Worship Like the Shepherds ¡V Luke 2:8-20
Steve Simala Grant ¡V Dec. 8/9, 2001
Intro:
I want you to think about God. Just for a moment, concentrate on God in your mind. Use your imagination if you like, or reflect on God¡¦s characteristics, or meditate on all that God has done for you.
Pause
Now think about how much more God is than all that you have just imagined. Expand your conceptions beyond space and our universe. Outside of time. Unlimited power.
Pause
And now, take all of that and cram it into a newborn infant.
Pause
That is Christmas. God become man. The eternal, unchanging, all knowing all powerful ever present God of the universe, born as a human child just like each of us. Doesn¡¦t that sort of blow your mind? Doesn¡¦t it fill you with a sense of awe, wonder, at the incomprehensibility of the whole scenario?
What should be our response to this unthinkable truth? I¡¦ve been reflecting this week on the Christmas season, and on its place in our culture and in our faith. I¡¦ve been thinking about what our response should be to God as we celebrate the birth of our saviour. And I¡¦ve come to one conclusion: our response must be one of worship. Worship of the Christ child, yes, but more so, worship of God become flesh.
And yet it is sometimes difficult to worship at Christmas. There are the innumerable distractions ¡V of the busyness and hectic schedules, of presents and trees and parties and family gatherings and increased stresses we encounter at this time of the year. And there is the familiarity of it all ¡V most of us could probably recreate the entire story, could sing many of the Christmas carols by heart, could even get a large number of the details correct ¡V simply because we have heard it over and over and over. The familiarity can desensitize us to the wonder.
So I want to lead us to pause. At least for the length of time we spend in our services through this advent season. To simply pause and worship. We are going to re-tell the story throughout our Advent and Christmas time, with a special focus on how those in the story responded to God becoming flesh. My goal for this mini-series is that we would learn more about how to worship ¡V that as we walk through the familiar accounts, we would see ourselves in the story, we would see our journey reflected in the participants in the first Christmas, and that we would learn to worship as they did. By the end of this season, my prayer is that each of us would be able to look back and say ¡§I¡¦m like the shepherds, or like the Magi, or like Joseph,¡¨ and I want to worship my Lord like they worshipped the Christ-child. Today we focus on the shepherds: Luke 2:8-20.
1. The Shepherds: who they were.
We have an image of the shepherds as clean-cut, respectable, hard-working people just peacefully minding their own business out in the fields. That isn¡¦t entirely accurate¡K
Leon Morris: ¡§As a class shepherds had a bad reputation. The nature of their calling kept them from observing the ceremonial law which meant so much to religious people. More regrettable was their unfortunate habit of confusing ¡¥mine¡¦ with ¡¥thine¡¦ as they moved about the country. They were considered unreliable and were not allowed to give testimony in the law-courts.¡¨ (Luke, Tyndale NT Commentary, p. 93). In other words, they were generally regarded as grubby, thieving low-lifes. There wasn¡¦t a lot of money in sheep, and the nomadic nature of their occupation created opportunity for theft which apparently many of them took advantage of.
In fact, the Biblical text in Luke tells us that they were ¡§living in the fields.¡¨ They were homeless ¡V wanderers ¡V in some cases scavengers. And they were well down the social ladder. They were likely hard men, calloused, rough, certainly dirty and likely uncouth.
And yet, to them God revealed the entrance of God into humanity with the most clarity. The most fanfare. Think about it ¡V Joseph had a dream. The innkeeper was surprised. The Magi followed a simple star, and only after they show up did the theologians have a go at deciphering the location. Mary?- you could make a good case that she had more information and clarity than the shepherds: it was actually the angel Gabriel that visited her and laid out the plan. And I would grant you that point: but the shepherds got a visit from ¡§a great company of the heavenly host¡¨ ¡V they got in on the heavenly party itself! They certainly got a glimpse of the fanfare and the celebration in the heavenly realms that surrounded the birth of Jesus. And isn¡¦t that just like God? Doesn¡¦t it confirm the heart of the message of Christ¡¦s coming into the world ¡V that He came for sinners ¡V that He didn¡¦t come to the elite of humanity, but to the rest of us. In fact, He came for you and I.
We may not resemble the shepherds on the outside. On the outside, on the surface, we look like decent, respectable folks (at least most of us do ļ). But on the inside, apart from Christ, we are just like those shepherds. We are grubby, thieving low-lives. And it is to us that Jesus came!!
2. How they responded:
So there they are, at night, watching their sheep. Just like 1000 other nights. And then suddenly life changes forever. Suddenly, an angel appears in front of them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them.
A. The Initial Response: terror (vs. 9).
What does it take to terrify a group of tough guys? In this case, all it took was ¡§the glory of the Lord.¡¨ The angel shows up, and they were terrified. What do you think might have been running through their minds? Assuming they recognized it as God¡¦s doing, what explains their fear? I think it is the same fear Isaiah had, and that you and I have: exposure. We are confronted with the holiness of God and are immediately, painfully aware of our own sinfulness. And in the face of the glory of a holy God, our sinfulness gives us reason to be afraid. We think that God has finally come to ¡§get us,¡¨ that everything we have ever done that is wrong is about to be revealed and we will be punished. But that is not the case here, it wasn¡¦t for Isaiah, and it isn¡¦t for us. I believe that for the vast majority of us, God¡¦s first message is one of forgiveness and salvation and hope. It was for Isaiah, it was for the shepherds, I believe it is for us also. So the angel¡¦s words to the shepherds are for us also! ¡§Do not be afraid! I bring you good news of great joy.¡¨
Are you afraid of God speaking to you directly ¡V afraid that His message will be one of judgment and rejection and punishment? Fear not. God¡¦s message to you is one of forgiveness and acceptance and hope. It may be uncomfortable! It may be unnerving!! And God may even point out some areas in our lives that need to change ¡V but only so that He can bring forgiveness and acceptance and hope. And salvation!
So that was the initial response ¡V terror. This is not an inappropriate response by the way. It is an honest response, it is a response out of the recognition of the greatness of God contrasted by our own sinfulness. And so this leads me to two conclusions: first, we had better not stay in terror when God¡¦s next words are ¡§Do not be afraid.¡¨ We had better go beyond that to recognize God¡¦s great desire to come into relationship with us as His children. But alongside that, and this is my second conclusion, we had better never forget that God is God. We had better always approach Him with a recognition of who He is. We dare never get to a place of casual indifference, or of demand, or of taking Him for granted. What I mean is that we need to always respect and honor in the midst of intimacy with God.
B. The Second Response: action. (vs. 15-16).
So the angels appear and praise God, and these lowly shepherds get to join the celestial party ¡V at least for a moment. What happens next? (read vss. 15-16).
They got up and went. There is an urgency in the language that is difficult to capture in translation, though vs. 16 tells us they ¡§hurried.¡¨ They left the sheep in the fields in the middle of the night and went to see with their own eyes this thing that the angels had told them. Now I don¡¦t read any disbelief into this ¡V no sense of ¡§I¡¦ll believe it when I see it¡K¡¨, but rather an act of faith: God said this, I believe it, let¡¦s go be a part of it! Their second response was one of action.
I said that my desire for this Christmas series is that each of us would find echoes of our journey somewhere in the Biblical story of Christ¡¦s birth. Well if you are a person of action, the shepherds are for you. They had just had this miraculous experience, this supernatural revelation of God, and they got moving. They could have sat around the campfire talking about how great it was, smiling and laughing and reliving the moment ¡V but they didn¡¦t. They got up and headed straight for town.
That is how some of us respond best to what God has done ¡V we get energized, we want to roll up our sleeves, dig in up to our elbows, see something happen. We want to get busy, get organized, and get rolling. These are people that aren¡¦t so concerned with planning all the details in advance or organizing the trip on paper, they just want to jump right in and get active. The angel didn¡¦t give them a street address, didn¡¦t give them the name of the inn ¡V in fact didn¡¦t even tell them it was an inn at all! All the angel said was that it was in Bethlehem (they would have known this was ¡§The City of David¡¨), there was a baby with clothes on, and there was a manger. They just got busy and went. And vs. 16 tells us they ¡§found¡¨ the baby. It doesn¡¦t tell us if they had to look really hard, if they asked around, of if they just went from barn to barn until they found what they were looking for. But we know that they found the Christ child, just as the angel had said.
Illus: Mexican Pastorelas¡K
This ¡§active¡¨ response is a form of worship. It is a way of response to what God has done and revealed. And maybe it is how you worship best. Maybe you need to be active, involved, getting your hands dirty. If that is you, then worship like the shepherds. Make it active, spontaneous, just jump right in and figure it out as you go.
C. The third response: sharing with others (vs. 17-18).
In keeping with their ¡§active¡¨ nature, we don¡¦t read about them hanging around Mary and Joseph for a long time. It doesn¡¦t seem like they settled in for a while, pulled up a bundle of straw and got comfortable. They got moving again. There is a sense of energy about these shepherds, of enthusiasm, of contagious excitement.
The news and experience was so great that it had to be shared. Have you had an experience like that recently ¡V where something really positive happened and you couldn¡¦t wait to share it with someone? So you called your best friend or your spouse or someone else as quickly as possible, just to share the good news. (eg. Joanne¡¦s call this week). This is what happened with the shepherds. They shared the amazement with others.
Here I see a principle that applies to all of us, regardless of personality type. What God has done for us needs to be shared. I picture these shepherds as excited, maybe a little loud, certainly active and eager ¡V and so I¡¦m going to guess that that is how they shared this news. I picture them like excited teens, running up to people, jumping around, stammering out the facts in the midst of a flurry of exclamatory comments like ¡§it was just so great! So amazing! You should have seen it! The angel appeared, and then there was a bunch more, and it was all true ¡V the baby was right like they said, and they said it is the Christ, and it was just so great¡K¡¨ and then grabbing the next person and saying the same thing.
Now maybe that isn¡¦t your personality type ¡V and that is ok. But the principle stands ¡V the good news needs to be shared. Maybe you share it in a quiet note to a friend. Maybe it is in a deliberate action that demonstrates concretely the love of God. Or maybe it is excited, energetic, and lively. The important thing is that the message gets shared.
I want to remind you here of our Christmas pageant next Sunday (geared for outreach), and our Christmas Eve service. These are both opportunities for you to follow the example of the shepherds ¡V to invite someone to ¡§come and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.¡¨ These are good opportunities to gently share the amazement and the wonder of the fact that God became man so that we could be in relationship with Him.
D. The fourth response: worship and praise (vs. 20).
So they hear the message, find the child, share the news, everyone is amazed, and then what happens? They returned, ¡§glorifying and praising God.¡¨ They worshiped. On a hillside, surrounded by sheep, they worshiped. They glorified and praised God. It doesn¡¦t tell us how ¡V if they sang or prayed or danced or feasted or quietly reflected. It just says they glorified and praised God. I¡¦m going to venture that however they did that, it was an expression of their own personality, culture, and most importantly it was genuinely from their hearts.
Camp story ¡V me as a teen.
That¡¦s pretty simple. And that is what we are called to in this season. And so I want to encourage each of us to find ways to worship this Christmas season. In spite of the busyness. In spite of the familiarity. Take the time and opportunity to kneel before the manger, to be filled with awe at the fact that all that we imagine God to be ¡V and more ¡V is present in that little 7 or 8 pound human child. And then respond ¡V maybe you see yourself in the shepherds and want to respond like they did, maybe you¡¦ll find another character in the story in the weeks to come.
Conclusion:
(options)
I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. If it were possible for a created soul fully to ’appreciate,’ that is, to love and delight in, the worthiest object of all, and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul would be in supreme blessedness. To praise God fully we must suppose ourselves to be in perfect love with God, drowned in, dissolved by that delight which, far from remaining pent up within ourselves as incommunicable bliss, flows out from us incessantly again in effortless and perfect expression. Our joy is no more separable from the praise in which it liberates and utters itself than the brightness a mirror receives is separable from the brightness it sheds.
C.S. Lewis.
True biblical worship so satisfies our total personality that we don’t have to shop around for man-made substitutes. William Temple made this clear in his masterful definition of worship:
For worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of will to His purpose -- and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centeredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin.
Perhaps you’ve heard the story of the hapless Texan who vacationed in England?
While there, he attended a religious service and was amazed at how quiet and reserved it was. Not one word was spoken out of turn. All of a sudden he heard the minister say something he really liked. "Amen!" he shouted. Everyone in the church turned and stared, and the usher came running down the aisle.
"You must not talk out loud," admonished the usher.
"But I’ve got religion," the Texan protested.
"Well, you did not get it here!" the usher replied.
