When angels first announced the arrival of the Messiah, why was their audience a group of lowly shepherds? For such a momentous event in history, you'd expect God to send his heavenly messengers to the distinguished politicians or religious leaders of the day.
Alistair Begg explores the answer to that question today on Truth for Life. Well, before we turn to the Bible, we turn to God who gave us the Bible. Lord, gracious God of heaven, who has spoken and your Word has come to be, grant now that by the Holy Spirit you will speak into our lives, granting to us clarity and understanding and faith, so that like those who rejoiced at the discovery of this good and great news, we might do likewise. For we humbly pray in Jesus' name.
Amen. While the words to which I should like to call your attention begin in the eighth verse of Luke chapter 2. Luke chapter 2 and verse 8, and in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. Luke has now recorded for us in verse 7 the event of the birth of the Lord Jesus.
And now, in verse 8, he tells us of the announcement of this birth that has been made by the angels and to the shepherds. Let's begin where we left off last time by reminding one another and doing so very purposefully of the fact that we're dealing here with real historical events. The work of Luke, as we saw in his introduction last time—that's the opening four verses of his Gospel—the work of Luke is not to tell stories but to record history. And the narrative that he gives us is essentially interpreted history. It is history condensed, because he couldn't write it all down, and not only condensed but also explained, so that we have not only the events as they have unfolded, but we have also the explanation as to the nature of these events.
And as I say to you, it's very important that we keep that in mind. We realized last time that Luke, who was not himself an eyewitness of that which he describes, nevertheless had deferred two eyewitnesses. He had made sure that he conducted his investigation, as he says, very thoroughly, very carefully, in order that he might write an orderly account, and in order that as a result of his orderly account that those who were the readers of it would actually be brought to certain convictions concerning the good news that he proclaimed. And so it is that we are entirely dependent on the work of the eyewitnesses. Therefore, we're entirely dependent on the testimony of the apostles. And so, if you are wondering about these things, if you find yourself on the fringes of the Christmas story, as it were, marginally skeptical, diffident about whether it is worthy of wholeheartedly committing to this kind of thing, then I would say to you that it is very, very important just to read your Bible, just to read the New Testament records, and see the claims that are made by these people.
And then ask yourself, does the data reinforce the claims that are being made? For example, Peter. Listen to how Peter puts it when he's writing to folks who are being pressed in upon by all kinds of myths and intrusions, many of whom perhaps were beginning to say, I don't know if this Christian life is worth it. Goodness gracious, when I signed up for this, they might have said, I didn't think that we would face the Neronian persecution. I didn't think that people would be getting killed just for following Jesus. And they might even have that occasion to say to one another, I wonder if we're really on the right track.
I wonder if this is actually believable. And some of you might have been having those thoughts this week. Well, listen to how Peter puts it. We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
That's pretty straightforward. We want you to know that we didn't make this stuff up. We actually were there, and we saw it. John does the same thing. When John begins his first letter, he starts off by saying, That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked on, which we have touched with our hands, that is what we declare to you. In other words, all of our sight, all of our senses, have been involved in this. We were present, we saw Christ, we heard Christ, we obeyed Christ, and some of us are going to die for this Christ.
We're not involved in mythology. This is exactly what took place. Someone says, Yes, but that's old. This goes back a long, long way. Yes, it does.
It's old, but that doesn't mean it's obsolete. The prophecies that came in the Old Testament that were fulfilled in the New Testament did not come about as a result of Micah or Jeremiah or Isaiah sort of sitting down and scratching out with a pencil on a pad conjectures about potential that may transpire in the future. Now, Peter also addresses that. He says, For no prophecy was produced by the will of man. The prophecies didn't come about as a result of the cogitations of these individuals. They themselves were surely surprised by many of the things that they wrote. And indeed, Peter says that they were like men standing on their tiptoes, looking down through the corridors of time to see in what way the things they had actually written down were actually going to be fulfilled.
What was happening to them? Well, he says that they were caught up by the Holy Spirit. They spake from God as they were led along by the Holy Spirit. In other words, what we have in their record is not the product of a fertile imagination but is the product of divine revelation—that God has spoken, that he has disclosed himself, that we are reading history, we're not reading poetry.
And don't let anybody tell you differently, especially if they have not considered along with you the New Testament record. If you think about it just for a moment from the other side, as you study these narratives, these birth narratives, it would become, I think, fairly obvious to you that if someone were inventing the coming of a Messiah, surely they would not do it in this way. Thomas Watson, in his Body of Divinity, says, One would have thought if Christ would have come into the world, he would have made a choice of some queen or some personage of honor to have descended from.
But he comes of poor, obscure parents. Let's invent a gospel. Let's invent this. And so they all sat down together and said, Well, where do you think the Messiah should be born? This is the great momentous event of all time. God incarnate. Well, why don't we have him born in a cattle shed? No, no one will ever believe that. If you wrote that down, you couldn't have a Messiah in a cattle shed. With animals as his companions.
With cobwebs for his curses. No, we'd better not write that down. No one would believe that at all.
No, that's exactly where it's written down. It doesn't smack a mythology to me. I mean, if you were coming—mythology has halos and everything.
We added all that later, all the stuff with big lights around your head, like you got a large globe sticking out of the back of your head. And people look at that and say, That's the kind of thing I'm talking about! You know, I don't believe that stuff. I don't believe it either. I don't believe they had all those things around their head.
Those are the inventions of fertile imaginations. But when you get to the raw data, it doesn't feel like that. In fact, it feels very strongly that they're doing exactly what they say they're doing—that is, they're reporting the event. The demeanor of Mary was quite remarkable, wasn't it? When she received the news of the birth in verse 34, her response was to say, Behold, I am the servant of the LORD.
That's of chapter 1. Let it be to me according to your word. And the angel departed from her. So, in other words, she's a wonderful example of hearing from God and then doing as God asks her to do. But I'm not doing her a disservice when I suggest that as she and Joseph made their journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, that she might have had occasion just to say to him in passing, You know, Joseph, this is a little bit weird for me. Because apparently the baby that I'm carrying is going to sit on the throne of his father David, and his kingdom will never come to an end.
And you can't even get me a decent hotel reservation. There's something wrong with this story. But let it be as the LORD has said. Hey, truth is stranger. Truth is stranger than fiction. Truth is stranger than fiction.
You don't invent this. Well, as we consider this, we should keep in mind that Luke, not only in this section of his gospel but throughout his entire gospel, is essentially making known three things. One, he's making known salvation itself—the good news, the gospel, salvation. He's declaring salvation. Secondly, he's saying that salvation is found in Christ alone. And thirdly, that salvation is good news for the whole world. So, if somebody said to you, What is Luke on about? You can tell them, he's on about salvation.
He makes clear that that salvation is only found in Jesus. And thirdly, that the salvation, this good news, is for everyone—for black, for white, for rich, for poor, for dumb, for smart, and so on. It is the good news of great joy which shall be for all people. Now, with that said, let's look at this birth announcement. Because that's essentially what we have here, is a birth announcement. And birth announcements are big business. I don't remember having a birth announcement for our boy thirty-five years ago. I'm sure we did something like, Hey, we've had a boy!
Or maybe a telephone call or two, maybe a note scribbled or somebody, but not! We didn't have Pinterest. We didn't have Shutterfly. We didn't have tinyprints.com.
We weren't able to digitize and magnify and diddly-doo, do the whole thing, and outdo one another with your birth announcement. I've got him on a swing. She's wearing a… It's got the thing. It's great! Actually, I love it.
They come at me from all places and stuff, and some of them are my own grandchildren, so I don't feel put upon it. But it's quite remarkable to me. But this outdoes them all. This outdoes them all. Outdo your neighbors next year.
Forget email. Have an angelic birth announcement. Let's have an angel coming down the street in the middle of the night, announcing to your neighbors just exactly what's happened. Could never happen, could it?
Well, it did happen. The very unusual nature of it is, again, what is so striking. But don't let's worry about the angel for a moment. Let's notice, first of all, the unusual recipients—the unusual recipients.
To whom is the announcement initially given? To shepherds. Shepherds. Now, the status of a shepherd in society wasn't good. They were on the low end of the social spectrum. They were not known for their honesty. They were not known to be particularly clean. They didn't subscribe to many of the external washings and things that were required by Pharisaism. And they worked so much that they seldom showed up at the church services. And they weren't regarded as the most reliable people in the context of the culture. Therefore, that's what makes it so quite amazing that they were chosen to be the recipients. If we now were going to announce the most significant event in all of human history, what do you think the chances are we'd choose the shepherds, given their status, given their background, given their education? Oh no, let's be honest about it. We wouldn't have gone amongst the rough-and-tumble on the fields of Bethlehem, would we?
We would have gone somewhere else. Because many of us are actually convinced that the only way you can reach the world is if you let everybody know what a genius you are. I'm a genius. And a Christian.
Well, forget the genius part. Why are you a Christian? Because your cynical friends are going to say, You can't be that much of a genius if you're actually a Christian. If you really were so smart, you wouldn't be a Christian. Because I read that stuff. And so it goes.
No. They wouldn't be our choice, but they were God's choice. Years ago—and I found this this week when I was looking back through old things—I found a talk that I gave to boys in 1970.
So 70, I was 18. And I gave a talk from this passage, and the three points were these. God comes at unexpected times to unexpected places, and he uses unexpected people. And here the unexpected recipients of this news are the shepherds. Why would God do this?
So that people would say, Well, that's quite remarkable, isn't it? You see, this is in keeping with God's approach. When Mary sings in the Magnificat in verse 52 of chapter 1, part of her song goes, He has brought down the mighty from their thrones, and has exalted those of humblest state. He brings down the mighty, exalts the humble.
Okay, let's see that in action. Well, let's announce the birth of Jesus. To whom will we go? Let's go to the shepherds. Let's use the shepherds. If you think about this, Paul says the same thing when he writes to the church in Corinth.
He says, having spoken about the wisdom of God and the foolishness of man, and then he says, if you want an illustration of this, he says, you just need to look at yourselves. Now, just look at the Christmas choir. What a strange group of people. I mean, they're nice.
I mean, I like them all. They're my friends. But, you know, when you look at them at night, it's like, wow, look at these people.
All kinds. Mr. Jones, Mrs. Smith, people gazing here, gazing there. Some of them know the words.
A few of them actually know the notes. It's a remarkable group. It's a remarkable group of people.
And you look at that, and you go, this is a microcosm of Parkside Church. You're going to win the world with this group of people? They don't look that great. We're not that great. Consider your calling, brethren, when you were called. Not many of you were powerful. Not many of you were from a noble background.
Not many of you were particularly brilliant. The consonant is important. The M is important. He doesn't say not any. He says not many.
And that's true. And part of the offense of the gospel is an offense that has silenced some of us, because our concern for the approbation of our peers, whether it is in the business or the scientific or the social community, is such that we do not want to be thought as those foolish people who actually believe that God was incarnate, came down the birth canal of Mary in the time and in the place that the Bible says. But he gave the news to the shepherds.
They are unlikely recipients. Because in the Bethlehem fields, those who were used to the arrival of the birth of lambs were now going to go and gaze upon the Lamb of God. They were going to arrive at this manger scene and hear the cooings of this little child—cooings that would eventually, from the same lips, produce the statement, I am the good shepherd, the good shepherd gives his life for the sheep. But we must move on from the unlikely recipients to the angelic appearance. Now, some people are stumbled over angels. I am not stumbled over angels, and I don't think you should be too. In fact, many of our skeptical friends who believe all kinds of interesting things want to step back from angels.
I just say, why don't you include it with all of the other things that you're prepared to engage in? Frankly, I think it would be strange if the hosts of heaven were not involved at some level in this kind of announcement. I mean, you don't expect just some guy coming up the street with a bell, you know, shouting. People are like, Who's he? I say, Well, that's Levi. Yeah, they found him somewhere. He's supposed to go up and down Bethlehem just shouting, you know.
They say, Well, it wouldn't have their same ring to it, would it? And so the angel comes. The angels appear. It would be surprising if the angels didn't appear. Go and read your Bibles and think about angels for a while this afternoon. You'll discover that they're created beings, they're spiritual beings, they're intelligent, but they're not all-knowing, they're powerful, but they're not almighty. They exist to do God's bidding as servants and as messengers.
They're shadowy figures, they're mysterious figures, they're awesome, and they're real, and they show up at key moments. Here at the birth of Jesus— remember when Jesus is arrested in the garden and his disciples are prepared to defend him physically? He says, Put your sword away. I could call twelve legions of angels right now if we wanted to take care of it that way. At the resurrection, who is it that explains the significance of the empty tomb? It is an angel. And at the return of Jesus in power and in glory, it will be with the sound of a trumpet and the voice of the archangel. So again, I say to you, it would be very strange if it was not an angel of God that was entrusted with such a magnificent story and such an important mission.
You don't want to leave it just to anybody. It is an angel that answers Mary's question when he has told her that she's going to become the mother of a child. And Mary said to the angel, How will this be, since I am a virgin? And then the angel says, The Holy Spirit will come upon you. The power of the Most High will overshadow you. This is an Old Testament picture. It's the picture of the cloud, of the presence of God, both identifiable by the presence of the cloud and veiled on account of the cloud, appearing over the ark, appearing in the presence of Moses, appearing at many times, signifying that God is present here. And the angel says that, You are going to become the temple of God, Mary, that which is born in you.
There's nothing like this anywhere else. The eternal God, who's coequal with the Father and with the Spirit, literally, literally and actually entered the virgin's womb and took upon himself our human nature. That is what the New Testament record is saying. The fact that liberal scholarship seeks to clean it up by saying, You know, people in the twenty-first century are so effete, they are so clever, that please don't go to them with any of that stuff. Take out the hard parts. It's just a brick in the wall. It's just a small piece of a great theological mosaic. You can take it out, and it won't do anything.
If you take it out, there's nothing left. If you take out the virgin birth, you just took out Jesus of Nazareth. You just took out the Savior.
You took the whole thing out, literally, physically. You're listening to Truth for Life as Alistair Begg examines the supernatural birth of Jesus. We'll hear more tomorrow. Here at Truth for Life, we don't skip over the difficult parts of Scripture. Our job is to teach the whole Bible and trust God's Spirit to work through his word to bring people to saving faith. By God's grace and by your faithful partnership, the gospel message is proclaimed every day on Truth for Life. And here with more about this is Alistair. Thank you, Bob.
You know, every time I read the gospel of Luke, I'm reminded of the fact that what we're dealing with is historical reality, not cleverly devised myths. It reinforces our desire, a desire that's at the heart of our whole ministry at Truth for Life, to make the gospel as widely known as we can. And in doing that, of course, your partnership is the foundation of it, prayerfully and financially. And so as we approach the end of 2024, let me encourage you to not falter in this regard, but to give generously so that we might be able to approach a new year with a great sense of anticipation. And you can easily and securely make an important year-end donation right now. Go to truthforlife.org slash donate or call us at 888-588-7884. Or if you'd prefer, you can mail your year-end donation to Truth for Life at Post Office Box 398000, Cleveland, Ohio 44139. And to show our gratitude for your support, we want to invite you to request a beautiful book of prayers titled Every Moment Holy, Volume 3.
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Our number is 888-588-7884. Thanks for joining us. Tomorrow we'll find out what it takes for the Christmas story to truly become significant in someone's life. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
