GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LUKE 2:15-18
15 After the angels left them and had gone into heaven, the shepherds said to each another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem! Let’s see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.” 16 So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger.
Commentator R.C.H. Lenski said, “Luke’s words read as if the angels, surrounded by heavenly light, receded upward until they were hid from sight” (Exposition of Luke p. 137). I agree. The detail that “they had gone into heaven” after telling us that the angels left gives us the very picture of the angels departing upward in such a way that the shepherds could see them ascending into the clouds or toward the starlight above.
Their reaction is exciting. It was exciting for them, and it should be exciting for us. It’s presented very much like the rapid-fire questions of the sailors who wanted to know about Jonah when they cast lots to find out why the storm hit (Jonah 1:8). It’s not some wise old shepherd droning on about proceeding somberly over the hills until they ‘reacheth unto Bethlehem.’ Their speech is excited, breathless, and hurried. And in verse 16, they hurry off (σπεύδω, speudo, they “sped away”).
And they found him! There is no prolonged search. The baby was still in the manger, so it was the very same night; hardly an hour had passed, we should think. The shepherds transformed from racing over the hills to standing quietly, mindful of the tired woman who just gave birth and the baby, wrapped tight in his sparganóō swaddling clothes. There’s no point in debating about the little Lord Jesus and the “no crying he makes” (Away in a Manger was composed by Martin Luther for his own children). Christ is true God and true man, and if he slept through the lowing of cattle after his birth he certainly wept later on. As my associate, Nate Scharf said, “How else would Mary know when to feed him?”
17 After they saw him, they spread the word about what had been told to them about this child. 18 Everyone who heard it was amazed by what the shepherds said to them.
When the gospel is preached, the result in the Christian’s heart is to cherish the message and to share the message. The shepherds became the first genuinely Christian missionaries and preachers on this night. They had no call to preach. They had no special instruction or ordination. But they weren’t going out to serve congregations or administer the sacraments; they were going out to spread the gospel. All it takes is the truth and a believing heart. Faith in Christ will not need the skills of rhetoric for the gospel message to be effective. The message is everything: Christ the Savior is born!
The result of their preaching was amazement. People didn’t know what to think, but there were many in Israel who were waiting for this very thing to happen. The people who heard the first Christmas gospel news were Jews who were yearning for the message. They knew the promises. Their parents and grandparents had passed those promises down, generation by generation, but believers are plagued by doubt. Those dark moments come like yesterday’s eclipse and we focus on what’s wrong all around us. We want to ask with Asaph, “Will the Lord reject forever? Will he never show his favor again? Has his unfailing love vanished forever? Has his promise failed for all time? Has God forgotten to be merciful? Has he in anger withheld his compassion?” (Psalm 77:7-9). We let money troubles, arguments, mistrust, and the failures of the people around us get to us, beat down on us, and cripple our hope.
But he hasn’t forgotten us. He hasn’t rejected us. Has he shown his favor? He sent more than a message. He sent more than a messenger. He came in person, himself, God in the manger in Bethlehem. He came to take our troubles and carry them to the cross. He came to take our wandering, meandering lives of mistakes, failures, and peregrinations, and he laid his own straight and narrow path there in place of it all. Where your name was engraved on the spines and title pages of endless volumes of your sins ready to be opened, read, and judged before God’s throne, Christ stepped in with his own spotless record, empty of any accusation at all, and he wrote your name there at the top. You! Forgiven, righteous, spotless, and blessed.
It’s as if the shepherds have just left. We stand amazed! And we adore that child every bit as much as they did.
Oh come let us adore him,
Oh come let us adore him,
Oh come let us adore him,
Christ the Lord!
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Archives by Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: http://www.wlchapel.org/worship/daily-devotion/
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota