of our Savior. We pray that you might give us some extra insight into scripture, and especially tonight as we look at this fourth major episode which leads to the worship and praise of the shepherds because of the birth of the Savior. We pray this in Christ's name, amen. All right, open your Bibles with me to Luke chapter 2, verse 9. Luke chapter 2, verse 9. And see, what we have seen in our study that we had on Sunday morning is that there were three major announcements by angels to the central players leading up to the birth of the Savior. The first was the appearance of Gabriel to a Levitical priest by the name of Zechariah. And he was to be the father of John the Baptist. And he and his wife were past the age of 60, and they had never had any children. She was barren. And yet the angel was to announce to him that God was answering their prayers, and they would give birth to the forerunner of the Messiah. and that he would be known, as Jesus said later, as the greatest of the Old Testament prophets, and that's John the Baptist. And then the second one that we saw was Gabriel's appearing to Mary to let her know that she was going to become pregnant as a virgin, and that she would be giving birth to the Savior. And then the third appearance was to Joseph to let him know that it was okay, that Mary was going to become pregnant from the Holy Spirit. And we saw three different responses. Zacharias' response was one of unbelief. He just couldn't believe that his wife Elizabeth was going to become pregnant and give birth to a son. And so he had to go through some divine discipline. He lost his voice. He was mute. The angel said, you won't be able to speak until the child is born. And the second, with the appearance of the angel Gabriel a second time to Mary, he told Mary that she was going to become pregnant without the normal process. And her question wasn't one of doubt, it was one of, how is this going to exactly take place? So she responded in faith, but she wanted some clarification. And then we come to the third one, who was Joseph. And Joseph understood what the angel told him, that this was fulfillment of the prophecy from Isaiah 7, 14, that a virgin would conceive and give birth to a son who would be called Emmanuel, God with us. And so the angel said that this was OK and that Mary would become pregnant and the Holy Spirit would enable that. And so he responded in faith. and obedience. And he did not put away Mary. And he and Mary were both told separately that the baby would be called Yeshua in Hebrew. That is from the Hebrew verb yashah, which means to save, to deliver. And so he was to deliver or save his people from their sins. So this sets the stage and tonight what we're going to look at is three more. But the second two are extremely brief, so most of the time we'll spend on the first one, the announcement that came from first one angel, and then a multitude of angels in Luke 2, verses 9 to 14. So this is the fourth angelic message that is revealed in the gospel accounts. And it is the announcement to the shepherds, announcing the birth of the Savior, who is Messiah, Christ, Messiah, the Lord. And this is in Luke 2, verses 8 through 19. And their response is also one of trust, but then praise. So we have trust plus some clarification, trust plus obedience, and now trust and praise. So the background to understanding all of these different announcements really comes from one of the Old Testament covenants. four significant Old Testament covenants. A covenant is a contract that God initiates with human beings. God enters into this contractual relationship where He alone is bound by the conditions of the covenant. And the first of these was the covenant with Abraham which promised to the descendants of Abraham three things. an eternal possession of a specific piece of real estate that would be located between the Mediterranean Sea and the Euphrates River. Secondly, it would be bounded by the Wadi, which is an intermittent stream to the south of what we now call Israel, but it was north of the Sinai Peninsula. And that this was given to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as an eternal possession. So there was the promise of the land, a promise of descendants. Descendants that would be more numerous than the sand of the seashore and the stars in the heavens. And that the third was that Abraham was to be, it was a command actually to be a blessing. to be a blessing to the whole world, and that that blessing would eventually come through a descendant who would be identified as the Messiah, the Promised One, the Anointed One. Now, there were three parts to that covenant, land, descendants and blessing, or land, seed, and blessing. The land covenant or the land promise was expanded in another covenant at the end of Deuteronomy chapter 29. The blessing promise is expanded in a later covenant called the New Covenant which is described in Jeremiah 31, 31-33 But the one we're focusing on is the middle one, which expanded the descendant or the seed promise, which was the Davidic covenant. God entered into a covenant, a unilateral covenant. That means God is the one responsible for fulfilling the blessings of the covenant. He introduced that covenant with King David of David and Goliath fame. So the stipulations are given in two places, 2 Samuel chapter 7, and here we have 1 Chronicles 17, 11-14. It's a promise that God will establish, He will have a descendant, a descendant who will sit on His throne forever and ever. and that God is the one who will establish his kingdom. It is not something he will establish on his own. And verse 12 says, he shall build me a house, which is a reference. Some take this as referring to Solomon building the temple, but there is a temple that is built by the Lord Jesus Christ when he returns at the second coming that will be the messianic temple in the age we refer to as the millennium, the thousand-year reign of Christ. He says, He shall build me a house, and I, God says, I will establish His throne forever. Now to have someone sit on a throne forever and ever, that means that person has to be eternal. That means they don't die. And so this indicates only deity is eternal. So it indicates that the one who sits on the throne is eternal. But it also indicates he is a descendant of David. So that tells us he is a man. He is a human being. And so you have these hints that are expanded upon through the Old Testament. Hints that this Savior, this Messiah will be true, undiminished deity and true humanity. He will be fully God and fully man. So we see this foreshadowed and the foundation for it in 1 Chronicles 17. It is also, another important passage comes out of the second Psalm, where the beginning is a picture of this war of the kings of the earth, the rulers of the earth, in rebellion against God. And we read this, the kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together. It's a conspiracy against God. Against the Lord, capital L-O-R-D indicates the personal name of God in the Hebrew, it's Yahweh. Against the Lord, that's God the Father, and against his Mashiach, his anointed one. And then in verse 6, God the Father is speaking, he says, yet I have set my king on my holy hill of Zion. Verse 7 represents the words of the Messiah talking back to God the Father, and he says, I will declare the decree. The Lord has said to me, so me refers to the Messiah, the anointed one. He is speaking about the Lord has said to me you are my son today I have begotten you so this language shows up again and again all through the Old Testament in the predictive prophecies and then we come to that well-known verse in the Gospel of John 3 16 for God loved the world in this way that he gave his what his only begotten son his unique son Where do you think John got that language? He got it from Psalm 2 written by David about a thousand years before Christ. And so the Bible hangs together and all these announcements by the angels are basically going back and reflecting upon these promises and these various covenants and showing how they are fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ. So we saw last time the indication of this in Luke chapter 1, where we're told in the sixth month, that's the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy with John the Baptist, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth to a virgin, and then it says, who was betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David. See, Joseph and we find out from the Gospel of Luke, Mary, are both descendants of King David. That ties it back to the Davidic covenant. In Luke 1.32, the angel announced that he will be great and will be called the son of the highest. That language comes out of Psalm 2. and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David." That takes us back to 1 Chronicles 17 and 2 Chronicles 7. He's going to sit on the throne of his father David. He is a physical descendant of David through his mother Mary. And he will reign over the house of Jacob forever and of his kingdom there will be no end. So you see all of these things fit together. It's like a building a house where everything is interdependent and interlocked together so that you can't take away one piece without it affecting other pieces. You have to take the whole or nothing. So we come to Luke chapter 2 and we also see this at the beginning of Luke 2 where we're looking this evening. Joseph also went up from Galilee out of the city of Nazareth into Judea, where? to the city of David. This is Bethlehem. Bethlehem lies about five miles to the south of Jerusalem. You can walk it. You can see Jerusalem from, there's a lot of hills, but if you have the right vantage point, you can see Jerusalem from Bethlehem. So he goes to the city of David. So this is where David grew up, where David was born. It is continuously known as the city of David. It's another reminder of the Davidic covenant. So Joseph and Mary together go to Bethlehem. And this fulfills a prophecy that is at the bottom of the screen. Micah, an Old Testament prophet from the 7th century B.C. made the prediction under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, but you, Bethlehem of Ephrath." Ephrath was an older Israelite, back several generations, who founded the city of Bethlehem. In the New King James you'll read it, Bethlehem Ephrathah, what that means is Bethlehem of Ephrath where he founded it. It said, though you are little among the thousands of Judah, you're just a small insignificant village, yet out of you shall come forth to me, God is the one who is speaking, out of you shall come forth to me the one to be ruler in Israel. A ruler sits on the throne. And so this is focusing again on that throne, the descent from King David. "'Yet out of you shall come forth to me the one to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from of old.'" Well, wait a minute. In the previous line, "'You shall come forth to me,' that indicates a physical human birth. But then it says, "'His goings forth are from of old, from everlasting.'" Well, only God is eternal and everlasting. So it's emphasizing that the one who's going to be born in Bethlehem is both God, he's eternal, and he is fully human. This is the Davidic covenant which promises an eternal house, an eternal kingdom, and an eternal throne. So this sets the background and connects what we read in the other angelic announcements, how they all tie back to the Davidic promise. And now we read in Luke 2 verse 8. Now they were in the same country, that's referencing Bethlehem, which was mentioned in the previous verses in verse 5 and 6, where the baby was born. Now there were, in the same country, shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. And so the picture on the right is a picture of the traditional shepherd's field, which is about two miles from the church in the center of Bethlehem, known as the Church of the Nativity. And this is where, typically in standard practice, this is where there were flocks of sheep that were kept. And this is where the angel appeared and made the announcements to the shepherds. Now some people ask the question or raise the objection to a December birth of Jesus because they say it's too cold. Why are they going to be out in the fields then? Well, that betrays an ignorance of the meteorology of Israel. because Israel has a dry season that goes from May to about the end of October, and everything burns up. There's no forage there on these pastures. There's no grass. And it isn't until you start getting the fall rains in November. If you've been to Israel with me in November, and we got a little wet, and that's when everything suddenly begins to bloom and the grass comes out, even in the desert in the Negev, there will be grass growing. And so this is a prime time for there to be pasture for the sheep. But what's also important is recognizing who these sheep were. What sheep would be out there year round in those fields? Well, remember what I said, you have Bethlehem that's about four or five miles to the south of Jerusalem. And in Jerusalem, you have the temple. What takes place at the temple every morning, every night? There's a sacrifice. where are you going to get the lambs for the sacrifice? Well you need to have a flock that is close by. So it is believed on the basis of a lot of evidence, it can't be proven, but it is strongly indicated that these flocks that were at Bethlehem were the flocks that provided the lambs for the sacrifices in Jerusalem. And so they would be there year-round, and that also would mean that the shepherds that took care of those sheep would not be normal shepherds. They would be Levitical priests taking care of those flocks that were destined to be used in the sacrifices in the temple. So there's a certain amount of discussion also about the purpose of the angels appearing before these shepherds. And there's one line of thought that, well, shepherds were really looked down upon in that culture. They were sort of the lowest social bracket on the social ladder, and they were pretty disgusting and untrustworthy and lots of things like that. And so there are some that will come along, and you will read them, and they will say, but they represented the fact, of course, the angel announces the coming of the Savior to these who are sinners, and so that's a picture of the gospel. The trouble with that is, is all through the Bible, all through the Old Testament, there are numerous shepherds that are held in high esteem. Abraham was a shepherd, Moses was a shepherd, David was a shepherd. And these shepherds all through the Bible are looked at as those who are positive, including the fact that God calls the leaders of the church's congregations shepherds, pastors. And so the Bible really doesn't seem to have a culture of negativity towards shepherds. However, they would reflect the common people. the everyday person. They have an everyday job. They're shepherds. They go out there. They work. They're dirty. They spend the night with the sheep. And that what we see is that when the Messiah comes, it's unexpected. He doesn't appear to the political leaders. He doesn't appear to the religious elite. He doesn't appear to the social elite. He appears to the shepherds because he's coming to provide a salvation that is for all. And so then suddenly what we see is this appearance of this angel. It is an angel of the Lord. It is not the angel of the Lord, which is the reference to the pre-incarnate Christ, Jesus who appeared in the Old Testament before he came to the earth as a man. So behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid." They were scared to death. And we've seen this. We saw this with Zechariah in the temple. We saw this, that Mary's afraid. You know, this is typical for people to become afraid when there is an appearance of God called a theophany. Or in this case, it's an angelophany. The angel appears. but it is the glory of the Lord indicates the visible presence of God. So this is a word that comes in the Hebrew. It is from the word shekan, which means to dwell. And we refer to it as the Shekinah glory or the dwelling glory of the presence of God. And I believe that the Christmas star, you always hear this time of year, you know, the stories about astronomers trying to put together things of this star and that star, this planet and that planet all came together. And that was something that was miraculous and would indicate the birth of Jesus. birth of somebody. Something significant was happening. The trouble is the text says that when the magi are coming to the house, they are following the star which points out the individual house. Now if that's a normal star and it appeared over your house, you would be incinerated in an instant. Okay? So this is not a normal star. It is the glory of God that appeared, the Shekinah, that appeared to point out where the Messiah was. So the angel appears, the glory of the Lord. This is the first time the glory of the Lord is seen in Israel since the time of Ezekiel, sometime around 600 BC. Ezekiel was given a vision where he saw the glory of the Lord depart. from the temple in Jerusalem. And this is in Ezekiel chapters 8 through 11 describes this, that the glory left. The glory went from inhabiting the Holy of Holies, then it goes out to the East Gate, then across the Kidron Valley, up the Mount of Olives, and then ascends to heaven. And so no one in Israel has seen the glory of God since that time for 600 years, and now they have the glory of the Lord shining. This is monumental. We read what the angel then says in Luke 2.10 and following, Then the angel said to them, Do not be afraid, for behold, I will bring you good tidings of great joy, which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ, who is Mashiach. the Lord. And this will be the sign to you. You will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger." So there are four statements here of the angel. We'll run through them rather rapidly and then we'll see the fifth which is a statement from the multitude of angels. First the command, don't be afraid. Don't fear, as I pointed out Sunday, this is a major command given in scripture. Second thing he says is, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. Third thing is for there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord. And the fourth thing he says is this will be a sign to you, you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger. So what do we learn about these things? Well first of all, this command, do not be afraid, is used over 112 times in the Bible. Many times are when there is the appearance of an angel or God to people and they're scared. They are frightened because of that and God says, or the angel says, do not be afraid. Second, he says, I bring you good tidings. of great joy. Well, this phrase, good tidings, is from the Greek word evangelizo, where we get our word evangelist or evangelism. It means to give good news. The EU at the beginning, or EV as we pronounce it, is a prefix that means something good. And evangelizo means to announce something. That's also the noun for angel who is a messenger who announces things. So he's making an announcement of something that is very good that will bring them great joy. He says it'll be to all people. Now we have to be contextual here because up to this point in Scripture all people, I mean in the Gospels especially Luke, all people refers only to the people of Israel. It doesn't have that expansion to the world yet. But if you realize that Luke writes the Gospel of Luke, that's really Luke part one. Acts is Luke part two. And as the church begins in Acts two and then begins to expand in the book of Acts, there's the inclusion of the Gentiles. And it's not until that point that Luke uses the phrase all people to refer to both Jew and Gentile. This is that the Messiah was promised to whom? the Messiah was promised to Israel to establish their kingdom. But what He would do would be for all people. So this is that promise. Then third He says, for there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord. There are three key words here. Savior, Christ, and Lord. So the word Savior is a term that translates the Greek word Soter, which means usually a political deliverer or somebody who rescues somebody from difficult circumstances. It can refer to a judge. It only refers to one king Jehoahaz as a Soter. but it has the idea of somebody who rescues from a peril, and it could be a spiritual problem or a physical problem. Third thing he says about this is that it's the Savior, and he is Christ the Lord, born in the city of David, which takes us back to the Davidic covenant. Third, he is Christ. The word In English how we use Christ comes from the Greek word Christos which means anointed one. It's the way Mashiach is translated from Hebrew to Greek. So when you say Jesus Christ you're saying the same thing as Yeshua HaMashiach. He is Jesus the Messiah, the anointed one. And this is a technical term for the descendant of David as we saw in Psalm 2 2 earlier. And then last he says he is the Mashiach, the Lord. This is the Greek word kurios and throughout the Old Testament, when the Old Testament written in Hebrew originally is translated into Greek, It always translates the proper name of God, Yahweh. You'll see it as uppercase L-O-R-D in English. It always translates that with Kyrios. So this is a claim that He is the Mashiach. He is God. He is the sovereign creator God of the universe. And the fourth thing is a sign. Now a sign doesn't have to be a miracle, but it is something that is exceptionally unusual and unexpected. And so the sign is you'll find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths. These were strips of cloth not unlike the way you would wrap a corpse, a dead body for burial. lying in a manger. Now, you're not going to find a baby lying in a manger. You're going to find a baby lying in a bassinet or something else for babies, but not in a stone manger. And outside of Bethlehem, near Shepherd's Field, there are these stone mangers that you can see in a few locations, which is where the sheep and the cattle are brought and they are fed. So this is something that is unusual. So they would not expect the Messiah to be born and put in a stone manger. They would expect the Messiah to be in a palace. They would expect the Messiah to be in some place of wealth and comfort, but not in a rock-hewn manger. And then we have all of these angels, a multitude without a number, that suddenly appear and they announce the message of God's grace. In the New King James it translates it, glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, goodwill toward men. And this is based on the majority of Greek manuscripts. I think this is a correct reading. But in a few older manuscripts it says, peace on earth to people God favors. I think there's a lot of discussion on this, but basically they're saying the same thing. The word goodwill and the word favor are both taken from the same Greek word, which indicate those with whom God blesses spiritually. It's the expression of His grace. And then it refers to peace. This isn't world peace. Most of the time in the Bible the word peace does not refer to the lack of violence or the lack of wars. It refers to something that is whole, something that is healthy, and often it refers to our relationship with God. That because we're sinners we are not at peace with God. But when we get into the New Testament, we read in 2 Corinthians 5.19 that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses to them. so that God was reconciling us. And what is Jesus called in the prophecy in Isaiah 9-6? He is the Prince of Peace. And so he came to make, so that we could have peace with God, he could reconcile the world to himself. God desires the salvation of all. In 1st Timothy 2.4 we read who, referring to God our Savior in the previous verse, desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. So this is the announcement, and this is what they're singing about. Peace on earth refers to a realignment of our relationship to God because of the work of Jesus the Savior. The result of this is that after the angels disappear, the shepherds hurry up and go to Bethlehem to find the baby and find him lying in a manger as the angels said. And we read in verse 17, now when they had seen him, they made widely known the saying which was told them concerning this child. So they're telling everybody about this. They are evangelists spreading the good news. And verse 18, and all those who heard it marveled at these things which were told to them by the shepherds. And then they praised. Mary, on her part, kept all these things, treasured them in her heart. And then the shepherds returned back to the fields glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen as it was told to them. So we see Zacharias doubts the message, and he goes through divine discipline. Mary believes it, but she needs a little clarification since this is her body that's going to become pregnant. And third, there's Joseph, and Joseph believed and did what he was told to do. And here we see the shepherds, and they believe, and they praise God. There are two more messages. There's the warning, of an angel who appeared to Joseph, warning about Herod's about to come and telling them to flee and go to Egypt. That's a simple warning there. And then spent a year or two in Egypt, and then the angel appears and tells them to return back to their home. So these are the angelic messages of the Christmas story. And what's important for us to remember is these responses. We have four responses, and one response should not characterize us. That's the response of unbelief. The others are the response of belief, and the result is we need more clarification at times. Well, exactly what does the Bible say? We need to learn it. Second, we need to obey it. And third, we need to praise God for it. So the reason we praise God is because He sent a Savior, and all through this I've emphasized the fact that He was both God and man. We're going to close out the service tonight by observing the Lord's Table, also called Communion or the Eucharist. And the Lord's Table is our opportunity to carry out a command that the Lord gave to all believers, and that is to remember His death until he comes. And so the two elements that we have in the Lord's table are the unleavened bread, the matzah, and then the cup. So the matzah represents the body of Christ. If you read through the account of the original Passover, they were not to put leaven or yeast into the bread because the way leaven works is it quickly permeates everything And just as sin does. And so it was, God was going to use this as a picture of Jesus' humanity that he did not have sin. And so the bread represents the humanity of Christ that he was born sinless because of the virgin birth. And then the other element is the cup. The cup represents the blood of Christ. That is an idiom for his death, his violent death upon the cross. And so when our Lord observed the Passover with his disciples, the night before he went to the cross, they were observing, it was Passover, it was Pesach. And they were to observe that dinner, And then in the course of that dinner, when they came to the matzo bread and the host was to break it, he broke it and he gave it new meaning, saying that this represented his body, his humanity. Then when they came to the third cup of wine, he blessed that and gave it new meaning, that this represents his death on the cross that is the sacrifice to establish the new covenant. So I will have the deacons come forward and they will be passing out the elements. Our Lord then came to the bread and he broke it, passed it out to his disciples. And he said, this is my body, which is given for you. As often as you eat this, do so in remembrance of me. I'll ask Mark Reisinger to come up and return thanks for the cup. Please bow with me in prayer. Heavenly Father, we come to you this evening and this season where we celebrate the first Advent. We thank you that your Son was always about your business, which culminated in the cross. And as we take this cup, we ask that we would focus on the peace that Your Son brought between God and man when He took our sins on His own body on the cross and provided His righteousness for anyone who accepts that. And we ask these things in Jesus' name, Amen. Blessings and prayers of Heavenly Father. Praise you. We give you all the glory. We praise you because you have provided us a savior. And we give you all the glory tonight, Father. As we conclude our services, we pray that you will give us safe travels to our homes so that we might continue to celebrate with our friends and our families. Help us to stay focused on the sun throughout this whole day, tomorrow, to keep our focus on the Savior so that we might glorify Him in everything we do. And it's in His name that we pray. Amen.