The Announcement of Jesus' Birth, Part 1 B

Listen to Isaiah 60, arise, shine, your light has come, the glory of the Lord has risen upon you, that's the Messiah, and nations will come to your light. From the very beginning, this good news of the forgiveness of sin would go to Israel and through Israel to the nations. The message of forgiveness extends to all the peoples. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. With December 25th fast approaching, how are you doing at staying focused on what's truly important, lasting and hopeful about Christmas? Even if you know by heart what the Bible says about Christmas, it's possible that one of the most significant aspects, second only to the actual birth of Jesus, has never hit you as it should. Today on Grace to You, John MacArthur takes you to that sort of hidden element of the Christmas story, helping you fully embrace what John calls the promise of Christmas.

That's the title of his study. John will be in the book of Luke today, so if you have your Bible, turn there now. Let's open our Bibles to the second chapter of Luke's gospel. Now the message is good news, good news, verse 10, good news of great joy.

And what's so good news? There has been born for you a Savior. The Savior has come who will save His people from their sins and therefore from death and hell, from the judgment of God, and who will bring them into the promised blessings of a kingdom and a king of blessing beyond description and imagination, eternal glory, all that.

Good news, good news, folks, good news. There is a Savior. There is forgiveness of sin. You can't escape hell. You can go to heaven forever.

You can be blessed by God. Now as we unfold this passage, I want to give you a few points. Number one, the proclamation of good news. You know, it's the most unlikely group of people to make this proclamation to. If you were orchestrating this, if you were a PR agent and you were designing a campaign to announce that the Savior of the world had been born, the last people you would go to was a bunch of shepherds. But that's exactly where the Lord sent the message. In verse 8 says, in the same region, that's the region around Bethlehem.

It's just a small village, certainly not a city. So down in that region there were some shepherds. Now it tells us also in verse 8, they were staying out in the fields. Now according to most of the history of that time and even afterwards and before in Israel, shepherds stayed out in the field from April to November.

The sheep at that time would roam the fields and then they would have a little lean-to fold made out of...it could be stones gathered together or wood gathered together, something to enclose them. At night they'd bring them in, keep them in the fold and the shepherd would lie across the entrance. That's why it literally says in John 10, Jesus says, I'm not only the great shepherd, I am the door. You might think He's mixing His metaphors.

He's not. The shepherd is the door. The shepherd would put his bed and lie across the entrance to the fold. No sheep could get out without walking across Him and He would make sure it didn't happen. And Jesus calls Himself the door because He wants us to know that once we're in His sheepfold, He'll never let us out.

That's the doctrine of eternal security. So the shepherd gathered his sheep. They would all be out in the fields during the day. At night he would pull them in and put them in this little open air lean-to and he and his other shepherds would watch. They would each have their turn to watch and others would sleep at the door to protect the sheep from getting out. So they were staying out in the fields, which puts this somewhere from April...generally April to November, could be even into December.

We just don't know. What are they doing? It says in verse 8, they're keeping watch over their flock.

Night time has come so they're in the fold now. And they could still be out in the field. If it was a full moon, they might have left them out, but typically they would bring them into the fold so they could carefully watch them and no predator could get them, although there may not have been mountain lions that close to Bethlehem. We don't know, there could well have been, but sometimes thieves also.

So they're very likely in a fold. It's night and some of them are awake and perhaps it's early enough at night that they're all awake when the angel arrives. By the way, the Mishnah, which is the codification of Jewish law, and the Talmud, which is rabbinic teaching, required that flocks be kept only in wilderness areas. Flocks couldn't be kept in the populated areas, so they were out there in that wilderness area.

There's another very interesting note I want you to have here. Remember now, Bethlehem's about six miles south of Jerusalem. In fact, when you...that's from the city center of Jerusalem. When you're driving today out of Jerusalem, you don't even know a break between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. It's an uninterrupted suburb.

It's very close. But the rabbis had made a rule, it's recorded in the Mishnah and the codification of Jewish law, that any animal found between Jerusalem and a certain spot in Bethlehem was subject to be used as a sacrifice in the temple. Now there were sheep grazing in that area purposely to be used as sacrificial animals, but the rabbis reserved the right in the event that there were more people than available animals to literally commandeer any animals in the area and take them and use them as sacrifices. And if we remember history, we remember there could be as many as a quarter of a million animals slain around the Passover season. How interesting that the announcement of the final and full sacrifice, the Lamb of God slain from before the foundation of the world, the Savior of the world was made to shepherds who very likely took care of sheep who were offered as pictures of that coming sacrifice.

Well, the tranquil normalcy of a night of shepherding was violated in an amazing way in verse 9. They were out there and it was a night like any other night. It was the very same period of time, the very same 24-hour period as the child had been born in Bethlehem.

They were outside town in this field and it was just a night like every other night. They were doing what they'd always done, telling their normal stories, playing their little flutes, doing what shepherds did, and an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them. And it says here, He comes, the Greek verb is ephistemi.

It literally means to stand near somebody. So these shepherds are there checking out the full, doing whatever they do, and all of a sudden, here's Gabriel standing there. And it's evident that he's not one of the guys. It's very evident.

It's a dark night, to whatever degree. It's all of a sudden emblazoned with the highest of all created beings standing in the midst of the lowliest of all earthly folks. And the sequence is the same as always. When Gabriel appeared to Zacharias, when Gabriel appeared to Mary, or when he appears, this angel of the Lord appears here to the shepherds, the sequence is always the same. Appearance, fear, comfort, message, sign.

That's always the sequence. Appearance, fear, comfort, message, sign. And that's exactly what we see here. We saw it with Zacharias when Gabriel came to him. We saw it with Mary when Gabriel came to her. And so, the angel of the Lord suddenly, suddenly, instantaneously, immediately with no anticipation, he's standing near them. Now, as if that's not enough, the text adds, and the glory of the Lord shown around them. And we read that, and we've heard that, and we perhaps haven't thought about it very deeply. Folks, I can't even describe to you what a significant statement that is.

That is one of the high points of all of history. If you go back and study the glory of the Lord, that is simply defined, the manifestation of the presence of God in light. Now, God is not corporeal. He doesn't have a body. He doesn't have a form, a physical form. He's the invisible God. But when He reveals Himself, He reveals Himself as light, some kind of glowing, brilliant, shining, incomprehensible manifestation of light. In fact, if He revealed Himself fully in light, in Exodus 33, it would be enough to incinerate anybody. And that's why God said to Moses, I can't show you My full glory, you'll go up and smoke.

So, God tucked Moses in a rock and just let a little bit of His afterglow shine so that Moses could see it. But if you study the glory of God, you start in the Garden of Eden, and God is there with Adam and Eve, and there's no sin, so there's nothing to fear, so that the presence of God is not something that consumes them because there's no sin. And so, they're walking and talking with God in the cool of the day, and they're in the presence of the Lord.

They're walking with the glorious, shining Shekinah manifestation of God. Then sin comes in, and immediately God says, I can't have fellowship with you anymore. And He throws them out of the garden, and He puts an angel with a flaming sword there.

And that wasn't because He didn't care about them, it was because He did care about them. And should they enter the garden and come into His presence, they would have been immediately destroyed. So, God put the angel with the flaming sword there, in a sense as protection. And here was man walking and talking in the presence of God with the glory of God. All of a sudden, he's alienated from the glory of God completely. It's a long time before the glory of God appears again, and in Exodus chapter 40, they finish building the tabernacle. The tabernacle is going to be where they worship the Lord, and there's a place in the tabernacle called the Holy of Holies where God is going to take up residence. And when they finished that, according to Exodus 40, the glory of God came out of heaven, came down. The glory of God came and just filled that place. Just the great shining Shekinah presence of God came down and filled that place, and the glory of the Lord had come back, and God was manifesting His great presence and His great glory.

It was a monumental moment. It was the establishment of worship. It was the establishment of the place of worship.

It was the establishment of that place where sacrifices were to be made in order to give people access to God, where once a year, the Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the high priest would go into the holy place, and then into the Holy of Holies, and he would sprinkle blood on the mercy seat, and their sins would be atoned for. And God signified the great importance of that when His glory came down. And His glory, you remember, came out of the tabernacle and went up into the sky during the day as a cloud and led them and as a pillar of fire at night and led them, and they saw the glory of God, the great light manifestation of God. Later on when they built the temple, the same thing happened.

The temple was completed in Solomon's day. The glory of God came down, and God again said, I'm taking up residence. I want to be the focus of your worship.

I want you to give your attention to Me, to worship and glorify Me. It wasn't very long, however, until they turned against God, and you can read in Ezekiel 8 to 10, the glory of God left. It departed. It went away from the temple.

A sad moment. The prophet stands, and he watches the glory of God go up over the temple and go up over the door and up out over the mountain, and it disappears, and God leaves Israel. And the glory never came back until this night, been a long time before David even, until this night, and the glory of God appeared on earth again.

Boy, this is not just a small event. It signified in the garden the presence of God. It signified in the tabernacle the presence of God. It signified in the temple the presence of God coming into the world, and it signified this night that the presence of God had come into the world. The presence of God had come not in a building, not in a tent, but this time it had come in human flesh, in the Messiah. And later on in his life, Jesus took disciples in Matthew 17, records it up into the mountain, and He pulled His flesh back, and they saw the glory of God. He was transfigured before them.

Remember that? Someday the glory of God's going to come back. We haven't seen it.

It hasn't happened since this earthly time. Nobody has seen it since, those shepherds and those disciples. But someday the glory of God is coming back, Matthew 24 and 25, when Jesus returns.

And when the glory comes back, it won't just be Israel, and it won't just be a few shepherds, and it won't just be some apostles. When the glory comes next time, the whole world is going to see it because God is going to blacken the sky. The stars are going to go out. The sun's going to go out.

The moon's going to go out. It's going to get pitch black, and then the full universe is going to be filled with the blazing glory of God. It won't be His back parts. It won't be His afterglow.

It will be the full face. And when man, sinful man, confronts the full glory of God, he will be incinerated. And that is the final and glorious judgment of God, and He establishes His kingdom of glory on the earth where He reigns forever. This is not just some small event. This is the glory of God coming down. But of all people, to shepherds, to the lowliest of the low, the glory comes. Now we know this is a monumental moment in redemptive history. And it says they were terribly frightened.

Well, I understand that. That was the same reaction everybody else had. The glory of God is terrifying. When Isaiah saw God in a vision, he was terrified, pronounced a curse upon himself and expected to be immediately incinerated. When Ezekiel, in chapter 1 of Ezekiel, saw the glory of God in a vision, he fell on his face in a coma. When John the Apostle saw the glory of Christ, the Shekinah glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ in Revelation 1, it says he fell over like a dead man, went into a coma.

Terror is the result of seeing the presence of God, even a veiled presence of God. People who saw Jesus and understood that He was God were terrified. A woman was healed by Jesus, and it says she was absolutely terrified when she realized He had to be God because He had just healed her.

The disciples had Jesus in the boat. It says they were afraid because of the storm. Jesus stopped the storm, and it says they were exceedingly afraid. They were more afraid of having God in their boat than having a storm outside their boat. I understand that. Even a veiled presence of God was enough to terrify a sinner because the sinner knows if I could see God, if I'm in the presence of God, he can see me.

I see holiness, he sees sin, I'm in trouble. So this is the normal reaction. These are common guys.

They probably haven't had any very interesting experiences in life. Certainly nothing could even come remotely close to this. And would they have ever expected that God would have showed up?

But He did. This signifies the importance of this event. This is not just any life here being born in Bethlehem. This is not just another example of religious virtue.

This isn't another good man. This is something monumental here. God Himself has come down out of heaven in shining light, and they were terribly frightened. And I understand that. They were in a state of absolute panic, terrified. Verse 10, and the angel said to them, do not be afraid.

Oh, easy for you to say. Do not be afraid, or stop being afraid. By the way, it's the same sequence to Zacharias and Mary. These men didn't need to be afraid of God, which again indicates to me that they were righteous, that they were true, believing Jews, devout who loved the true and living God, and were waiting for the Savior to come. You have nothing to fear, he said. Now the only way that could be true is if your sins had been what?

Forgiven. By the way, that's a very common phrase. If you want to have a good Bible study, start in Genesis 15, 1, where that phrase first appears, don't be afraid, and follow it all the way through Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Judges, 2 Kings, 1, 2 Chronicles. You find it in Nehemiah. You find it in Daniel.

You find it in Zachariah. Then you find it in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Acts, Hebrews, 1 Peter, and Revelation 1, 17. Just follow that whole phrase, and you have times when you ought to be afraid of God, but there are those times when God says, don't be afraid, don't be afraid. And every time it is when God is going to reveal grace. Okay? Listen, if God shows up and He's not come for grace, be afraid.

True? But when He comes with a gracious purpose, and He did that so many times in the Old Testament, so many times, He said to Israel, don't be afraid, I'm coming in compassion, I'm coming in grace, I'm coming in mercy. You don't need to be afraid in the presence of God when He brings a gracious purpose. So the angel says, don't be afraid, the news is good...the news is good. In fact, it's good news that will produce great joy. This is not news of judgment, this is not news of punishment, this is not news of cursing, this is not news about death.

That will come to the world and that does come to sinners. I bring you good news is from the verb euangelizo, from which we get transliterated the English word evangelize, which simply means to tell people the good news. Evangelize isn't even an English word, it's just a transliteration of a Greek word, euangelizo. By the way, Luke uses the verb often to proclaim the good news, to preach the good news, to bring the good news.

He uses it in chapter 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 16, chapter 20. He likes that word. Luke uses the verb more than any other New Testament gospel writer. You'll find the noun all over the place, euangelion, which is the noun form of the same root, it's all over the place because the message of Christianity is good news, isn't it? It's good news we have a saving God. It's good news He sent a Savior. It's good news there's one who's come to take away your sin. It's good news all your sin is forgiven forever. That's the good news and this is such good news it ought to produce great joy, which is the utter opposite of fear. And the word literally means laughter, hilarity, joy as 1 Peter 1 says, inexpressible with which you greatly rejoice. You know, you can't contemplate the gospel without joy, can you?

Without laughter and hilarity, good news. Boy, these guys went from absolute sheer terror to hilarity upon the instruction of this angel, perhaps Gabriel. The highest and best joy is for those who receive salvation. This is great joy. This is the highest joy. This is the joy that comes to those who receive the grace of salvation. I bring you good news of a great joy. There has been born a Savior. There's no greater joy than that, is there?

Against that matter, every other matter pales in importance. The highest and best joy is for those whose sins have been forgiven, those for whom the Savior has died and paid the penalty for their sins. The news is good, folks, and this is what we tell the world, isn't it? Go into all the world and proclaim this good news.

Let me give you one other point just briefly. That's the proclamation of the good news. Here's the pervasiveness of it, and this is a good place to close, the pervasiveness of it. Back to verse 10, I bring you good news of a great joy.

Here's the pervasiveness of it. Which shall be for all the people, for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior. Just those two phrases, one in verse 10 and one in verse 11, sum up the pervasiveness.

How widespread is this good news? Verse 10 says it's good news of great joy which shall be for all the people. Now the people, primarily the word laos in the Greek, primarily from which we get the word laity in English, meaning the people, the word primarily refers to Israel. Luke uses it a number of times to refer to Israel for all the people. Of course, the angel is saying, first of all, for Israel, salvation is of the Jews. The message of salvation comes to Israel. The new covenant is being delivered and ratified to Israel and the fulfillment of Davidic promise and Abrahamic promise with it. It is Israel, Israel the primary recipient of this wondrous reality to all the people. And he knows that the shepherds would understand it as Israel because they understand God as the Redeemer of Israel and God as the God of Israel and they being the covenant people.

But it doesn't end with Israel. They are the primary people. They are the ones that would be understood by those shepherds as the people. They're the ones Luke intends us to understand as the people.

But it doesn't stop with them. Go over to verse 31 where you have Simeon picking up the baby Jesus in the temple and he realizes that this child is the Savior and he says he's been prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light of revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of Thy people Israel. So we've got to go beyond just Israel.

Israel is the primary, but the secondary is it goes to the world, to the Gentiles. And that is exactly what Isaiah the prophet said there in Isaiah chapter 60. And that wonderful...and by the way, the promise of the gospel to all nations is in Isaiah 9, 2, Isaiah 42, 6, Isaiah 49, 6 to 9, Isaiah 51, 4. It's not just isolated to one verse, but listen to Isaiah 60, arise, shine, your light has come, the glory of the Lord has risen upon you, that's the Messiah.

And it says, the Lord will rise upon you, His glory will appear upon you and nations will come to your light. From the very beginning, this good news of the forgiveness of sin would go to Israel and through Israel to the nations...to the nations...the nations. In fact, all peoples in verse 31 is plural, all the peoples.

And that's why it's translated that way with an S at the end. Whereas back in verse 10, it's singular, the people, Israel. But the message of forgiveness extends to all the peoples, all nations. And so we are to make disciples, said Jesus in Matthew 28, of all nations...all nations. So this good news extends to all nations. That's the big picture.

That's the collective picture. Look at the individual picture in verse 11. Today in the city of David there has been born, look at this, one of the next two words, for you, a Savior, for you.

Yes, that's right, you guys standing right here, you shepherds. The angel standing right with them says, for you, for you. You could say it this way, the Savior has been born and He will be the Savior of everybody and the Savior of anybody who comes and believes.

The humblest, the most ignorant, the most uneducated, the most lowly and unskilled, even despised, even the chief of sinners, even the lowest of the low. He is the Savior of everybody who is saved from every people and tongue and tribe and nation on the face of the earth and anybody who chooses to come. He's the world's Savior and He's your Savior. Father, we thank You for this great portion of Scripture, so foundational, basic, important, understanding our faith.

Oh, how sad that He came unto His own and His own received Him not. The greatest news you could ever hear, the Savior has come to save you from your sins, from the power of sin, from the penalty of sin which is eternal hell and someday from the presence of sin which is holy heaven. We thank You for the Savior and the good news that turns fear into great joy. For those who reject the Savior, there's reason to be afraid, for He will come again and there will be no grace when the glory returns.

But for now, the news is good. The day of salvation has opened the door to any sinner who will repent and embrace Christ. May you work that work in the hearts of those who are here today and those who hear this message, we pray for Jesus' glory and sake. Amen.

The unheralded birth of a baby has turned the world upside down, hasn't it? John MacArthur's study here on Grace To You called The Promise of Christmas is helping you rejoice with the angels that Jesus Christ came to earth to redeem sinners like you and me. Well, we've been talking about it all month, but today we're down to only three days till Christmas, so it's the deadline if you want to pick up a MacArthur study Bible or any other item from Grace To You and have an opportunity to receive it before December 25th. And you need to hurry. John, you have the details, and you also have a few gift suggestions.

I do, and yeah, what you said is true. This is really the last day to order resources in the United States and have them delivered by Christmas, so you have to place your order next day shipping, and you have to do it by phone before four o'clock Pacific time or on the internet before two o'clock Pacific time. Outside the U.S., you need to contact your local G2 office, but I would just say as a footnote to all of that, it's not a big deal if it doesn't get there by Christmas. It's more important to have the resource than to say, oh, I missed this Christmas. I've got to wait a year.

We don't want you to do that. And if you don't need to get it by Christmas, then you can just order it by normal mail, and it'll come, and it'll still do the same good work. But as you think about Christmas and think about serving your own life with the Word of God or the lives of others that you care about, here are the things that I would recommend. The MacArthur New Testament Commentary Series. For any Bible student who's serious, and every believer ought to be, 34 hardbound volumes covers every New Testament book. Each volume independently is affordable.

Discounting the whole set makes the whole thing affordable. It's a treasure for a lifetime. A copy of One Perfect Life, The Harmony of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John into one narrative. The book, Biblical Doctrine.

All the doctrines of the Bible summed up from the verses that teach those doctrines. And the flagship resource in demand all the time, including Christmas, the MacArthur Study Bible in the New American Standard, which is what I use, the New King James, the ESV, 25,000 footnotes. And again, with every MacArthur Bible, you get a free copy of one foundation of book celebrating our 50th anniversary. Order today by 4 p.m. or 2 p.m., if it's on the internet, Pacific time, and you will be able to get them by next day mail before Christmas.

But if that's not important, let them be on your list for an after-Christmas gift. Yes, these helpful resources make ideal gifts for new believers, veteran saints, every follower of Christ. To pick up the MacArthur Study Bible, or One Perfect Life, or Biblical Doctrine, or the MacArthur New Testament Commentary Series, get in touch today. Our toll-free number is 800-55-GRACE. Again, that's 800-55-GRACE.

Call us before 4 o'clock p.m. Pacific time and speak directly to one of our customer service representatives. They'll help you get the right shipping option for your order to arrive before Christmas. That number one more time, 800-55-GRACE. Or place your order online before 2 p.m. Pacific at GTY.org and just make sure you use Next Day Shipping. And friend, thanks for praying for John and the Grace To You staff. That's really the most important way you can minister to us.

Also, if you get a moment over these next few busy days, we'd love to hear how John's verse-by-verse teaching is helping you grow in your love for the Lord. Email is a great way to contact us. Write to Letters at GTY.org. Once more, that's our email address, Letters at GTY.org. Or if you prefer regular mail, the address is GRACE TO YOU, Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412. Now, on behalf of John MacArthur and the Grace To You staff, I'm Phil Johnson encouraging you to be here tomorrow when John continues his look at the promise of Christmas with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Wednesday's Grace To You.