Luke 2:1-20 - The Song of the Angels

Normally, we study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel.

We are in the Advent season, and this particular Advent season, what we're doing is we got a theme, Good News of Great Joy, and we're looking at the four songs of Advent.

You see them up on the screen there.

The Song of Mary, we've looked at already, the song of Zechariah today, the song of the angels.

Like the other songs, it erupts with themes of God's glory, God's goodness, and delight in God's grace.

Yes, if you if you need a copy, would you like one to follow along?

Raise your hand up, somebody will get one to you.

Anybody at all like a copy?

There you go.

Right right over here on this side as well.

Thank you so much.

But what is the meaning of this exuberant angelic song?

Why is it sung to Simple Shepherds?

What difference does it make in redemption history, and what difference would it make for us even today as we uh sit here in the world in which we live?

I'm convinced that the deepest longings of our hearts are not met by theological novelty, that is, coming up with something new each and every year.

I'm 22 years a pastor now, so come up with a new Christmas message.

No, no, no, no.

I don't think the deepest longings of our hearts will be met by theological novelty, but rather when God in his sovereignty reaches down to us by his grace and mercy.

And so here we are again telling the old, old story, knowing full well that if we want to be timelessly relevant and at the same time impactful, we must speak of things that are eternal.

We all know something is deeply wrong with the human condition, something that we cannot fix on ourselves by ourselves, and we need outside help, that God would come to us with rescue in his hands to offer us salvation as a free gift, not by following rules, but by opening our hearts to receive.

This is amazing grace.

Never gets old to talk about this.

There are some wells that don't run dry, Pastor John Piper says.

There are some horizons that expand as you approach, some stories that reach back forever, forward into eternity, down to the depths of mystery and up to the heights of glory.

Advent is one of those.

It is inexhaustible.

And Tim Keller Emmanuel, that's what Jesus is called, means the ideal has become real, the absolute has become a particular, and the invisible has become visible.

The incarnation is the universe sundering, history-altering, life-transforming paradigm, shattering event of history.

I hope I have not lowered your expectations.

I hope we have raised them up.

Let's read the story that you're familiar with.

There are some things that tradition claims about this story that we will not find in the text of either of the two birth narratives in the four gospel records.

See if you can find what's missing in what you're used to hearing about as I read.

It came about in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth.

Not just of Israel, not just that region of Israel, Syria, Palestine, that whole region there.

No, of all the inhabited earth.

This was the first census taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.

All were proceeding to register for the census, everyone to his own city.

And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to a city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, in order to register along with Mary, who was engaged to him.

Some of your translations will say, betrothed.

They had a three-part process to becoming married.

It includes betrothal, engagement, and consummation of the marriage itself.

She was with child.

It came about that while they were there, Bethlehem, the days were completed for her to give birth.

She gave birth to her firstborn son, meaning later she will have other children.

And she wrapped him in cloths.

Most parents would do that, and laid him in a manger.

Can't think of any other parents that would do that.

Manger is mentioned three times in this story.

It's probably a foot and a half wide, kind of just maybe a foot deep like this.

It's kind of a trough that the animals would drink out of, basically.

And so she laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.

And in the same region, there were some shepherds staying out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.

And an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terribly frightened.

And the angel said to them, Do not be afraid.

I never grow weary of saying this, and most of you know, some of you know what I'm gonna say.

This is the most often repeated command in the Bible.

It's not do not smoke, it's not do not chew, it's not do not go to the movies, it's not do not dance, it's do not be afraid.

This tells us what the God of the Bible wants for you and wants for me.

Um does not want us to be afraid.

And ironically, the fear of the Lord is what leads to life.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of even knowledge itself.

So the angel comes, says, Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy, which shall be for just your family.

No, your just your church, no, just your denomination, no, just the Israelites, no.

This good news of great joy will be for, say it, all people.

All people.

And here we sit, recipients, by extension, of this good news that was declared that night.

That's so amazing.

Verse 11.

For today in the city of David, that's Bethlehem, there has been born for you a savior.

Not an example, not just another religious leader, but a savior.

There's no better example.

There's no better religious leader.

But this one is all of that, and a savior.

His name means Jesus.

God is salvation.

It's right there in the middle of his name.

It flows from that that he would be our savior.

He is Christ, the Greek version of the Hebrew Messiah.

Christ, same thing.

He is the long-promised Messiah of the Lord.

This will be a sign for you, angel speaking to shepherds.

This will be a sign for you.

This is how you'll know that that's the you got the right baby.

You'll find a baby wrapped in claws.

Well, that's kind of common, isn't it?

So if they go to Bethlehem, which they will, and they go, we're looking for a baby wrapped in cloths.

Are there any babies here in Bethlehem in a diaper?

A nappy, if you're from the UK.

Is there anybody here that has a baby that would be wrapped up in?

Yeah, there'd be a lot of people that would probably, if there were babies, they would be wrapped in cloths.

But the angel goes on so that with greater specificity, these shepherds can know the angel's message was true.

Wrapped in claws, lying in a manger.

Mentioned three times here in this chapter, verse 7, verse 12, and verse 16.

But I don't want to get ahead of myself.

Suddenly there appeared with that angel a multitude of the heavenly hosts praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest.

We sing, Gloria in Excelsius.

Yeah.

That's glory to God in the highest in Latin.

And here we have it in our English Bibles, glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace among men with whom he is pleased, or upon whom his favor rests, the NIV says.

And I like the way that NIV translates.

That it came about when the angels had gone away from them into heaven, that the shepherds began saying to one another, you could see them kind of scrambling.

The light has faded, the angels have gone, the song is done, the sheep are waking up, going, What is going on?

And each of the shepherds are going, what do we do?

What do we do?

And they talk to each other and they say, Let's go straight to Bethlehem then and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.

This revelation.

And this whole thing could be summed up as revelation response.

That's what we got here.

You know, it's really beautiful that way.

Um they came in haste.

I mean, you've got to see them running, and they found their way to Mary.

This is the middle of the night, probably, and Joseph and the baby as he lay in the, there it is, manger the third time, specific location, specific baby in a specific situation.

So you don't go to one of the other babies in Bethlehem and think, oh, that's it.

No, this is the one.

Not where you would usually find a baby.

And they had seen this, when they had seen this, they made known the statement which had been told them about this child, and all who heard it wondered at the things which were told them by the shepherds.

We've lost the sense of wonder in our world.

We are so arrogantly self-important, self-focused, self-obsessed.

You see it in the magazine titles that have gone from life to people to self.

Me.

And we think we're so smart, but we've sawn off the branch we're sitting on and we've lost wonder.

And we were designed for wonder.

It's why we're longing all the time.

That's why our longings aren't satisfied because we keep turning our affections in the direction of things that don't make us wonder.

They got told this story about this child, and they wondered at the things which were told them by the shepherds.

But Mary, I love this, treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart.

I love that about Mary, this teenager, this virgin now mother.

That's gotta be enough to make a young girl wonder right there.

And yet there's the baby.

And she's holding him, she's nursing him, she's changing his nappy.

And these shepherds have come from out in the fields, and they're kind of a bunch of smelly roughnecks, and they're telling a story about some angels singing in the sky, and how that angelic choir broke into their darkness with this great news.

And she had had an angel visitation herself, but it had been a while, nine months.

And here she is in the city of senses taking for her family, and perhaps needing some reassurance that this thing that has happened to her is of God.

Because I need assurance, you need reassurance all along the way.

I think she needed reassurance too.

And she treasured this, and she pondered about this.

What are you treasuring?

What are you pondering about?

What are we treasuring and pondering?

Think about it.

How do you tell what you're treasuring?

How do you tell what you're pondering and thinking about all the time?

Verse 20.

The shepherds went back, they returned.

Where'd they go?

They returned.

Well, where were they that they returned to?

They went back to work.

I like that, amen.

They just went back to work, people.

The shepherds went back, they returned.

And this time they went back different, glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen, just as had been told them.

In other words, when they went to Bethlehem with this news, and they were all along the way going, uh, what are we looking for again?

What are we looking for?

We gotta find a major.

We gotta, okay, let's look for a major.

Let's find a major with a baby in it.

Okay, let's find a major with a baby in it.

It's swaddling clothes.

And they found it, and then they were filled with wonder, and they went and told everybody about it, and people began to be changed and transformed, people like blue-collar workers at boring jobs who felt like their lives had no meaning whatsoever, likely.

And they were despised societally and financially and economic system that did not respect what they did.

And they went back treasuring and praising and glorifying God, and they went back to work different than they left their jobs when they heard that angel song.

Oh, so there's so much here.

I mean, I love uh I love telling this story, I love reading this story.

Every year this comes around, and I want God to just open our eyes to see some things.

Pray with me.

Almighty eternal God.

So draw our hearts to you, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations and control our wills that we may be filled with wonder, utterly wholly yours, dedicated, open to you.

And then, Jesus, we pray, as you will, to fill our world, our work world, our family life, our households, our extended family, our friends, our neighborhood with your glory for the good of those people who have lost sight of wonder in this world.

Lord, may the song of the angels be our song this week.

Amen.

All right, so uh Dr.

Luke is this is a fascinating account, by the way.

I and we've talked about the first four verses, the first five verses there of chapter one, which you can go back and read yourself at some other point.

But let me describe what we just read.

You set your eyes on the page, verses one to right in there of chapter two, and tell me if you don't see this as well.

First of all, Luke gives us an account that has context.

The historical time period when Caesar Augustus was emperor.

There is a historical context to this story.

There's a political context.

The Roman Empire is in power.

There's an international context because there's a world census going on.

And Quirinius was governor in Syria.

Not talking to Israel here, Syria to the north.

So it's more than one nation that's been talked about.

As a matter of fact, there's a context politically, historically, internationally.

There is a national context, a local one.

Galilee is mentioned, Nazareth is mentioned, Judea is mentioned, Bethlehem is mentioned.

There's a religious context that Luke has included in his account.

The religious context is this: an angel appears.

Some people don't believe in angels, some people don't believe in demons, some people don't believe in the immaterial, the spiritual realm at all.

You may be one of them.

I do not know.

I'm not here to argue with you about that.

I'm simply here to point out to you that in this account, Luke, the medical doctor, Luke, the guy who writes like a historian, a man of science, who understands some of the theological implications of what's going on here as well.

He's not shy.

He's not holding back because he's trying, he knows this might sound weird.

No, he says angels broke through the night sky and sang.

So it has a religious context.

These angels singing this song of salvation.

There's an ancestral lineage context because Joseph and Mary come from the house of David, and that's why they're going to the city of David for this sense.

There's a medical context because Luke is a doctor, and he's talking about a woman that he knows from chapter one, is a young virgin teenager.

She had become pregnant.

That doesn't happen.

And he, a doctor, of all of the people who's the one that makes that argument, the doctor is the one making that argument.

Which for me, as a reader, gives me greater certainty about it.

He would have said, I don't believe that.

Let me push this.

When did you, how did that, what, you know, all that kind of stuff.

And no, he still comes down saying, she was a virgin, she had a baby.

And there's a sociological context as well.

We have a historical context, political context, international context, national context, religious context, ancestral lineage context, a medical context, and a sociological context.

What misunderstood this teenage girl was.

Why?

Because she became pregnant but was only engaged at the time.

Misunderstood, probably shamed she and Joseph.

Sociological context is also that this baby that she was told would be the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Prince of Peace, the one that God would uh raise up to be the Messiah.

And she can't even get a room in a hotel.

And she has to deliver this baby along with her husband and lay this baby in a really, really kind of a skanky place, a manger.

Where animals feed.

No crib.

You know, it wasn't like they had time to get the room ready.

How many of you spent time doing that?

Getting your kids' room ready, you know, buy all the stuff, little little musical things that go around, entertain the baby, lots of bright posters for you as you walk in the room, and um, and the baby's like that all the time.

And and this baby gets a manger, gets an animal feeding trough.

So low on the sociological uh scale and the economic scale, as well as in this story on the sociological context, you got these guys, these shepherds.

They're not the ones, if you really wanted to tell a credible story to and you wanted that story to sweep the world, it wouldn't be shepherds that you tell that story to.

Um so the point is this this story is not a fanciful myth.

It is credible, researched, and recorded history.

You may or may not believe it.

You you can choose to reject it if you want to.

Um, but Luke is presenting it as history, and I am as well today.

My job is to remind us how God was behind all of this.

And if God gets behind something, it's often going to look a little weird to us.

Amen?

Some of you know that better than others.

My uh goodness, here was the precise scenario and location where the Old Testament prophets, Isaiah 7, Micah 5, had actually predicted hundreds of years before this happened, baby born city of David, Messiah.

And it happened the way the Old Testament prophets predicted it.

So we have here is the effusive song of the angels, and it is glory to God in the highest on earth, peace to men on whom his favor rests.

That's from the NIV version of it.

The angel's song is plain enough to be understood by the shepherds and almost plain enough to be understood by the sheep.

There it is.

Glory to God in the highest.

And on earth, peace to men on whom his favor rests.

The angel's song is brief, but it's clear.

It's about the most important thing in all creation and the most needed thing on the earth.

What's the most important thing in all creation?

God's glory.

What's the most needed thing in all the earth?

Peace.

And it still is today.

And that's why we tell this story every chance we get.

Because we need it.

And we need to hear about it.

It's about what God deserves most, glory.

And what humanity needs most, peace.

It's about the glory of God and peace on earth.

Last month this man passed into glory.

This writer, Michael Gerson, some of you are familiar with his work.

He has an article called Defiant Hope of Christmas online.

You can read it.

The largest figures of time, King Herod, Emperor Tiberius, grow smaller.

The smaller figures, Mary Joseph, and some random shepherds, loom large in this story.

The smallest, most helpless figure blots out sun and moon and fills the whole sky with song.

Glory to God in the highest peace on earth.

Goodwill toward men.

This stunning display of God's glory lying in a manger is so unusual, so unexplainable in human terms, so paradoxical.

It's an example of a remarkable ordinary moment.

Ordinary as shepherds, ordinary as a peasant couple.

Ordinary as another baby.

Babies are born every day.

Lots of them.

Ordinary as a baby with a nappy.

But remarkable in so many ways.

So powerful.

Keller, again, Emmanuel means that this ideal has become real.

And I love that.

Here's God with us.

That's remarkable.

And we need to remember that.

Augustine.

He lies in a manger but contains the world.

He's wrapped in swaddling clothes, but vests us with immortality.

He found no place in the inn, but makes for himself a temple in the hearts of believers in order that weakness might become strong, strength might become weak.

This is the effusive song of the angels, and it's all about God's glory and about peace that has come to earth.

Secondly, the exuberant response of the shepherds is at least noticeable here as well.

They were just nodding off at their boring everyday job when the angels broke open the night sky and burst forth into song.

Who was on watch that night?

I don't know.

I hope to meet him someday when we all get home.

His name's Steve, I don't know.

Maybe his name is Bob.

You know, Bob, what was that like?

Well, is this going like this?

And it was like, it's starting to go off like starting.

And then all of a sudden, boom, you know.

And then I woke up Henry and I woke up Andrew and I woke up all the other guys.

And then I said, look at the guy up there talking to us.

And then the choir showed up, and it was like, you know.

And they just blew us away.

We just, I mean, you know what it's like when you're coming out of sleep?

Somebody wakes you up from a nap.

You know?

Sometimes I call somebody and I go, Didn't I wake you up?

And they always go, No, no, no, no.

You know, whenever that happens to me, I go, No, you didn't wake me up.

I had to get up to answer the phone.

You know, I I yeah.

Nobody wants to be caught like that.

These guys are caught like that.

We should be astonished at the goodness of God, stunned that he should call us by name, our mouths wide open at his love.

Bewildered that at this very moment we're standing on holy ground.

That's what those shepherds felt like that night.

I'm certain of it.

Brennan Manning so beautiful, uh, puts it so beautifully for us there.

Somehow I think we've become experts at missing the point, haven't we?

I say that not to chide us, but to awaken us.

Don't miss a point.

You know?

It's so easy because I like to pour dripping syrup.

I mean, I like nostalgia and I like sentimentality.

I mean, we watched two Christmas movies this week, and in both Christmas movies, I'm like, oh, you know, that's so sweet, you know.

How many of you watch a Christmas movie this week?

Anybody?

Okay, yeah.

I'm not gonna ask you your favorites because sometimes, you know, not you know, you're not sure you can recommend them to everybody, you know, just given what goes on in some of them.

But um, there this mixture, and we're kind of experts at missing the point, I think.

We're missing the point, though, um, that this glory to God and peace to humankind, this is God responding to us and our need, our deepest longing.

God broke into our darkness and exploded it with his light and this joyful song of salvation.

And he's put it on offer to you and to me as a free gift.

You don't have to be religious to accept this gift.

You don't have to get all your doctrines straight to accept this gift.

Paul Tripp, brilliant book called Come Let Us Adore Him.

He says, in a culture that uses this season to get children to dream about how their lives would be made better by possessing a certain material thing where Christmas has been reduced to a shopper's nightmare and a retailer's dream.

It is vital to draw the wonder of our children away from the next great toy and toward the wonder of the coming of our great Lord and Savior Jesus.

Again, he's Paul is not anti-toy.

He's not anti-Christmas presents under the tree.

He's not that way.

I know I've met man.

What he is, is he wants us to keep the main thing, the main thing, and the plain thing, the plain thing.

And don't forget the great and wonderful thing.

Because sentimentality and nostalgia is not gonna be enough when you have to go to the hospital, when you have to stand beside someone who's really hurting and wondering about the really big questions of life.

You're gonna need something more than just something that makes your tears well up.

You need something more and richer and deeper than all of that.

Got to finish up here.

The effusive song of the angels, the exuberant response of the shepherds.

Also notice the inexhaustible peace of God in Christ.

That's what they're singing about, is this salvation that God is putting on offer through Jesus.

And we are invited.

This gospel is an invitation.

It's not some list of things you've got to do to receive, it's a gift.

It's an invitation made to you.

The question is, like the shepherds, will you receive that great news and respond by running to see it with eager, enthusiastic faith, and then let it transform and change you so that you go back to your boring everyday mundane lives, whatever they are, whatever mine is, different because we were with him.

And he has come to be with us.

The salvation of God is peace.

Reconciliate, peace with God, peace with men, peace within.

The source of this salvation is God's grace, free favor, irrespective of any human merit or works, his loving kindness to the undeserving.

This grace and peace flow from the Father and the Son together.

How will you respond?

Is the question.

Why is this important?

Well, I don't know if you've seen the news.

You might have been hiding under a rock for the last couple years, I don't know.

But that's why it's important what's been going on in our world, not just for the last couple years, because we tend to think that our slice of history is really the most important one.

And it might be to us.

But when you start to study a little bit of history, just read a little bit about it, you start to see this there's a lot that's gone on in the last 2,000 years.

And the claim of the Bible is that Jesus is the answer to every longing heart.

Through all of those years, and all of those things we've had to suffer through selfishness, wars, conflict, pandemics, disasters, disease, death.

And the list goes on and on and on.

And yes, we're quite clever little creatures.

We've created computers and smartphones.

Now we can distract ourselves from authentic realities and escape into our fake virtual realities, and yet we'll still be haunted by the transcendent realities.

And God comes to say, here's what you are, your worshipers.

Worship God and receive peace from Him.

That you can't make yourself and you can't in some way anesthetize yourself, distract yourself, escape away from the reality of who you are and how much you need Him.

I've got to close here, so let me go to a Fleming Rutledge quote.

Her book called Advent is really, really beautiful.

Here is the forward thrust of Advent, the countervailing motion that lifts the boats clear, the heralding announcement of the arriving God, the note that is struck as sounded from the future.

We are not looking backward sentimentally to a baby.

We're looking forward to the only one in whom the promise of peace will someday be fulfilled.

And this is exactly what Jesus said as he walked the earth and taught his disciples.

I'll close.

That is our thought.

Glory to God and the highest on earth, peace to men of whom his favor rests.

Some of you have read The Last Battle by C.S.

Lewis.

Lucy says to Diggory, in our world too, a stable once had something in it that was bigger than our whole world.

Amen.

Let's pray.

Lord, thank you for this text.

Thank you for the old, old story.

Thank you for how it reminds us that you designed us to glorify your name.

You are worthy.

We have been attracted by so many other things.

You are worthy, Lord, for us to turn to you, to offer you glory, to worship you, and to receive from you the peace that we so long for.

We work so hard for it, we scramble around thinking we'll find it and all these other things.

And yet you've told us so simply, so beautifully in this song of salvation that we will find that peace in you and in you alone.

So we give you thanks this day and glory in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And amen.