GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LUKE 2:8-9
8 There were in the same country shepherds staying out in the fields, taking turns watching over their flock at night.
There was something special, very special, about these shepherds, or else there was nothing special about them at all. There was nothing particularly special about them as to their abilities, or their purity, as to their piety or the degree of their faith. Perhaps one of them was in the middle of a vulgar joke when the angels appeared. Perhaps one of them was in the middle of telling a lie. Perhaps some of them were bored with their work, not really concerned about every last sheep in the flock. Most of them were probably asleep. We cannot say what their particular sins were, but we can say with certainty that they were sinful and in need of a Savior. Why? “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).
Yet they were special—very special. How so? They were an audience that would listen to the message of the angels. How many of God’s prophets, priests and patriarchs yearned to be the audience that would hear this message over the long years of the Old Testament! But the message didn’t come to Moses, or Elijah, or Isaiah, or Jeremiah. It wasn’t David or Daniel or Deborah or any of the other heroes of faith to whom this announcement came. It was Bruce, Randy, Tom, and Kerry—or whatever the shepherds were named. They were men and boys who needed to hear the gospel. These were men who already knew the full condemnation of God’s law, and that made them the perfect little congregation to listen to the full comfort of the gospel.
9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.
The glory of the Lord is a bright flare of fire, often enveloped in the surrounding darkness of smoke or a cloud (or here, by the dark of night). It is always an image of God, the awesome and awe-inspiring Creator who transcends our world, bursting in upon his creation. Whenever the glory of the Lord appears, it is a message in itself: God is about to do something special, something that would otherwise not be clear, and it will be something very significant. But more than that: When the glory of the Lord appears, it “invariably pertains to the plan of salvation from sin which he [God] made in Christ and which is carried out through him” (August Pieper, The Glory of the Lord, 1931).
So this is what the shepherds saw: A bright light all around them, and an angel of God there with it and with them. They had been watching their flock in turns so that they could all get a little sleep and yet maintain their vigilance. ϕυλάσσοντες ϕυλακὰς τῆς νυκτὸς means literally “guarding the watches of the night.” The night was divided into four watches of a couple hours each, and at the end of each watch, the men going off duty would wake up the next ones, probably using the position of the stars or the moon to tell the time. Now this pattern was shattered by the light and the angel, and “they were terrified.” Their terror is understandable. The personal appearance of God and even of his angels causes anyone to be instantly aware of his deficiencies. Isaiah cried out, “I am ruined! I am a man of unclean lips!” (Isaiah 6:5). Saul of Tarsus, so eloquent, was reduced to meager questions: “Who are you, Lord?” (Acts 26:15), “What shall I do, Lord?” (Acts 22:10). We would think (as these shepherds undoubtedly did) of the terrifying prospect of our future. “Death, than which nothing is more horrible; judgment, than which nothing is more terrible; and infernal punishment, than which nothing is more intolerable” (Johann Gerhard, Sacred Meditations, No. XXVIII).
The holiness of God lays bare our unholiness, our utter sinfulness, and our inability to do anything about the accounting of our sins, right to the very top. We are hopeless before that holiness. But this is the very hopelessness that has beaten down every human argument that might say, “I’m not so bad; I can live so well that God has to accept me. I can have a say in my own salvation.” As C.F.W. Walther said, “The Word of God is not rightly divided when the Law is preached to those who are already in terror on account of their sins, or the Gospel to those who live securely in their sins.” Like the Germans whom Luther preached to when the Reformation first began, this was an audience that already knew the law. They had been made aware of their sins. Indeed, they had been made aware of little else! Their hearts were in agony over their sins and their sinful condition. This is what their terror was all about. And therefore their terrified hearts were the most fertile ground imaginable for the healing seeds of the gospel.
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