Stand with me for the reading of the word. We're going to talk today about the seekers, selected, the surrendered, the Christmas story. And as we started last week again, who do you find? Right at that stable in Bethlehem, you find the wise men who were seekers, you find the shepherds who were the selected, and you find Mary and Joseph, the surrendered. This morning, we're going to look at the shepherds who were the selected, and I'm going to read to you from Luke chapter 2, verse 8 through 20. Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. Then the angel said to them, Do not be afraid, for behold, I 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 the Lord. And this will be a sign to you, you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, goodwill towards men. So it was when the angels had gone away from them into heaven that the shepherds said to one another, let us now go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has come to pass, which the Lord has made known to us. And they came with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in the manger. And when they had seen him, they made widely known the saying which was told them concerning his child. And all those who heard it marveled at those things which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept these things and pondered them in her heart. Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen as it was told them. And our Father, we pray today, Lord God, that may we be found, Lord God worthy, to be one of that remnant of selected ones, like the shepherds. So many, Lord God, that you overlooked, that you did not choose to be the ones who would gaze upon the greatest Lord miracle, the greatest event in history up until that time, to look upon the birth of Messiah, the incarnation of the living God and His Son, Jesus Christ. Father God, move amongst us today, have your way with us. Wake up the sleeping. Lord, put a fire in the hearts of the lukewarm. May you make those who are dead alive in Jesus Christ today. And we pray this in your name, amen. Be seated. So God chose a group of shepherds out of the fields of Bethlehem to be the first ones to see the newborn king. Now, as you're sitting here today, I hope you are one of the chosen. Jesus said in John 15-16, you did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, then the Father will give you whatever you ask in My name. Why did God choose the shepherds over, again, so many other people? Why did He choose Mary and Joseph? Is God a God who just arbitrarily, randomly, without reason, you know, he puts a blindfold on, he looks at humanity and he says, throws a dart, I'm gonna choose you. And then he throws another dart and I'm gonna choose you. Is that how God chooses people? So the question as we look at this passage is, why were these shepherds chosen? To see the greatest event in history up until that time. Why didn't he choose the priests? The Sadducees and the Pharisees. Why didn't he choose the people of Jerusalem? And why did he specifically choose these shepherds over others? So I want to share with you, I think, some things that are revealed in that passage as to why he chose these above so many others. I believe it's why he chooses people today. So the first thing I want you to look at is they had faithful hearts. And in verse 8, it says, now they were in the same country, shepherds, living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks. And I just want you to notice what they're saying. They were faithful shepherds, keeping watch over their flocks at night. They weren't sleeping. They were faithful, they were consistent, they were at their post doing their designated job. They were diligent, day in and day out, 24-7, in season and after season. Each week, each month, each year, each decade, whether it was sunny or raining, whether it was cold or hot, whether it was at night or in the day, they were faithful. They were faithful in this very simple task, keeping watch over their flock. If you look at the picture that I put up, I just want you to notice, this dude is sleeping. These guys are awake. You know what Jesus calls this guy here? He calls him a hireling. A hireling. Let me read to you what a hireling. John chapter 10, 12 and 13, he says, but a hireling He who is not the shepherd, one who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them. The hireling flees because he is a hireling and does not care about the sheep. So Jesus is contrasting here. He's making a contrast between a true shepherd and a hireling. The hireling is asleep on the job. The hireling is a coward. When the wolves come and the lions come, he runs. He doesn't stand there and defend the sheep and put his life at risk. He doesn't fight for the sheep. He's hired. He's an employee. He's there doing a job, but he doesn't own it. He's doing it for money. He don't care about the sheep. He's in it for himself. What's in it for me? What's in it for me? What am I going to get out of it? And we've had hirelings here at Living Word through the years. We had a man that we hired as a pastor on the first day on the job. I said to him, we have to set up chairs upstairs in the children's room. And while we were setting up chairs, he looked at me and he said, I didn't come here to set up chairs. Well, he only lasted here a short time. He was gone. In fact, the day he came in and put his fat butt on my desk while I was sitting there studying, I realized it was time for him to go. Like, just moseying into my office at 10 o'clock in the morning when we have work to do and he just decided he was going to put his rear end on my desk and we were going to chat when there were things to be done. And I realized it's time for him. By the way, you know what? This happened about 18 years ago. He still isn't pastoring anywhere. He's got all the degrees and supposedly all the experience, but he's still not pastoring. He was a hireling. When I feel called to be a pastor, I went to my senior pastor, and that was Pastor Rizzo at Maranatha, and I went to him and I said to him, I feel called to be a pastor to preach and teach the word of God. He said to me, come here on Saturdays and clean the building. And every Saturday from about eight in the morning until five in the afternoon, I would go there and I would clean the building and I would work. I would build things, I would repair things. I'm not the most handy person, but I would do whatever I could do. Some people are too big to be used by God. Have you ever noticed that? Some people just, they're much too intelligent to be used by God. Some people are just so much more sophisticated than us to be used by God. Some people are just so much better than us to be used by God. Jesus, in his parable of the talents, remember he gave one five, one two, and one one. And the guy with the five, he put it to work and he ended up with 10. And the guy with the two, he put it to work and he ended up with four. But the guy with the one, he went and he buried it. And Jesus said this, he said, his Lord said to him, well done good and faithful servant, this is the one with the five, you have been faithful over a few things, and I will make you rule over many things, enter into the joy of your Lord. See, these shepherds were faithful with the little things, just the little things. And they got to see the birth of the Son of God. And this is true of everything in life. I just want you to understand this. This is true of everything in life. Learn this! If you're not being blessed. Learn it. For he who is faithful with little is always given more. Financially, it's true. Relationally, it's true. It's true of your body and what you do with your body and it's true in the spiritual life. It's true in your career. So here are the shepherds who, again, they're faithful over a few things, little things, shepherding their sheep, leading their sheep to green pastures, leading them besides the still waters, protecting them against the wolves and the lions, caring for them, loving them, anointing their head with oil, faithfully tending the lambs. And they got to fix their eyes on the birth of the Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world. That is the greatest event in history up until that moment. Because they were faithful with a little, they got to experience the big. And faithfulness is the doorway to greater things. Faithfulness, understand, faithfulness is essentially, it is faith in action. Faithfulness is continuous faith. It's consistent faith. It's faith repeated day in and day out. In the simple stuff of life. The reason why so many people, I think, are not blessed. Or are not healed. or not living in the abundance of God that the scriptures make so plain, is that they are not faithful in those little things. There's not that continuity, that continuousness of faith. And that's why the blessings aren't coming into their lives. The shepherds were simply, they had hearts of faith in simple stuff. Some people think, oh, well, if I get the big stuff, I'm gonna be faithful. No, you won't. No, you won't. If you're not faithful in the little things, you will not be faithful in the big things. If you're not faithful with God, obeying the little things that he's called you to do, which he makes so clear in his word, you will not be faithful if he gives you something big. Second, they had ears to hear. Ears to hear. Verse 10 through verse 15. It says, and the angel said to them, do not be afraid, and behold, I 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 the Lord, and this will be a sign to you. You will find the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. Now watch this here. The angel appears to them, and he's telling them this. Then, suddenly there's a choir of angels singing glory to God in the highest and on earth peace and goodwill towards men. So they hear the word from the angel, the word of the Lord. They see this glorious choir singing and praising to the Lord. What do they do? Yeah, right? They say, let us now go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has come to pass which the Lord has made known to us. They act on it. You know, see, they heard it. They had ears to hear. Matthew 11, 5, Jesus said, He who has ears to hear, let him hear. Now I want you to do something. Just take your left hand and right hand and just put them on the side of your head. Go ahead, do this. Don't be afraid. I'm not going to hurt you. And just feel your ears. Now, touch the person's ears, neck, no, you don't have to do that. You all got ears, right? I don't think anybody's... I mean, sometimes people are born without ears, sometimes people have accidents and they lose an ear, sometimes they fight Mike Tyson and they lose an ear, you know, you never know how you can lose an ear. Some of you who are in the martial arts and you've done jiu-jitsu and wrestling, you don't have ears, you just got lumps of cauliflower on the sides. What Jesus is saying here is that we all have physical ears, right? When they put this thing on my head, I always tell them, don't push it down hard because I see myself preaching sometimes. If I look at it on the internet, I look like this. I look like Dumbo. I mean, if you threw me off this pulpit, I'd float to the ground. We all have ears, right? We all have ears. But not everybody has ears to hear. Not everybody has ears to receive the Word of God, and believe on the Word of God, and act on the Word of God, and obey the Word of God. So there are people sitting here today, the Word of God is going forth, and they're not hearing. They may be hearing audibly, but they're not hearing with the ears of their heart. In John chapter 12, verse 27-30, watch this passage, it says, Now my soul is troubled, And what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour, but for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name. And then a voice came from heaven saying, I have both glorified it and will glorify it again. Therefore the people who stood by and heard it said that it had thundered. It was Tarandera. Others said an angel had spoken to him. And by the way, they were wrong too. And Jesus answered and said, this voice did not come because of me, but for your sake. Some heard thunder. Some heard an angel. And there were some who heard the voice of God. What made the difference? Their faith? See, we all hear through our filters. And some of our filters are just filled with unbelief. Some of our filters are so clogged with our self-righteousness and our sin that we can't hear, we can't receive. Some of our filters are just filled with doubts and limiting beliefs. And some have filters that are filled with faith and can receive and hear the voice of God. Now you may be sitting there and saying, well, if I was out there in the shepherd's field, and an angel appeared to me, and then a choir of angels began to sing glorifying God, how could I not hear it? How could I not get it? How could I not run down? And I want to just say this to you. If God sent an angel to some people, if he sent an angelic choir to some people, I want to just assure you that there are some people who will not believe. They will not believe! I can prove that. I can prove it from scripture and I can prove it from experience. By the way, I've watched it here for 35 years. In the scriptures, The Israelites, it seems like no matter what miracle God did... Hey listen, how many of them got into the Promised Land? Two. Caleb and Yeshua. The rest of them died. No matter what God did, water from the rock. And I'm sure that there were people standing there saying, well, you see, there's probably an invisible stream behind the rock. And when Moses hit that rock, it moved. And all of a sudden, water came forth from the rock. You ever meet that guy? Manna from heaven. And they still didn't believe. Listen, it's a natural phenomena. The wind blew the coriander seed off the trees. It went through the sky and came down on us. That's the manna. The quail. The summer wind came blowing in from across the sea. The quail blew in and in your sin you still wouldn't believe me. All summer long and they still didn't believe. A pillar of fire by night It was an atmospheric disturbance. Static electricity. A cloud by day. Well, just a cloud. It was just a cloud. And they continuously dwell in their rebellion and rejection. We had a woman come here a number of years ago. Had a dramatic story that she told us. My sister will remember this. She said that she saw Jesus in a vision. That Jesus came to her. And she drew this portrait. It's still somewhere in the church, but it was like a four foot by three foot portrait of what she saw. It was beautiful. She said, Jesus came to me. And she still didn't believe. She still didn't follow him. Though she claimed that she had this incredible vision. Why? See, notice what the shepherds did. They heard what? His word. Remember the story of the rich man and Lazarus? Notice, learn this lesson, it's important. Abraham said to him, and this is him talking to Lazarus, they have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them. And he said, no father Abraham, but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent. If somebody comes back, listen, if a relative comes back from the dead, then they'll believe. But Moses said to him, if they do not hear Moses and the prophets, if they do not hear the Tanakh, the word of God, that was in its entirety complete at the time when this is being spoken by Jesus, if they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded till one rise from the dead. If you do not believe the word of God, let me tell you something, God could do all kinds of miracles, he can give you all kinds of signs, and he can give you all kinds of wonders, and you ain't following him. And that's a fact. How many of you sitting here today believe in Jesus and are a follower of his, though you've never seen him? How many of you are followers of Jesus and you love him, though you've never seen him? One of my favorite passages in scripture, because I've never seen him, not physically. I've never heard him audibly. I've seen him in my heart, and I've heard him in my spirit. 1 Peter chapter 1, 7 through 9, Jesus Christ, whom having not seen you love. Isn't that amazing? And you love him more than you love anyone else. I see it by the way you serve him and live for him. And if they came in here today and they said, listen, if you're going to continue in your faith in Jesus, we're going to shoot you. How many of us would stand there and say, fire away? I mean, I'll tell you, I mean, we would go for their guns first and try to take them out, but we would do that in this church, and we are prepared to. But whom having not seen you love, though now you do not see him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy, inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith, the salvation of your souls. Though you've never seen him, you love him, and you believe in him, People say, well, you see, you gotta see to believe. No, you need to believe to see. Why do the shepherds Again, why did they see Jesus? Why did they experience him? Why did they go? Because they had ears to hear his word. And this passage, this passage right here in 1 Peter, you love him and believe in him, Jesus Christ. You know why? And you read through that context, 1 Peter 1, in fact, verse 25, but the word of the Lord endures forever. Now, this is the word which the gospel was preached to you because they received the word. When you receive the word of God, You will love Him. When you receive the God, the Word of God, you will believe in Him. Third, they had legs to run. Faithful hearts, ears to hear, legs to run. And they run to Jesus with passion and excitement. So in Luke chapter 2 verse 16, and they came with haste. You know what the word there for haste is? It's speedo. They put on their speedos and they ran down. That's the way we get speed. The idea is that they ran. This wasn't like, oh, well, you know, the angels showed us. We saw the angels glorifying God. You know, let's take a look. They didn't stop at Starbucks. They went right there. They didn't stop for gas. They didn't procrastinate. Are you even procrastinating people? They're enthusiastic, they're passionate. It was only about maybe a mile or a mile and a half, but they sprinted and they did it. They may have broken the world record for the mile that day. Reminds me of Peter and John, when Mary told them that Jesus had risen and his body wasn't in the tomb, they ran down. And they ran with passion. Psalm says that's the way we are to seek God. Throughout the Psalms, the way to seek God is to seek Him with an intensity, with a passion. Psalm 62, 1 and 2, Oh God, you are my God, early will I seek you. My soul thirsts for you, my flesh longs for you in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water. So I have looked for you in the sanctuary to see your power and your glory. It's seeking God with passion. You know, let's go. How many of you like doing things with apathetic people? Does anybody here, though some of you at times may be a little apathetic, does anyone like doing anything with a passionless person? I mean, I don't. I don't. Hey, let's go do that. And they'll be like, well, you know, goodbye. Goodbye. Don't have time. Bye. Don't want to waste my time. Don't want to waste my life. I'm going in the fourth quarter right now, and let me tell you, I don't want to waste my time. I don't care what it is. If it's working out, going to the gym, doing a workout, If it's praying, if it's witnessing, if it's studying, I don't want to do it with passionless people. I want to do it with people who have legs to go. That are anxious and passionate. And some passionless, apathetic, mediocre human being. Fourth, they had eyes to see. Luke chapter 2 verse 17, now when they had seen him, what did they see? When those shepherds got there, and this is a great depiction, notice the wise men hadn't come yet, that's later. It's a cave. I don't even think there were cows in there, but there were sheep in there. And it was smelly and it was dirty. And they see Mary and Joseph holding in their arms, Messiah. They see God in his condescending love and grace, small and humble, a baby. See, we all have eyes. But how many of us see that? How many of us, when we look at this story of the nativity, We see God in this condescending, in this humble state. The Almighty. Small. Instead of a throne, a manger. But some people look at this and, you know what, they say, well, they see a baby. Hey, big deal. It's a woman, it's her husband, there was no room in the inn, and you know what, it's just a baby with the parents. And others see One of the most glorious things that have ever been seen. But some people, again, they don't have eyes to see. Jesus in Matthew chapter 13, 14 through 16, He said this, Some people, man, they're looking at it all the time and they're just not getting it. They can't perceive it. Why? Because this people, their heart has become calloused. Their heart is hard. Sin, their rebellion against God. It's just, it's so hard that they can't see it. They hardly hear with their ears and they have calloused their eyes. Callouses on their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their ears, hear with their, I'm sorry, see with their eyes, hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and turn and I would heal them. But blessed are you, your eyes because they see and your ears because they hear. See, I believe Jesus is to be seen. We may not have the privilege of going down to Bethlehem and seeing the birth of the Lord, but we have the privilege of being able to experience him and see him every day in our lives. 1 John 1, verse 1, the apostle John, He says this, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled concerning the word of God. We have heard him, we have seen him, we have touched him. And John did literally. He, on the night of the last supper, he placed his head upon the very heart of God, the heart of Jesus, heard his heartbeat, heard the heartbeat of God. Now, I believe that there is a parallel that the scriptures give us in our physical experience of the natural world and our spiritual experience of God. In fact, there is a parallel between our five senses and there being five spiritual senses. In Matthew 11.5, again, he who has ears to him, let him hear. He's not talking about physical ears. He's talking about a spiritual sense where we can hear the voice of God. And few, few do. And most don't. Few do and most don't. A great lesson from Elijah. Elijah, the mighty prophet of God. And Elijah was used to experiencing God in the big. He calls down fire from heaven. He lays upon a boy who has died, and he raises him from the dead. He prays that it not rain, and it doesn't rain for three years. He's used to experiencing God in the big, and God says to him, when he's running from Queen Jezebel and King Ahab, they want to kill him. They've got a contract out on his life. Luca Brasi and the mobsters are out to get him. He feels he's the only one left in the entire world. He's hiding in a cave, and God says to him, I want you to go outside, you're gonna experience me. So he steps outside of the cave and he walks out and there's a hurricane and God's not in it. Well, God's not in it. I thought he'd be in the hurricane. And then there's an earthquake and God isn't in it. And then there's a firestorm and God isn't in it. What did God and how did God communicate to Elijah? A still, small voice. I think that's how he communicates with us most of the time. But we're noisy people. I mean, we're noisy. We're busy. Our brains are going on. We're watching the television. We're looking at the computer. We got this thing. We're just noisy. We're talking to each other all the time on Facebook. Watching what people eat for breakfast. How interesting is that? What interesting lives you have. And by the way, for those of you who keep trying to FaceTime me on Facebook, I don't have any friends. I don't accept friends. I just want you to understand, it's not against you. I'm not on Facebook. I know I have something on Facebook and people keep, oh, I get people from the church all the time. They wanted me to be a friend. I'm not being your friend, okay, on Facebook. I'll be your pastor. No, I'm not wasting my time looking at Facebook. Just another thing to preoccupy my time and waste my time with. So, We have all these noises. And even when we shut it all off, we can't. You know, you see, you're hearing all the things now that all these psychological studies about the dangers of those handheld devices are? That basically they cause your brain to retard. They cause you to be retarded. You cause your brain not to develop. Be careful with your children. The people at Google have private schools in California. They're schools. They don't use computers or handheld devices. They read books and they write with pens and pencils. They must know something that we don't. Just think about that. Look at so many young people. They can't even communicate. You ever sit with some people, young people, they can't communicate, they don't know how to communicate. Hey, let me get out my cell phone and then you get your cell phone and we'll talk together. I mean, I'll tell you something, there's something wrong. There's something wrong, alright, there's something wrong. We just fill ourselves with all this stuff and we can't hear from God. But He's given us ears to hear. He's given us eyes, sight. But blessed are your eyes because they see and your ears because they hear. He's giving us spiritual eyes to experience Him, to see Him in our spirits. Taste. Look at this one. Psalm 34 verse 8. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who trusts Him. That we can taste. of the goodness of God. We can taste the blessings of God. We can taste His love, His grace, His kindness, His compassion. Acts chapter 17, 27, touch. His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way towards Him and find Him though He is not far from any one of us. Have you ever felt His love? Have you ever felt His warm arms just embrace you? Have you ever felt His loving hands on your soul? That loving embrace of eternal grace? And the scriptures even say that we can smell Him. Smell. Psalm 45 or 6 to 8. Look at, this is David. He says, your throne, O God, will last forever and ever. So he's talking to God here. He says, a scepter of justice will be the scepter of your kingdom. You love righteousness and hate wickedness. Therefore, God, your God, has set you above your companions. He's talking about the Father and Son there. by anointing you with the oil of joy. He says, all your robes are fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia. From palaces adorned with ivory, the music of the strings make you glad. Notice that all your robes are fragrant with the myrrh and aloes and cassia. How would he know that? He's again, he's describing, David is describing, again, this spiritual sense to experience God. The smell of your presence. I think he's speaking figuratively, but it's the sense of the presence of God. You're just going through life, doing your thing, nothing bad, and all of a sudden, you just have an overwhelming sense of God's presence. Just driving down the road, and all of a sudden, Jesus is just sitting there with me. He was there the whole time, it's just that I didn't realize, or I was focused on other things. Sometimes I've done triathlons, and I could be in the water, or I could be on the bike, or I could be running, and all of a sudden, it's like the Lord, right in the water while I'm swimming, and you're focused, and it's intense, and all of a sudden, it's like I just know He's there with me. On the bike, and all of a sudden, He's there with me. And just the sense of His presence. See, the Christian life is about experiencing God. There's the entire Bible, that's what it's one. Why does God throw all these stories of people? So you go through the book of Genesis, you go through the book of Exodus, you go through all the books of the Bible, and you see Enoch is experiencing God, and Noah is experiencing God, and Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Joseph. Then you see Moses experiencing God, Joshua experiencing God, Ruth experiencing God, Deborah experiencing God, David experiencing God, and one person after another. The Christian life. There's a message that we could bring to the church. Right in these communities that we live in. Because most Christians or people in Christian churches today don't know this. They think being a Christian is going to church. Agreeing to some doctrinal statement. Being a Christian is knowing God. And it's being known by God. It's to experience God. It is a love affair with God. We're in the engagement stage, folks. The marriage is coming. But it's to hear His voice, and to feel His touch, and to taste His goodness, and to smell the sweet aroma of His presence, and to see His glory. That is the Christian life. I wonder how many churches that's being preached in in Bergen County this morning. Maybe a handful. The fifth, they had mouths to share. Faithful hearts, ears to hear, legs to run, eyes to see, and mouth to tell. And I think that the father wanted them to tell everyone about this. I was watching a little documentary on a guy named Danny Weirfall. Danny Weirfall was Heisman Trophy winner in 1996 at the University of Florida. Danny has become more famous in the kingdom of God for his ministry, Desire Street Ministries, where he goes into the worst areas of New Orleans and he ministers to people. He helps to build homes for them, renovate their homes. Most of those homes that were destroyed by the hurricane years ago, they're still in ruins. He's a real true authentic Christian. But something that jumped out at me that Danny had said in the show, he said, I have been given to give. But that's worth writing down. That He gives to us to give it away. Now, I've said this to you week after week. What are you here for today? Well, you should be here to meet God. You shouldn't be here to hear a little, you know, self-help message. You know, a fancy little message that maybe I'll learn something here that's gonna make my life a little better. You should be here to meet God. To meet God right where you are at this time in your life. And then to take what God gives you and then go give it away. You know, the Christian church, evangelical churches like this that preach the Word of God, I want to tell you, most people in the church, let me ask you, does your knowledge of the Word meet your actual obedience in life? Think about that. Because most people in the church, we're like stuffed pigs. We've been so stuffed with the Word of God, but we don't act on it. We don't give it away. Given to give. And that's what these shepherds did. Verse 17. Now when they had seen him, they made widely known the saying which was told them concerning this child. Notice, they went wide. It wasn't narrow. They didn't just go and tell, hey, let's just, I'll go over and tell my wife. I'm going to go home and I got two kids, wake them up and I'm going to tell them. They told the whole town. They told their fellow shepherds. They told the people of Bethlehem. They went out and they told everybody. And I'm sure some of the people thought they were crazy. An angel appeared to us and there was a choir of angels and we saw the Messiah. He's a baby, born in Beth. They thought they were hallucinating. This is like a mass hallucination. A bunch of them. Or they thought they were just lying. We are called to share what God gives us. Let me share something with you about just sharing. We need to share from the word. I think this is something where sometimes we may not realize we're not being as effective as we can be in our witness because we're not sharing from the word. I could stand here and I could say to you, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him would not perish but have eternal life. Now that's powerful. But you know what I think it's more powerful? When you take your finger and you show them. You know why? Because, listen, people in this culture, they are so skeptical. And they're skeptical, I don't know about you, I am. Let me tell you something, we live in a world of deception. Satan is the rule of the world, he's the massive deceiver. The media deceives us. The politicians deceive us. The educators deceive us. Even science deceives us. I said, go back 20 years and see all the things that scientists were saying are absolute truth. And you'll find that so many of these different ideas and theories have been disproved. So when you go and you share the Word of God with someone and you quote it to them, they're sitting there and saying, well, how do I know that's true? How do I know that you didn't make it up? Or how do I know you just didn't find that out in the church you're going to? Or you heard it from your pastor and you're saying, when you can show them, you take your finger and witness to them from the Word. Isaiah chapter 15 verse 11 says, So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it. The word of God never comes back void. I resisted it for seven years, but it was working in me. The word of God never comes back void. Another thing to share is share Jesus. Jesus said in Acts chapter one verse eight, but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you shall be my witnesses to me in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. Witness unto him. Share with him who he is. Share with him what he has done and share with him what he has said. But share Jesus. I just want you to just look at that passage a second. If you're afraid to share Jesus with people, you know what your problem is? You don't need to go to a Carnegie seminar and learn how to win friends and influence people. I just want to tell you that. More Bible study is not going to get you to do it. You think, if I just learn more and more and more, I'm going to have no problem sharing my faith with people. The reason that you are not sharing your faith with people is that you are not filled with the Holy Spirit. You take a brand new believer who gets saved and then gets filled with the Holy Spirit, they share with everybody. I can tell you that from my experience. You share. It's that you're not filled with the Holy Spirit. You're not surrendered. You're not submitting to Him and letting Him work through you. You're more focused on your fears and worried about what people are thinking about you than truly thinking about what God thinks about you. I have a seminar tonight. A seminar that I'm doing tonight, I'm doing a webinar tonight for a group out in Michigan. This is business. They invited me to come in and they're giving me an hour and 15 minutes. I'll share my faith throughout that time. By the way, I don't do it in their face. I'm not preparing how I'm gonna do this. All I know is the Holy Spirit is in my life and I share Jesus. Jesus has made the greatest difference in my life. I stand by the grace of God today before you. And I just share. I don't need to prepare anything. I'll just share. And it just flows. And when you have the Spirit in you, that's how it works. And he flows to this very imperfect crackpot. But there's enough cracks where he can work through. Share what Jesus has done for you. Share what Jesus has done for you. When Jesus cast out the demons, remember the demoniac with a legion of demons in him, and he cast them out, and then the man is sitting at Jesus' feet, and for the first time in years, he's in his right mind. He's in his right mind, he's whole, he's dressed, he was running around naked, he was crazy. And he's just sitting at Jesus' feet, and Jesus says, I have to leave now. So Jesus is getting in the boat, and he says, Lord, I wanna go with you. I wanna become number 13. Lord, I really want to go with you, and notice just what Jesus says to him here. Mark 5, 18-20, as Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon possessed begged to go with him, and Jesus did not let him go, but said, go home, watch this, go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you. and how he has had mercy on you. So the man went away and began to tell in the Decapolis, those are the ten cities of Syria, how much Jesus had done for him and all the people were amazed. Just go and tell them what he's done for you. Has he done something? If you don't have anything to tell that he's done for you, then he hasn't done anything for you and you need to be born again. But if you have been born again and you have been forgiven of all your sins, if you have a new life in Jesus Christ, go and tell what he has done for you. And that is something we should be doing all the time. It's amazing that people out there, they're hurting. You ever look into the eyes of so many people? They're gray. They're gray. I even see people coming in here and they got gray eyes. You know what gray eyes are? There's no life. They're oppressed. They're depressed. They're discouraged. They're gray. They're hurting. They're lost. And when you share with them about what He's done for you, what He's done for you, that He's giving you purpose, He's giving you meaning, He's giving you hope. Let me tell you, that's powerful. Share from the Word, share Jesus, and share what He's done for you. Last point here, number six. They had spirits to worship. Faithful hearts, ears to hear, legs to run, eyes to see, mouths to tell, and a spirit to worship. I believe that before the angel appeared to them, these guys, in their simplicity, were worshipers of God. They may not have been sophisticated worshipers of God like David, but they were worshipers of God. And they would be out in those fields, and they would look up at the stars, and they would look up at the planets, and they realized that there was an almighty God who created the whole thing. And they had worshiping hearts in their simplicity. So it tells us in verse 19 and 20, but Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. That's for another Sunday. And then the shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen as it was told them. Praising and glorifying God for what they had heard. What did they hear? They heard the word of God. They heard the angel say, do not be afraid for behold I bring you glad tidings of great joy which will be for all people for there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord and this will be the sign to you. You will find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger. You know what I find in my life? Every morning I get up and I have my time with God. I start off reading a psalm, and then I read a couple chapters from the Tanakh, and then I read a couple chapters from the New Testament, and I read them, and what happens is, after that, then from my heart overflows a praise psalm. They will probably never make music or make, nobody's gonna want to use those, okay? But I write a praise song to the Lord every morning. And it's usually a paragraph, but it flows from my heart after God shares his word with me. So hearing, they praise, and then it says, praising and glorifying God for what they had seen. What did they see? They saw the Son of God. and swaddling clothes, lying in a manger, with the Virgin Mary next and Joseph the carpenter, his stepfather, standing next to him. That's what they saw. So here's our wrap-up, here's our application. Again, what I started off with you, you have the selected. Why? Why were they selected? I believe they were selected because they were faithful. And they were faithful in the little things. Stop and ask yourself this morning, am I faithful? Am I faithful in worship? Am I faithful in serving God? Am I faithful in the daily study of His Word? Am I faithful praying to Him each day? Am I faithful in my attendance to Living Word, or if you're visiting us, whatever church you go to? Am I faithful in my family? Am I faithful to my employer? Am I faithful in handling the material blessings that He gives me? Am I doing what He asks? Ask yourself that. Because they had ears to hear. Selected because they had ears to hear. And ask yourself that question. Do I hear God's voice? Am I tuned in? to channel 777? Or am I tuned in to the voices of the world, to my cell phone, to Hollyweird and the media? Am I tuned in to God's still small voice? And when He speaks, do you turn up the volume? Or do you turn it off? When He speaks to you, do you turn it off? Because you don't want to hear what He's saying to you. which may mean that He's calling you to repentance or conviction. Why did God select them? Because they had legs to go. And ask yourself the question, when God calls you to go, do you go? Or do you procrastinate? Do you hesitate? Or maybe you just refuse His direction that He's given you in your life. They were selected because they had eyes to see. And ask yourself today, do you have eyes to see? Am I experiencing the Lord in my life? Seeing Him in my spirit, touching Him, tasting His goodness, sensing His presence. Because they had mouths to share. Am I sharing God's Word? Am I sharing Jesus with others? Am I sharing with them what He has done to me? And then last, because they had hearts to worship. And ask yourself that. Are you worshiping God out of a heart of joy because of the word that he's revealed to you? Are you worshiping God because of the experience and the joy of just experiencing him and his wonder? God has, I believe, much. for those of you here at Living Word Community Church in 2019. I really believe that God has, there's gonna be healings here like never before. I don't know if it's gonna happen with me. I don't even know if I'll be a part of it. All I know is God revealed to me that he's gonna do things here and there's gonna be a refining fire that's gonna be poured out on this church in 2019. And I believe that, again, that refining fire is gonna bring physical healings. I believe it is going to bring tremendous blessings. And I believe it's going to bring abundance upon people here in this church. I really feel the Lord is telling me that. And I just wanna say this to you, though. Here's a message to prepare yourself with. Prepare yourself. Are you somebody that God will select to pour that blessing out upon? Right now, look at yourself and look at the six things that you see in the shepherds. Are you someone that God will look down on today and say, you know what? You're a person that I can trust. The way you're living, the things you're doing, your devotion. Because I believe those are the people that are gonna experience these blessings. And always, always through the years, this church has been blessed. But there are always those people on the outskirts and I look and there's not blessing that's falling into their life. And that is because they are not in a place where he can pour out those blessings upon them. So I just encourage you, take a moment here, look at yourselves before you run out. You have all the busy stuff of Christmas and parties to go to and football's on today. Just take a moment before you run out. Let the Holy Spirit talk to your heart. So would you all bow your heads and close? We'll close in prayer. And we are joyful. Joyful, joyful we are. Oh my god Oh You are the one who saves, You are the one who saves You are the one whose hands lift us from the grave You are the light of life, the everlasting day You are the one who takes all our sins away You are giving and forgiving, ever-blessing, ever-blessed, fountain of the joy of living, ocean's depth of happiness. You are the one who saves. You are the one who saves. You are the light of life, the everlasting day. You are the one who takes all our sins away. Jesus, you are my rescue. Jesus, you are my rescue. I give you everything I am. Jesus, You are my rescue. Jesus, You are my rescue. I give You everything I am. You are giving and forgiving, ever-blessing, ever-blessed. Fountain of the joy of living, ocean's depth of happiness. You are the one who saves. You are the one who saves. You are the one who lifts, lifts us from the grave. You are the light of life, the everlasting day. You are the one who takes all our sins away. You are the One who takes all our sins away. You are the One who takes all our sins away. You are the One. Praise You, Lord. The Holy One. The only One. Oh, come all ye faithful. Let's sing His praise. Oh, come all ye faithful.