redemptive plan that was at work the day of his birth. He reached even further back than that, as his heart spoke of the redemption of God that has been at work from the dawn of creation, in preparation for the moment when the parents of humanity, Adam and Eve, would fall from God’s favor through a disobedient act.
The presence of Freedom is to speak of the presence of God in Jesus. Freedom was wrapped in a blanket, lying in a manger. Freedom walked among the afflicted, the poor, and the dying. Freedom hung on a cross and on the third day declared, “Death will have no dominion over Me or you”. Freedom challenged Death to a dual – and Freedom won! Freedom is the unfailing, ever-present Christ in one’s life.
Freedom calls to us in the reality of our lives that things do not have to be the way they are; that God is the Master planner and we’re part of it!
We will look at this message through the lives of the lowly shepherds of today’s reading. Angels appearing to lowly shepherds sets the stage for three important messages about the Presence of Freedom.
1. FREEDOM comes through simple humility
Luke 2:15 – “Let us go to Bethlehem and see this thing which has happened, which the Lord has told us about”
(Slide) Bill Wilson is founder and Senior Pastor of Metro Ministries based out of New York City, ministering to the five boroughs of New York, with expanding ministry around the world. When Bill Wilson was a boy, he was walking with his mom one day and they sat on a culvert to rest. His mom then got up and told Bill to stay there until she came back. A man who was walking that way found Bill where his mom had left him sitting three days earlier. She had committed suicide. I remember Bill telling his story at a Salvation Army conference in Newark, NJ, how when he was 11 he went to a summer camp. The preacher invited anyone who wanted to know Jesus personally to kneel at the bench-altar they had set up in the front. Bill was overwhelmed with God’s presence and so he knelt at the front because he wanted to know Jesus. He said that when he knelt everyone else moved away from him. None of the counselors wanted to speak to this stinky, smelly kid with torn clothes but they spoke to all the other kids. They knelt and prayed with all the other children, but not with this Wilson kid. Bill decided that day that he would be a friend to those who had no friends. Over time Bill touched the lives of the marginalized and destitute. These would be his parish and he would be their pastor and friend. He lived in the same slum conditions of his parishioners. His home was an abandoned warehouse and his bed was a bug-infested mattress on the floor. The rats were regular companions of his nightly turn-in. Yet, Bill founded the biggest children’s ministry in the world. Quoting from his website we read that “Metro’s largest program by far is its Sunday School currently reaching over 20,000 children at 151 sites in the US, over 16,000 at 54 sites in the Philippines, and many others in various nations.” (BS)
What happened to Bill Wilson is what happened to the shepherds to whom the angels first declared that Messiah, Freedom, was born. Here were men who, by virtue of their trade, were not subject to status or honor. Singer/Songwriter Michael Card writes of “shepherds with sheep dung on their shoes’. These were despised by the orthodox community, meaning those who had an understanding of what constituted normal behaviour and acceptable beliefs, attitudes or conduct. What matters the pathetic opinion or heart of a shepherd? These would be the “street rats” of the children’s Disney Classic “Aladdin”.
The angels’ announcement “A Savior has been born to you” changed the way they looked at themselves so they could say with hope, “Let us go and see”. They saw the value that God saw in them, as did Bill Wilson when the “orthodox” community didn’t include him in their counsel and care. This picture of the shepherds is one of a people who held no pride near their hearts and in their dung-covered shoes they went to see the King!
Freedom demands we be as the shepherds – void of pride. If we will see the King and expect to spend time in His presence and be touched by His holiness, we must first be stripped of our pride – to come to Him in the vileness of our condition and admit the truth – that we are not worthy of Him; that we are imprisoned by the tyranny of evil that Warren Wiersbe spoke of earlier and that we need forgiveness and cleansing. No more blaming everyone else. No more making excuses. No more playing politics in the Church. No more appealing to God as an intellectual act of worship. An admission is in order – “I’m guilty of misbehavior (SIN). I behave in ways that separate me from You Lord. Forgive me. Restore me. Cleanse me.” To reach this truthful place of admission and surrender is to know the experience of real FREEDOM.
2. FREEDOM leads us to simple boldness
Luke 2:16 – “So they hurried off and found…the baby”
People who find safety in conformity are threatened by people who find freedom in Christ. It was no small decision for the shepherds when they declared, “Let us go and see.” Their breech of conformity would mean a price to pay but for now they would see this thing that God declared to them. When they arrived it was a drawing near but with no lack of reverence. They knew they were in the presence of God. It was a demonstration of obedience to the command of Hebrews 4:16 which had not yet been written: “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” To leave the temple flock unattended was not only an act deserving the loss of their jobs. It was a sure way of bringing the temple guard down on their heads for such careless and risky behavior. The religious community would not have been pleased that these worthless caregivers of smelly sheep would think they had a right to do such a thing. The freedom of the announcement sent a surge through their being that could not be denied. It gave birth to a simple boldness that would never have been known before. But that’s what happens when God comes to town! The ordinary is confounded by the extraordinary; conformity is mesmerized by the mysterious.
Why do you think people get discomforted when they walk in church to find someone sitting in “their” pew? Why is it people get unsettled and discomforted by unusual music styles, songs, codes of conduct or dress that don’t fit the norm of what they associate with being “proper”? It’s because their conformity is being challenged. Their understanding of God is restricted to the external realities of what they understand and have known all their lives. He is “the God of the box” – He is known in a way that he can be measured, understood and rationalized. I’ve got news for you. We cannot put God in box! We have no idea what he’s thinking or why he does what he does! He defies explanation and comprehension! Anything we can manage and explain does not deserve the title GOD!
Why do you think people who “sit where they shouldn’t” or don’t like the static style of worship or the cold shoulder of the worshippers never come back a second time? Why is the church under heavy criticism and objection in society? I passed a church yesterday in Owen Sound that has a signed posted near its parking lot. It says, “CHURCH PARKING ONLY. VIOLATERS WILL BE TICKETED AND TOWED AT OWNERS RISK AND EXPENSE.” Way to go church.
People avoid us because they feel the heavy weight of being challenged to conform to our definitions of God, behaviour and codes, which don’t even measure up according to our definitions because of the way we behave so they are frightened away feeling inferior and un-welcomed because they don’t fit the norm.
Living with the Presence of Freedom takes heart. News Analyst Elmer Davis in his book “We were Born Free” wrote of the United States of America when he said, “This will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave.” So is this true of the influence of the birth of the Savior in that Bethlehem stall. “A Savior has been born to you” only works when we remain brave – brave enough to get out of our conformity and brave enough to challenge the conformists and to live like we believe the message of the angelic hosts. Embracing this truth demands we understand that we cannot live by this knowledge and expect to remain in conformity to the world’s impressions of rights, privileges and injustices. When we live this truth, the first thing we come to understand is that it’s not about you. How many times have you heard that in the last six months? I think it will continue to be a recurring theme for some time to come until there is evidence that we finally get it.
A cautionary note needs to be spoken here, people of God. We must never be presumptuous in thinking that God’s love for us gives us a right to access to Him. We have no rights. We have grace! This truth leads us to come with simple boldness – a respectful coming, a coming of recognition that it is a gift not a right.
3. FREEDOM instills us with simple joy
Luke 2:17-18…
Theologian: “While they were standing at the door, Christmas came in at the window. While they were doing the duty of earth, there flashed on them the glory of heaven. While they watched their flocks by night, there broke on them the angel of the day.”
Simple joy allows us to be free as Jesus was – working, living, playing and existing in the norm of everyday life and routine. It is what one writer called “the priority of God”. It is to return to life with the life-giver.
Simple joy comes when we recognize the two things experienced by the shepherds that night – “A Savior” and “Peace” – Freedom and Peace. Max Lucado, author and pastor, recalls a reminder of a Christmas past in a poem on a card that said,
“If our greatest need had been information, God would have sent an educator. If our greatest need had been technology, God would have sent us a scientist. If our greatest need had been money, God would have sent us an economist. But since our greatest need was forgiveness, God sent us a Savior.”
My heart is always strangely warmed when I think that the glory of the angels lighting up the night sky is symbolic of the darkness of sin’s prison being shafted with light and liberty! One must ponder the representation of the angel-choir song as Freedom’s presence – God’s presence – putting a song of deliverance in the hearts of the doomed. When Light blazes into our hearts with an indescribable experience of God’s presence, putting a song in our lives that nothing can douse, casting a glow of Freedom across the pages of our lives, how can there not be peace?!
I have a message for the tormented spirit; the negative heart; the complaining lips; the angry, the gloomy, the pessimistic, the doom-and-gloom-nothings-good whiners. Here’s the message. If you want simple joy so that you wake up with purpose and lie down having made a difference you must “come and see” as the shepherds did. If your life is void of purpose and even simple joy, it may be that you have not yet experienced or have not nurtured the experience, of what it means to be touched and changed by the Savior.
WRAP
Someone said it well of our faithful use of gifts when they wrote, “We may all stand round the cradle of Christ; but they stand nearest who come first...The place we take depends simply on the use we make of our teaching and gifts and opportunities.”
Where you and I stand right now in our living for others and being in clear understanding of what we bring to life and the Kingdom of God, is a reflection of how near we are to the cradle – that moment when the Christ changed us forever.
Imagine in your mind that I gave you a wooden stake and there are a series of holes that run from the front entrance to the altar, the altar representing the manger of Christ – a representation of that moment when he was born in your heart and the front entrance representing distance away from God. Imagine that you were to leave your seat and put your wooden stake in one of the holes that run down the center isle and where you place it speaks of your experience of Christ; your experience of simple humility, simple boldness and simple joy – where would you place your stake? Would it be close to the cradle (the altar) or would it be closer to the entrance, or somewhere in between?
“We may all stand round the cradle of Christ; but they stand nearest who come first.”
