The Promise Fulfilled in Bethlehem - Luke 2:1-14 (12.21.2025)

This morning, as we make our way closer and closer to Christmas,

we celebrate the coming of Jesus by rehearsing the story of Scripture.

We began all the way back in the garden where God placed the first man and the

first woman, Adam and Eve, in a beautiful paradise where God walked with them

and they had perfect fellowship with them.

But on one very bad day, Satan the devil came to Adam and Eve and he deceived

them. He twisted the words of God.

He convinced Adam and Eve that God didn't really have their best interest at

heart, that he was keeping something good from them.

And so together they disobeyed God.

They ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And in one instance, sin entered the world.

The perfect fellowship that man had with God would be broken,

was broken. And every baby born from then on would be born with this curse of

this terrible weight of sin.

But as terrible as a day that was, all hope had not gone.

For in the words of God, we hear the promise of hope.

We hear the promise of one to come. One of those babies would be born and would

grow up to crush the head of that ancient serpent.

If you're here this morning and you're unfamiliar with the Bible,

there is a lot to this story.

And because of time, we don't have time to hit all of the pieces of that as

we walk through the scripture.

But I want you to just have a few takeaways from the story.

Because of sin, man was separated from God.

But all along, God had a plan to rescue his people.

Throughout the Old Testament, he promises again and again that one whom the

people called the Messiah will come to crush the head of the serpent.

And we get tiny glimpses of God's rescue and promise as he sends prophets,

priests, and kings to his people. But the problem was that all those prophets,

priests, and kings were like you and like me.

They too were cursed with the terrible bondage of sin. They,

just like us, were separated from God.

And they, like us, needed a Savior who would come down and free them and us from our sin.

And so many of the people of God longed for the Messiah, the Rescuer.

But so many more were far from God.

They didn't listen to God. They didn't follow God.

And so one day God stopped speaking.

And from the time the old Testament closes and the new Testament begins,

the people of God waited in silence for 400 years.

I don't hear something I'm not saying. All along, even in the silence of God, God was working.

He was rescuing. He was keeping his promises.

And in the end, God wouldn't stay silent.

No, God was and always will be a keeper of his promises.

One day, a priest named Zechariah was praying in the temple of God.

Zechariah was a righteous man, the scriptures tell us. He walked blamelessly

in all the commandments and the statutes of the Lord.

Zechariah and his wife, Elizabeth, they were older. They were unable to have a kid.

And while Zechariah was praying in the temple, an angel of the Lord came to

him and said, Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard,

and your wife, Elizabeth, will bear you a son.

And you shall call his name John, and you will have joy and gladness,

and many will rejoice at his birth for he will be great before the Lord and

he will be filled with the Holy Spirit.

And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord, their God.

God had broken 400 years of silence with the promise of a baby to Zechariah.

And that baby would grow up and point to another promised baby,

a baby that we had been waiting for ever since Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden.

Just six months after Zechariah heard from the angel in the temple,

God sent another angel to a young girl in Nazareth named Mary,

who was betrothed to a man named Joseph.

And the angel said to Mary, Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you.

Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.

And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son. And you shall call his name Jesus.

He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.

And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father, David,

and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever.

And of his kingdom, there will be no end.

And so we've made it to the story, to the part of the story that I read just a moment ago in Luke 2.

Caesar Augustus has decreed that all the world should be registered.

So each family begins their journey back to where their family is from.

And so Mary is pregnant and ready to give birth to Jesus. So she travels along

with Joseph to the town of Bethlehem.

And when they get to Bethlehem, it's time for Mary to give birth.

And so she gives birth to Jesus.

She wraps him in swaddling clothes and she lies him in a manger because there's

nowhere else for them to stay when they get to Bethlehem.

And so the Savior of the world, the Son of the Most High,

God from God, light from light, true God from true God, gave up the riches of

heaven to be born through the womb of a virgin and be placed in a feeding trough

because there was nowhere else for him to lie.".

Now, here's the part of the story that we're going to sit with for just a few moments this morning.

Of all the people God could have told first about the coming of himself,

the coming of Jesus, he chose a ratty band of smelly shepherds.

Luke 2.8 says, And in the same region, there were shepherds out in the fields,

keeping watch over their flocks by night.

If you're familiar with the Christmas story, shepherds are as common as any

other character in the story.

No Christmas pageant would be complete without a merry band of wild boys dressed

in burlap and rope, wielding staffs waiting to be turned into lightsabers or swords.

But if you're a first century Jew, this is just as scandalous as a virgin giving birth.

Shepherds were the lowest of the low. They were despised and rejected.

Men hid their faces from them. They didn't have the basic luxury of human civil rights.

They couldn't bear witness in the court trials of the day.

They were banished to the outer fields outside of the city.

It was common practice that people would refer to shepherds as sinners,

kind of a cursed slang used against them.

So imagine, if you will, the life of a shepherd. They really only had each other.

And just like you and me, shepherds had personalities and feelings.

And so some might have laid on the hillsides outside of Bethlehem at night,

and they looked across the way back to the city.

They could see the lights, and they longed to be a part of what they couldn't be a part of.

I'm sure other shepherds, probably like the big brawny ones,

they thought that they didn't need anybody else.

They thought that they had convinced themselves rather that they were content

just where they are. They didn't want to be a part of everybody They were happy

They didn't need anyone or anything to take care of them,

But the reality is that those shepherds are a picture of you and me.

We all feel the same things that they felt.

There are times when we long to be a part of something, but we are left out.

Maybe we want friends, but we don't have any. There are times where we may think

we don't need anybody or anything, and we can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps

and not rely on anyone for anything.

But the shepherds are also a spiritual picture of us.

The Bible says that we have all sinned, that we are all outcasts,

that we desperately need rescuing.

We need someone to come in and to clean us up and to make us righteous,

to restore us, to bring us back into the city of God.

And so for a moment, I want you to imagine that you're a shepherd that night

here in Luke 2. It's dark.

You are lying in the grass on the hills outside of Bethlehem.

You're surrounded by your shepherd family.

Down below you are the sheep. They're all huddled together. They're sleeping.

Your own eyes are getting heavy.

You're ready to fall asleep yourself. And Luke says in verse nine of chapter

two, and an angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them.

And they were filled with great fear out of the utter darkness.

Suddenly an angel of the Lord appears to them.

Now, when we think of angels, we often think of depictions that we see in Christmas decorations around.

Basically, if you took any of the Prestons, you put them in a robe,

you put some wings on their heads, a halo.

That's what angels look like, right? But that's not what the Bible says angels look like.

The Bible says something completely different. Now, we love the Prestons.

I'm just picking on them.

If one of them showed up in the middle of the night, I would be terrified,

but a completely different reason than the shepherds, right?

The angels in the Bible are described as powerful. They're mighty in strength.

They're often seen as warriors.

They are not creatures that you really want to cross.

Every time you see a shepherd or an angel come to a person, they always say, don't be afraid.

These are not creatures that you would just assume that you could take in a fight.

And on top of that, in one instant, this angel has gone from the presence of

God to a dark hillside in Galilee and he's radiating with the glory of God.

He's shining with this magnificent light because he's just been in the presence of God.

Verse 10 says, And the angel said to them, Fear not, for behold,

I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord.

And this will be a sign for you.

You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.

In one instant, the lives of these shepherds are changed forever.

In one instant, the lives of everyone on earth are changed forever.

In one instant, your life and my life is changed forever.

When we hear the angel proclaim, fear not to the shepherds, we probably have one thought in mind.

He's saying to them, hey, don't be afraid of me. He's kind of saying like,

hey, bro, I know it looks like I've come to beat you up. I promise I haven't. I have good news.

And to some extent, he is saying that, but I think that we can see a deeper meaning here.

He's telling these shepherds and he's telling you and me today,

fear not, your sins have not overtaken you.

You are not without hope for unto you individually and collectively unto you

is born this day, a savior who is Christ the Lord.

God has come down to rescue us from our sins.

And this baby, meek and mild and lying in a manger wrapped in cloth,

he's going to grow up and he will do the rescuing.

This baby is the savior of the world who will save his people from their sins.

He is the long promised Messiah. And most staggeringly of all, this baby is God.

Verse 13, and suddenly there was with the angel, a multitude of the heavenly

hosts, praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest and on earth peace

among those with whom he is pleased.

The only fitting response to the birth of this child is a multitude of the heavenly

hosts, praising God and proclaiming the good news of the gospel.

Only fitting response to the mercy of God and the saving of his people is the

declaration of the glory of God.

He is worthy to be praised. And so the host of heaven bursts open the sky with praises to God.

Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace among those with whom he is pleased.

They yell out, they sing out in the night.

And this begs the question, who are those with whom God is pleased.

The Bible is clear. The author of Hebrews tells us in Hebrews 11,

6, now without faith, it is impossible to please God since the one who draws

near to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

God is pleased with those who believe, those who have faith.

The Bible says, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe

in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

When we believe that Jesus is who he claimed to be, the Savior who is Christ

the Lord, when we believe that he died for our sins, that on the third day he

was raised to life, then we will be saved.

He will cast our sins aside and he will clothe us with the righteousness of Jesus.

Then and only then will we experience true peace like the angels proclaim here in Luke 2.

Romans 5.1 says, Therefore, since we have been declared righteous by faith,

we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

He goes on to say in verse 2, We have also obtained access through him by faith

into this grace in which we stand and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

Back to Luke 2, 15. When the angels went away from them into heaven,

the shepherds said to one another, let us go to Bethlehem and see this thing

that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.

And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in a manger.

And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning

this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them.

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

And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard

and seen as it has been told to them.

Those shepherds, they jump up and they sprint into town.

They leave behind untold number of sheep, but more importantly,

they leave behind every stigma and curse that's been hurled to them for centuries.

And they race to see Jesus.

And that night they discover that God keeps his promises.

They discover that regardless of what the world thinks of them,

that God has come down to rescue them. Yes, even them.

There is no one whom God is not willing to rescue.

Friends, listen to me today. God keeps his promises. He came to rescue each one of you.

You're in desperate need because of your sins. separated from God,

and you cannot save yourself from them or bring yourself back to God. But Jesus can.

Jesus took on your curse of sin on the cross. He gave up his own life.

His righteousness is available to each one of you. Because he died,

you can live forever with God.

And through Jesus, you can have true and everlasting peace. Believe in him today.

Any one of us would love to talk to you more about that.

Brothers and sisters, if you have believed, if you have been saved from your

sins, if you have experienced true peace with God, respond like the shepherds.

Make known to everyone you can the saying that has been told them concerning

this child, that a savior has come, that he is Christ the Lord.

Let's all respond like the angels, singing out glory to God in the highest. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for Jesus. We praise you for the work of your hands, for your salvation.

Father, we pray that we would proclaim just like the angels,

that we would sing out praise to you, Father.

Were we to sing for all the rest of eternity, It wouldn't be enough to sing

of all of your glory and all of your worthiness.

Father, we pray that you would give us hearts that are quick to worship you,

that are quick to glory in your work.

Father, we pray that we would have the heart of the shepherds,

that we would proclaim the good

news of this baby, that this one is God himself come to us to rescue us.

He is all that he claimed to be. He died on the cross for our sins.

He broke his body. He shed his blood.

And on the third day, he rose back to life.

Father, as we wait for Christmas morning, we wait for you to come back,

to return to get those who have believed in you, Father.

We long for the day when Jesus will return, when all wrong will be made right,

when the heavens and the earth will be made new, when sin will reign no more,

Every day Will be a reminder That Jesus is Emmanuel God with us We thank you

for Jesus It's in his name that we pray Amen.