The Shepherd's Journey

READ Luke 2:8-20

I have been to “the shepherds’ field” outside Bethlehem. Actually, I think there are several “shepherds’ fields” all trying to attract tourists, because who actually knows which field the shepherds were in.

When you stand there you can look across at the modern city of Bethlehem and imagine the shepherds making that journey.

But the journey that interests me today is the journey they took from “watching over their flocks at night” with no expectation whatsoever that anything was going to happen, to “glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen”. Shepherds did not have a very good reputation at the time. They were seen as rough and dishonest, probably thieves. So, we might think of it as the journey from godlessness to faith, and worship.

In the story, there are seven stages. I am not suggesting that everybody’s conversion follows the same seven stages. God works in wildly diverse ways. I am just saying that this is an interesting example of a conversion.

Is it accurate to call it a conversion? Were they believers at the end of the story? You decide. Were their lives changed forever? Who knows?

Stage 1: they were watching over their sheep at night. There is no indication that they thought this night was going to be any different from every other night. There is no indication that they were thinking about God or about the ancient prophecies of a Messiah. In fact, that is highly unlikely.

Stage 2: Wham! Angel. The glory of the Lord shining around them. Imagine the shock. A dark night, then blazing lights and an angel. They were terrified!

For one thing, it would just be an incredible shock.

But actually terrifying… they were in the presence of God, or, at the very least, of God’s angel. What was God going to do to these godless men?

Think of Isaiah. And he was a priest (probably) and a prophet. He was in the Temple where you might expect to encounter God, and yet, when he saw God, he also was terrified and deeply troubled by his own sinfulness. “Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty”. (Isaiah 6:5)

Think of John when he had a vision of Jesus in Revelation 1. He wrote, ‘When I saw Him, I fell at His feet as though dead.” (Rev 1:17) And he had walked and talked with Jesus for three years.

How much more terrifying must it have been for shepherds who knew that they were far from God. Surely God was about to judge them.

We can turn our backs on God if we want to, but there will be a day of reckoning.

But suddenly things change dramatically again.

Stage 3: the angel told them not to be afraid. He, in fact, brought good news; good news of great joy that will be for all the people. They expected bad news of great terror, but the angel brought good news of great joy… for everyone and that must include them.

How could this be? Would God come to people like them with good news of great joy? What sort of God was this? At the very least, I think that at this stage they would have been confused, but maybe also a little hopeful. This was not working out the way they initially feared.

The angel continued to explain. “Today, in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you; He is the Messiah, the Lord.”

“In the town of David”, Bethlehem, just a few miles across the hills. For all their lack of devotion to God, they would have known that David, the greatest king of Israel, had grown up in Bethlehem. David had been a shepherd. He had possibly watched over the flocks by night in this same field a thousand years earlier. They must have thought about that many times. Some of them were possibly related to him.

And they may well have known that the Messiah would also be a descendant of David.

The angel said, “a Saviour has been born” A Saviour; One who saves.

“Born to you”. Well, that’s a bit odd because He hadn’t been born to them. The shepherds hadn’t had a baby; He had been born to Mary and Joseph. Except that, I have it on very good authority, because I googled it, that the text uses the “dative of advantage”. Who knew? In other words, the grammar tells us that the angels were saying a Saviour had been born for their good, for their benefit. Dirty, rotten, despised shepherds, God has given a Saviour for you, that you might be blessed. The God whom you thought was about to strike you dead is actually giving you a Saviour. You thought you were condemned to hell? No, God wants to save you.

Who was this Saviour? He was the Messiah, the Lord. This is what has been promised for so many centuries. This is not some new random thing. This is God’s plan and it had happened that night.

They were invited to go and see Him. They were invited to go and see Him. These nobody shepherds were invited to go and see Him. And they were told how to identify Him. “You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” That was a pretty good clue because there wouldn’t have been many babies born that night in Bethlehem and then put to bed in an animal’s feeding trough.

But it is also a bit weird, isn’t it? “He is the Messiah, the Lord”. Nek minnit, he’s lying in a manger.

Stage 3b: Suddenly there is a huge army of angels praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom His favour rests.” Imagine hundreds, or thousands, of angels worshipping God, but also declaring God’s gift of peace to all on whom His favour rest.

Do you think God’s favour was resting on them that night? Only a short time ago they had been terrified; now they have been promised God’s peace.

Stage 4: the decision to go and see. “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

I am not sure if they were already fully convinced. They do say “this thing that has happened” as if they believed it had happened. And they did believe it was the Lord who had brought this message to them.

Or, was their going to see in order to check it out? Either way, they made the decision to go and see the Messiah. Off they went, in a hurry. They were pretty excited. They did not want to miss any of this.

Then things changed again for them. Stage 5: They found the family, including the baby, and He was lying in a manger. Confirmation. This was the sign and the sign had been fulfilled.

There was possibly nothing else about that scene that indicated this was the Messiah. The glory of the Lord had shone around them in the fields, but I doubt the baby was glowing. In fact, if anything, being in a manger and amongst animals might have been evidence that this wasn’t the Messiah.

But, God had spoken. They could see the sign with their own eyes; that was enough. Even if they hadn’t been before, they were convinced now.

I wonder how long they stayed there. I don’t think you would want to leave. Why would you leave when you were in the presence of the Messiah and God had said He was their Saviour? Maybe they knew that they owed it to Mary and Joseph. Good manners required that they leave.

But before they did, it seems they told Mary and Joseph all that had happened. The text says that they told everybody. Maybe they were rushing down the streets of Bethlehem, knocking on doors, grabbing anybody they could find and saying, “Guess what?”

That is Stage 6 but even before they left they must have told Mary and Joseph about the angels and what the angels had said: a Saviour, the Messiah, for everybody, because it says that Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. How would she make sense of all that was happening? What was it going to mean for her that this baby was God’s Messiah?

Anyway, out in the street, they were spreading the word. They were now evangelists – unashamed, unafraid evangelists. “We saw angels. We were terrified, but they said, ‘Good news for all people. A Saviour. Our long-awaited Messiah born this night in this town. We have seen Him. We even touched Him. What are the chances of the Messiah lying in a feeding trough? But it was exactly as we had been told.”

All who heard it were amazed. What a message! How good is God? What incredibly good news. Peace for all on whom His favour rests.

OK, time to get back to the sheep. Time to get some sleep! Stage 7: They left Bethlehem and went back across the hills to their fields. But were they the same men who had been watching over their flocks earlier in the evening? They were not even close to those same men. They had been on a journey far more significant that the few miles to Bethlehem.

They returned glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen. They were no longer far from God and terrified by Him. They had experienced the mercy and grace of God. God had blessed them with the most extraordinary experience. Why them, they were perhaps the least deserving? Who knows. All they knew was God had been good to them and that he was an amazing God worthy of glory and praise. Did they wake some people up with their ruckus? Maybe. Who cares! They were overwhelmed, and overflowing with gratitude to God.

There’s an interesting phrase at the end. They praised God for all they had seen and heard “which were just as they had been told”.  For them it was very significant that God had been faithful; that what He had said had been fulfilled. This God was not only merciful; He could be trusted. His word was true. They were convinced by the evidence. God had said, “This will be a sign”, and there it was. Proof!

They had been on a journey from far from God, to an encounter with God resulting in fear, to a message of hope, to checking out the evidence, to meeting Jesus, to being evangelists and worshippers.

All because of this baby – the Saviour born for their benefit that day.

Where are you on that journey?

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