The Shepherds

C H A P T E R 6

THE SHEPHERDS’ FAITH

And there were shepherds living out in the fields

nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An

angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of

the Lord shone around them, and they were

terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be

afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great

joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a

Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the

Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby

wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” Suddenly a

great company of the heavenly host appeared with

the angel, praising God and saying,

“Glory to God in the highest heaven,

and on earth pence to those on whom hisfavor rests.”

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven,

the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to

Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened,

which the Lord has told us about.” So they hurried

off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who

was lying in the manger. When they had seen him,

they spread the word concerning what had been told

them about this child, and all who heard it were

amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary

treasured up all these things and pondered them in

her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and

Praising God for all the things they had heard and

seen, which were just as they had been told.

-Luke 2:8-20

t Christmas pageants each year thousands of Chll-

Adren put on bathrobes to act the part of shepherds.

We are accustomed to associating shepherds With the

birth of Christ, but what are theY (1ong there? What

role do they play? Unfortunately, the meaning Of the

shepherds has become merely sentimental. In our imag-

inations they evoke lovely pastoral scenes and fluffy little

lambs But that is not why Luke selected this event out

of the many others that he could have given us about the

birth of Christ. He was trying to teach us something.

The shepherds, like Mary, were given an angelic mes-

sage In response they listened well, overcame their

fears and went out into the world carrying the Joyful

news to others. By studying what they dlCl we can learn‘

about how we should be responding to thfi promises Of

Christmas. Working from the end of the passage back to

the beginning, let’s consider four things we should do.

HEAR WELL

The shepherds heard about 165115 from the angels and

went to see him for themselves (Luke 2:15)- Then the added their own e -t tt angttt had tOld them and

7 yewnness testimony to the message

(VCI‘SC 17). The result was that people who heard

the

shepherds were “amazed,” but we

they were led to belieVe Th are no]; told that

erful effect on the she h dtt message had a mOrC POW“

glorifying and praisintg) Sidiittzletttfitt vylho “returned,

heard” (verse 20). t t lngs they hadl

tancinotfhEZZrirtlthtiifetlluttcttpts- titttng us about the impor-

message, and the messa alt somes ttom hearing the

about ChriSt” ( Romansgi 01.817eard through the Word

issues in my marriage is - f ). One of the ongoing

listen to my Wife Often 3 my requent tattttttt to really

will ask my wife iKath smtttmg Wt” tome “F that I

told you about tthis V}; a O’Ht, and she will respond, “I

the most accurate Ans eren t you listening?” So often

member You Speakin 3:1” 18“ yes but no.” Yes, I re-

But no) I didn’t mil Futtt In that sense I heard it.

pI'Opcr attention I didyl’tetthit ksmk in, I didn’t pay it

The text gives us 3 tn tittt the Implications,

spiritually hear well It ome gtttdance about how to

shows us something to beware

Of and something to do.

Qualittt/it iiiiidntzlif (it biting. too diStraCth by the

seem to have been mori die Otttt that the Shepherds

ply affected than the rest of

the people. That may be because the shepherds heard

the message from angels, but everybody else just heard

it from ordinary shepherds. As many Christmas ser-

mons will rightly tell you, shepherds were not people of

social standing in ancient societies. They were not ed-

ucated; they did not have social power. The shepherds

heard the word from angels. They are (we may imag-

ine!) riveting and impressive speakers, to say the least.

But the rest of the people heard the Gospel from

human beings who were not eloquent or impressive at

all. If a message is challenging or hard to believe, it is

easy to dismiss it by focusing on the messengers. “Why

believe someone like that?”

We ourselves are in a very similar position. The au-

thors of the Bible in some cases did literally see angels,

or they had revelations directly from God, or, in the

apostles’ case, they knew Jesus Christ personally. The

authors of the Bible got visions and revelations, but we

get . . . just a book. And, along with it, communicators

who are very human preachers, teachers, and messen-

gers. This is a serious problem for a society like ours,

which seems to have a culturewide attention deficit dis-

order. It is extraordinarily easy to not really hear the

Word of God because it comes to us through such

nonspectacular means. The Bible is a long book and is

by no means a simple read. Preachers and teachers are

famously flawed, and every time one of them stumbles, it seems to be a warrant for turning away from the

whole Christian enterprise, Bible and all.

However, our instincts here are not reliable. Even

a laughable messenger might be delivering a true mes-

sage. Balaam’s donkey Was-let’s say it-an ass. Yet in

one of the strangest and most interesting accounts

in the Bible, God spoke to Balaam through it (Num-

bers 22:21-39). The lesson is that the medium is not

the message, that we must not ignore uncomfortable

truths just because they come through an unimpres-

sive messenger. I have often heard people say that they

had gone to such and such a church and the preacher

droned on too long and was boring. I often counter,

“Okay, but was the sermon wrong? Even though it was

boringly communicated, was God’s truth being set be-

fore you?”

We must be aware of our prejudices. While hearing

but not really hearing is bad for a marriage, it is abso-

lutely dCStl‘uctive of our relationship with God. The

Bible exists in an extraordinarily ignorable form. Its

teachers and preachers are often uninteresting, but we

can’t let that keep us from listening. The Scripture

contains infinitely valuable treasure, greater than the

gold and silver in all the deep places of the earth (Psalm

19510; 119372? Beware of missing out on it because of

the flawed character of the messengers. This leads us to

consider what this text positively encourages us to do.

Mary, again, is our example. There are two words

that describe how she listened to the Word of God.

First, Luke 2:19 says she “pondered” what she heard

from the shepherds. Scholars tell us that the Greek

word means to put in context, to connect, to think

something out. It is to look at a verse of the Bible and

ask: “What does this word mean? How does it fit in

with other things I know to be true? How does this fit

in with the rest of the Bible?” Psalm 119:130 says,

“The unfolding of your words gives light.” The meta-

phor of unfolding may perhaps be even more evocative

today than it was when first used. Today there are many

products, such as jackets and parkas, that can come as

a tiny ball or pouch but then unfold to be a garment

many times the original size. The Bible is like that,

only infinitely more so. What looks like a Simple state-

ment, when pondered, can be discovered to have mul-

tiple dimensions of meaning and endless personal

applications-far more than could ever be discovered

with a cursory glance.

At that formative (for me) Christian conference

referenced earlier there was a session on how to read

the Bible. The speaker, Barbara Boyd, said to us, “Sit

for thirty minutes and write down at least thirty things

you learn from Mark 1:17,” which reads, “‘Come, fol-

low me,’ Jesus said, ‘and I will send you out to fish for

people.’” Then she instructed us, “Don’t think after ten minutes and four or five things written down that

you’ve figured it out. Take the whole thirty minutes

and try to get to thirty things observed.” So we sat si-

lently and did as told. And indeed, after about ten min-

utes I was pretty sure that I’d seen everything there

was to see in these fifteen words. I put my pen down

and wanted to spend the rest of the time daydreaming,

but everybody else looked like they were still working,

so I picked up the pen and started pondering some

more. Then I began to notice new things. If I imag-

ined what the sentence would mean without one of its

words, it was easier to assess what unique meaning it

brought to the sentence. That gave me the ability to

get another two or three insights around each term.

Then I tried to paraphrase the whole verse, putting it

into my own words. That showed me more levels of

meaning and implications that I had missed.

At the end of the thirty minutes, the teacher asked

us to circle on our papers the best insight or most life-

changing thing we had gotten out of the text. Then

she said, “Okay, how many of you found this most in-

credible, life-changing thing in the first five minutes?”

Nobody raised their hand. “Ten minutes?” Nobody

raised their hand. “Fifteen minutes?” A few hands.

“Twenty minutes?” A few more. “Twenty-five minutes?”

Even more. That session changed my attitude toward the

Bible and, indeed, my life.

Thy Word is like it deep, deep mine;

and jewels rich and rare

are hidden in its mighty depths

for every searcher there.1

Luke 2:19 says, though, that she not only pon-

dered but also “treasured” what she heard. This ex-

pression has more to do with the emotions and the

heart. It means to keep something alive or to savor.

Mary doesn’t just try to understand the Word of God

cognitively. She takes it all the way inside, as it were, to

relish and experience it. The treasuring is not so much

a technique as an attitude.

The Bible elsewhere speaks of this: “I have hidden

your word in my heart” (Psalm II9:II). Taking the

message into my heart means not just to interpret it

but to let it affect me deeply. It means, in a sense,

preaching to myself, reminding myself of the precious-

ness, the value, the wonder, and the power of the par-

ticular truth I am treasuring. It is to ask myself

questions: “How would my life be different if I really

believed this from the bottom of my heart? How would

it change my thinking, feelings, actions? How would it

change my relationships? How would it change my

prayer life, my feelings and attitude toward God?”

If you don’t do both of these things-ponder and

treasure the Word of God-you will not truly hear the message. Your ears will hear it but not your mind and

heart. It won’t sink in, comfort, convict, or change you.

MAKE PEACE

In the middle section of our passage from Luke 2 we

hear one of the most famous Christmas texts of all

time. The old King James Version renders it “On earth

peace, good will toward men” (verse 14). But various

modern translations read something like this: “Peace

on earth for those on whom his gracious kindness

rests.” There is overwhelming scholarly consensus that

this is a more accurate translation than the older King

James Version, but what’s the difference? The older

wording seemed to say that Christmas meant everyone

1n the world would have peace through Christ. The

newer seems to be saying that only God’s special favor-

ites will have peace through him. Neither of these in-

terpretations is the most accurate.

To get to the best understanding of this famous an-

nouncement, we should remind ourselves what “peace”

usually means in the Bible. It is not a general peaceful-

mess with prosperity, and a trouble-free life. “Peace”

means the end of enmity and warfare. And as we saw in

Chapter 4, the Bible says the most fundamental and im-

Po1r tant peace is peace with God. The natural human

heart wants to be king, and so it is hostile to God’s

claims of lordship over us. Until we see our instinctive

hostility to God’s authority, we can’t understand one

of the great, deep mainsprings of all human behavior.

We are committed to the idea that the only way we

will be happy is if we are wholly in charge of our lives.

Of course, this self-centered desire to command and

control leads to conflict with other human beings. So

hostilities with God lead to hostilities with others.

There is no peace on earth because there is no peace

with God.

The proclamation of Christmas, however, is “God

and sinners, reconciled.” Jesus is the perfect mediator be-

tween estranged parties. By assuming a human nature,

the God-man bridges the chasm, dies for our sins, heals

the breach, and makes peace (Romans 5:1-11). How can

we have this peace with God for ourselves?

Remember that there is more than one way to ex-

press your hostility to God’s rule. The irreligious per-

son explicitly asserts his or her independence from

God: “I want to live any way I want to live!” But the

religious person much more covertly asserts his or her

independence from God. The religious person says: “I

am going to obey the Bible and do all these things,

and now God has to bless me and give me a good life.”

This is an effort to control God, not trust him. When

you obey God in order to earn God’s blessing and

heaven, then you are, as it were, seeking to be your own savior. Both of these strategies are hostile to God.

They don’t allow him to be either your sovereign or

your savior.

The first step toward peace with God is to recog-

nize that there has been a conflict. One way to do that

is to say: “Not only have I done bad things, but even

the good things I have done have been done to be my

own savior, to assert my independence from my Cre-

ator and Redeemer. So I need to be saved by sheer

grace, because even the right things I do have been

done for the wrong reasons. I need to rest wholly on

Jesus’ saving work on my behalf.” When you say that,

you have finally admitted the full extent of your resis-

tance to the Lord’s sovereignty. You have confessed

that you can’t save yourself. You rest in what the Lord

Jesus Christ has done, and you turn away from your

old way of living. That is making peace with God.

Does that mean, then, that Christmas brings only

peace for Christian believers? No. In the Sermon on

the Mount, Jesus tells us that all his disciples can be

“peacemakers” (Matthew 5:9). Peacemakers are people

who, through making peace with God, have finally

learned how to admit flaws and weakness, how to sur-

render their pride, how to love without the need to

control every situation. These new skills have enor-

mous power to defuse conflicts, to facilitate forgiveness

and reconciliation between people. Christians should

be fanning out into the world being peacemakers,

agents of reconciliation among the races and classes,

among the members of families, and between neighbor

and neighbor.

Christmas means that, through the grace of GOd

and the incarnation, peace with God is available; and if

you make peace with God, then you can go out and

make peace with everybody else. And the more people

who embrace the Gospel and do that, the better off the

world is. Christmas, therefore, means the increase of

peace-both with God and between people-across

the face of the world.

FEAR NOT

Another thing we learn from the shepherds is one of

the first things that is mentioned in our passage. The

old, familiar translation is “Fear not: for, behold, I

bring you good tidings of great joy” (verse 10, King

James Version). Here is the third way we should re-

spond to the message of Christmas. If we accept its

“good tidings,” it should end fear. We should fear

not. Why?

The verse before says that the shepherds were “ter-

rified.” At first glance that does not strike us as un-

usual. We assume that anyone who sees something that

extraordinary would be afraid. Something more than that is going on, however. In the Bible people always

experienced traumatic anxiety and fear when they got

near God, or even near the angels who came from his

presence. It all goes back to the original experience of

profound fear described in Genesis 3. There we learn

humanity was designed for a perfect relationship with

God. Now it follows that, if you have a perfect relation-

ship with the all-powerful, loving Lord of the world,

you would have no fear at all. You would not be afraid

of him or of anything else.

That was the original plan for the human race. Do

you see why there would be no fear? We fear rejection

and fuilure, but if you were completely filled with

God’s love, you would not care what people thought.

We fear the future and circumstances, but if you knew

God perfectly, and that he is good and in control, you

would trust him. And you wouldn’t be afraid of deuth

because you would know you would be with him

forever.

But when human beings chose to throw off God’s

rule in their lives, it broke the relationship with God,

and they were filled with fear and became subject to

terror (Genesis 3:8-10). The lie of the serpent went

into our hearts. He said: “You need to be in charge of

your life. Don’t let anybody else be in charge-

including God-because then you won’t be happy. You

will miss out on what is best for you!” That distortion

has been passed down into every human heart, and it

creates a fear of trusting God. But it is indeed a lie,

because try as we might, we can’t possibly get control

of our lives in this world. If in order to be at peace we

need to be in control, beholden to no one, then we will

constantly be afraid, because we learn as life goes on

that we are at the mercy of people and forces we can

neither predict nor manage.

So the shepherds experienced terror before the an-

gels, but it wasn’t simply the fear of the uncanny. As

with every other such appearance in the Bible, it was

because human beings are radically threatened by the

presence of the holy. When God’s glory appears, it al-

ways accentuates and intensifies our fundamental fear-

fulness because we are alienated from God. The angel,

however, has an astonishing message: “You won’t have

to be afraid anymore if you look at what I am showing

you.” The fear that inhabits the deep place of our souls

can be dispelled for good. How? The angels say, fear

not-but look! (Luke 2:10)

BEHOLD

The older translations say, “Fear not, for behold, I

bring you good tidings.” The modern translations usu-

ally skip the term “behold,” considering it an English

archaism, but there really is a corresponding Greek word there in the biblical text. The angel literally says,

“Do not be fearing. Be pereeiving. For I am telling you

the Gospel.” This is the principle-behold and you

won’t be afraid. If you take time to comprehend (be-

hold) what is in the Gospel message, it will remove the

fear that has dominated and darkened your life. To the

degree you truly heholol-gaze at, grasp, relish, inter-

nalize, rejoice in-the Gospel, to that degree the fears

of your life will be undermined.

What is this Gospel, this good news, at which we

must gaze? A Savior is horn. If you want to get over

your fear of rejection and failure and be filled with his

love, if you want to be completely forgiven and lay

down the melancholy burden of self-justification, you

have to rest in him as your Savior. Fear always haunts

and then overwhelms you when you seek to save your-

self, to earn your own sense of worth, and to construct

your own identity.

And what about the greatest fear we have-of sur-

rendering control? How can we trust him with our

lives? The answer is that the little baby in the manger

is the mighty Christ the Lord. So think, perceive, pon-

der. If the omnipotent Son of God would radically lose

control-all for you-then you can trust him. And

that should undermine your fear.

In 1961 the Russians put the first man into space,

Yuri Gagarin. Nikita Khrushchev was the Russian

premier, and he said that when Gagarin went into

space, the cosmonaut discovered that there was. no

God there. In response C. S. Lewis wrote an article,

“The Seeing Eye.” Lewis said if there is a God who

created us, we could not discover him by going UP into

the air. God would not relate to human beings the way

a man on the second floor relates to a man on the first

floor. He would relate to us the way Shakespeare relates

to Hamlet. Shakespeare is the creator of Hamlet’s

world and of Hamlet himself. Hamlet can know about

Shakespeare only if the author reveals information

about himself in the play. So too the only way to know

about God is if God has revealed himself.2

The claim of Christmas is infinitely more wonder-

ful than that. God did not merely write us “informa-

tion” about himself; he wrote himself into the drama

of history. He came into our world as Jesus Chmt to

save us, to die for us.

Look! Won’t you trust somebody who did all that

for you? The angel is saying: “You want relief from all

your fear? Behold! Look at Christmas. Look at what he

did.” And to the degree you behold it, and grasp 1t>

and treasure and ponder it in your heart, to that degree

those fears will start to diminish. Fear not! Behold!