Amy C Walters

The Shepherds and the Angels – Luke 2:8-20

The message delivered by the angels to the shepherds makes some big promises–that it’s “good news of great joy,” and that the “Savior has been born to you.” As the shepherds go to investigate, they find everything “exactly as had been told to them.” This incredible message was true because the God who sent it is trustworthy.

One of the most important questions we can ask when we’re studying any Bible passage is, what does it tell us about God? What do we learn about him? Where do we see him in this passage? What characteristics does he reveal?

In this story, we don’t see a whole lot of direct action from God himself, and yet his fingerprints are all over it. Let’s start with the fact of the angels’ appearance. Angels are messengers of God. They are his servants working on his behalf. And so when an angel comes and speaks to someone, it’s because God has sent him.

Here we have an angel showing up to a group of shepherds. We’ve already talked about how society viewed those shepherds as having low status, not very important in the eyes of their culture. And yet, God sent the birth announcement of the Messiah to these men first.

And what is this message? The angel says, “I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.” “Good news…great joy.” This is exciting stuff! This news about the Messiah coming into the world is great news.

Now, I don’t know about you, but honestly, sometimes I forget that this is good news. I think I have been so conditioned by pop culture to think that this news is a downer. You think about movies and literature and these other pieces of entertainment that we take in, and so often Christians are portrayed as trying to sell something that nobody really wants and nobody really needs. We’re the door-to-door salesmen of our day. That is how our culture portrays us.

And so we need these reminders, like this angel’s announcement, that no, no, no, this is not something that people don’t need. This is exactly what they need. This is good news of great joy.

And what is this good news of great joy? It’s that Jesus has come. The Savior that God promised way back in Genesis, when Adam and Eve sinned and they received a curse for their sin, there was also this promise that God would send someone to free them from the curse. 

And then throughout the rest of the Bible, God reiterates his promise to his people and he gives them more details through prophecies of who this Messiah would be and what he would do.

And now we get to that night with those shepherds in that field and the angels come and say, “Tonight is the night! That one that God has told us all about, he is here. The Messiah has come and you get the chance to meet him.” 

Wow, this is incredible news. This is good news of great joy because a Savior has come. Because God has fulfilled his promises.

It doesn’t matter how many centuries ago that promise was made. The eternal God has fulfilled his promise and sent his Son to come and be the Savior of the world.

This is good news to everyone who realizes they need a Savior. So when you share this good news of great joy with other people, and if they reject it, it’s because their hearts aren’t ready yet. It is not a reflection on the news itself. The good news will always be good news.

Now, the angel also tells the Shepherds how they’re going to recognize this particular child. Because there’s probably a lot of babies in Bethlehem at this time, but there’s only one baby who is wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.

So the angel sends them out with those instructions. And then the angel can’t help but worship God. A huge choir of angels shows up, and they’re saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth to men on whom his favor rests.” There is peace on earth because Jesus has now come to the earth.

One of the titles for Jesus is Prince of Peace. We’ve talked about how Caesar Augustus saw himself as a bringer of peace. And yet the peace that he brought was not real peace, was not lasting peace. It was a peace based on terror, of not wanting to go against the government and be punished severely for it. It was not a lasting peace that sunk down to people’s very hearts and souls. Only Jesus can bring that kind of peace.

And it’s “Peace on earth to men on whom his favor rests.” God’s favor. He is showing his favor to his people by sending his son to them.

Think about that for a moment. When you welcome Jesus the Savior into your heart, you have God’s favor. That’s God’s blessing. God’s face shining upon you. What an incredible thing! How amazing to be blessed by the God of the universe. You have that favor if you are a child of God, if you have trusted in Jesus.

This story goes on to say that the shepherds go to find Mary and Joseph and the baby. And the shepherds tell everyone about Jesus, they spread the word about him, and then they return glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, which were just as had been told to them.

Everything that they had been told was true. There was not a detail that was missing. There was not an exaggeration. What they had been told was exactly what they found.

And this is important because Jesus’ coming was just the beginning. He had a job to do. He had a purpose here on earth to save people from their sins. He had prophecies to fulfill as he went about his life and work here on earth. 

When we see that God is faithful in all of the details of this story, we can trust him to be faithful in those other details that have yet to be fulfilled. We can trust that he is going to do what he says he’s going to do, that Jesus will indeed save people from their sins. And when we encounter other promises in Scripture, we know that God is trustworthy and he is going to do those things. Even when the circumstances and the situations that we see around us don’t match that, we can trust that God is faithful.

There are a lot of things that we can learn about God from this story. But the key truth that I want us to remember is that God is trustworthy. 

When he says that Jesus’ coming is good news of great joy, we can trust that. We can celebrate that in our own hearts, and we can trust that as we boldly share it with other people.

When God says that Jesus has come to save his people from their sins, we can trust that. We can place our trust in Jesus and not work to try to get rid of our guilt or shame ourselves, to not try to be good enough ourselves.

And when life doesn’t seem to match up with what we read about in scriptures and the promises God has, we can trust that God will make it happen, that the good work he started, he will complete, that he is making a beautiful home for us in heaven, where we will be with him forever and there will be no suffering, no tears, no sorrow, just eternal joy with him.

We can trust that because God is trustworthy.