December 17
“In the same region shepherds were staying out in the fields and keeping watch at night over their flock. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were terrified. And the angel said to them….” Today a Savior who is Messiah the Lord, was born for you in the City of David. This will be a sign for you: You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger….When the angel left them and returned to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let’s go straight to Bethlehem and see what has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.’ They hurried off and found Mary and Joseph and the baby who was lying in a manger. After seeing them, they reported the message they were told about this child and all who heard about it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them.” Luke 2:8-18
I would love to see this scene played out in a Christmas pageant. In the church versions the shepherds walk in from the back of the sanctuary, down the aisle and stand on the right side looking adoringly at the Baby Jesus. We miss the whole scene from the field. It must have been amazing. This small group of shepherds were in the field watching their flocks and out of nowhere an angel appears and tells them that the Messiah has been born. They were the first ones to get the baby announcement. And then a multitude of the heavenly host appears and gives a concert right there in front of them praising God. So why were they the ones who were privileged to receive the angel’s message?
In Christ’s day, shepherds stood on the bottom of the social ladder. They shared the same status as tax collectors. During the period of the patriarchs shepherding was a noble profession. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were all shepherds. When the 12 tribes of Israel migrated to Egypt during the famine, however, they encountered a very different lifestyle. The Egyptians were farmers and as farmers they despised sheep and goats because they ate their crops. They considered sheep worthless for food and looked down on the Israelite shepherds. Over the course of their 400-year captivity in Egypt they forgot their nomadic roots and became farmers. When they escaped Egypt and settled in the promised land, shepherding became a menial task for the laboring class. Some scholars suggest that shepherds were considered to be outcasts, untrustworthy and unreliable. Others suggest that they were merely poor and lowly in position. Either way, the fact that shepherds were the first ones God chose to tell about the birth of His Son is noteworthy.
The Messiah was born into the world to an ordinary teenage girl with an ordinary husband who was a carpenter. He was born in an ordinary town in a stable surrounded by animals and hay. The first people that were told about the birth was a group of shepherds out in a field. This was definitely not what the Jewish leaders or any Jew in that day would have expected. But this is how He chose to come. He didn’t come to the self-righteous religious leaders or the influential Jewish leaders of the day. He came to the poor and hungry, the outcast and the needy. He came to save the humble and meek not to walk with the arrogant men who thought they had it all figured out. The shepherds received the news with great joy and returned glorifying and praising God for what they had seen and heard. God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things.
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