SUNDAY - DECEMBER 21, 2025 "Oh, Come Let Us Adore Him"

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God bless.

Oh come, let us adore him.

Oh come, let us adore him.

Oh come, let us adore him.

Christ the Lord.

As we continue our series, Oh, come, let us adore him this morning.

Let me ask you, have you ever had one of those moments?

We're going to be in Luke chapter 2 today, if you want to go ahead and turn there.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

As you turn there, have you had one of those moments?

I'm sure you have, but just one of those life-changing moments, one of those moments in your life where everything changed, whether it be good or bad, everything changed.

Let me give you an example.

December of 2000, Amber and I were dating, had been dating for a couple of months, and we were getting ready.

My sister had just had her oldest daughter, Allie.

Allie had just been born, and my brother was serving at a church in Clinton.

I was in seminary.

I was visiting Amber right before we, I was gonna, the plan was for me to go pick Clay up in Clinton, spend the night there, and then we were gonna drive to Cookville, Tennessee, where they lived, where Mandy and her family lived at that time.

So I was visiting Amber and I was getting ready to leave that night, and as I was telling her bye and getting ready to drive to Clinton, she did something.

She teared up.

First time in my life anything like that had ever happened.

Now I'll be honest, I had not had a lot of boyfriends and girlfriends.

I'd only dated a couple of girls.

And it was it was we I got in the truck and she was kind of teared up.

Now she ain't she might have been happy that I was leaving.

I'm not sure.

But for me, I had about an hour and a half drive from Hattiesburg to Clinton at that point.

And most of that time, um I cried.

And and called a friend of mine and said, dude, what has happened to me?

I don't understand this.

I don't know what's going on.

It was a significant event that I won't ever forget.

It changed me.

It changed the way that I viewed Amber.

It changed, it did something in our relationship.

At that point, I was very confident that she was the one that I was going to marry.

Everything just kind of changed at that point.

As we come to our passage today, the shepherds are experiencing an event that changes them.

What's going to happen is the shepherds are going to see and hear a message from the angels, from angels, and they are going to respond to that message by coming to Jesus.

Listen, and hear me for us as 2,000 years later, as we are gathered together to celebrate Christmas, to celebrate Christ's advent, as we are gathered together.

What we need to see, what we need to understand is that Jesus came as our Savior, Christ the Lord.

And we today have an opportunity to respond to Him.

So our challenge is this.

Oh, come.

Let us adore Him.

I invite you, if you are able, this morning, to stand with me as we give honor to the reading of God's Word from Luke chapter 2.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

We're going to start in verse 8.

And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field keeping watch over their flock by night.

And the angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear.

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 the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly hosts praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased.

And when the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, Let us go over to Bethlehem to see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.

And they went with haste, 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 that they had heard and seen as it had been told to them.

Let's pray together.

God, we do thank you.

We thank you for your word and how you have revealed yourself to us through it.

Change us today.

For all eternity.

Oh, come, let us adore you.

Jesus, it's in your name we pray.

Amen.

So today we are focusing really on the shepherds.

We want to look at the shepherds and how they responded, how they responded to this message from the angels, but first let's let's set some context, okay?

Let's look at the message first that was given.

Here's what we know about this message.

First, it was given to shepherds.

Now, while that may not seem totally random to us, I mean, understand, two of Israel's greatest leaders were shepherds.

Moses, he was a shepherd.

David, he was a shepherd.

But but at the time of Luke's writing, the time of that Jesus came into the earth, shepherds, their roles had not changed.

They were still doing the same thing, but the way their social standing had changed.

Shepherds were viewed as unskilled, uneducated.

Most of them were believed to be dishonest.

They were continuously religiously unclean because of what they did, because of their job.

They remained unclean all the time.

Kind of reminds us, though, of Mary's hymn that we looked at last year, where God looked down and he favored the humble.

Here are these shepherds.

Humble men out on the hillside, keeping watch over their flock.

So while the message came to the shepherds, it came through the angels.

Came through the angels.

Now, we we're not given the name of the angel here that first appeared.

We know that from Matthew's story, Gabriel was an angel that came, but we're not given his name here.

But here's what we know: an angel appeared to these shepherds.

Now let's understand something about angels.

Because when we say angels, what do you think?

Man, long dress, glowing, halo, maybe playing a harp.

It reminds me back when both of my boys were in preschool and we were getting ready to come do the preschool pageant musical and they had to dress up in those dresses.

Dad, I'm not going out there in that dress.

I'm not being a sissy angel.

And I had to explain to them, boys, while I understand that I get it, at the same time, angels, they are warriors.

When we see angels throughout the Old Testament, every time they show up, people fall down in fear.

There's even a couple of times, Numbers 22, Joshua chapter 5, when the angel is encountered in both of those things.

Joshua 5 · chapter mention

He has a sword drawn ready to strike.

This angel's, he he was, he was a warrior, and not only was he a warrior, but but here he is, and he's this warrior standing there, and the glory of God shone around him.

We talked about it last week.

For 400 years, God had been silent.

And now, all of a sudden, on this hillside outside of Bethlehem, an angel, a warrior of light, appears, and all around him is the glory of God radiating, shining around him as he delivers this message.

And then not just one, but multitudes of these warriors show up praising God, giving glory to God.

It must have been a special message.

And it was.

In verse 20.

But he considered, that's Joseph, these things.

As he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife.

For what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.

For he will save his people from their sins.

The message that the angels delivered to these shepherds is a savior has been born.

A savior, one who has come to save them from their sins, but not just any savior, and it's not just any savior that has come to save them from their sins.

It is Christ.

It is the Messiah.

It is the one who has been promised, the one for these 400 years of God's silence that they have been waiting on, the one that they have been searching for and waiting on.

Christ the Lord, the Messiah.

And we know that from what the what the angel told Mary back up in chapter, Luke chapter 1, verse 30.

Luke 1:30

The angel said to her, 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.

Verse 32, he will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.

And the Lord God will give 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.

Jesus is not just any Savior, he is the Savior.

He is the Messiah.

He is the one who has been promised.

He is the one they have been waiting on.

He is the one.

It is Jesus the Christ.

And then he it's not just Jesus the Christ, though.

Jesus Christ the Lord.

This title, Lord, is not a title that is given, that can be given really humanly.

It is a divine title.

Given to Jesus from the divine.

From God.

So in this title, a savior has been born to you, Christ the Lord.

What we see is this is the Savior.

God Himself.

Here's the message that the shepherds heard.

Out on that night as they're keeping watch over their flock.

This is the message they heard.

Now here's what we want to see, and here's what we want to understand this morning.

How did the shepherds then respond?

What did they do?

Once they heard this message from the angels, once they saw all of this, what did they do?

How did they respond?

Well, the first thing that we see this morning is they heard the message.

They heard it.

And you say, Grant, how do we know that they heard it?

How do you understand that they heard it?

Well, first we see that they hear it because in verse 9 it tells us they were filled with great fear.

They were filled with great fear.

Well, okay.

Why how do you know they heard it if they were filled with fear?

Because, listen, when a messenger such as the angels reveals a message, you hear it.

Let me give you an example.

Several years ago, I told y'all that Cal Ripkin Jr.

is one of my favorite baseball players of all times.

Not one of my.

He is my favorite baseball player.

I grew up loving Cal Ripkin Jr., loved watching him play, all of these things.

When I told y'all about that, several of you came to me or texted me later and let me know that he was coming to speak at the Heindel Center at Northwest Community College.

And Amber and I had the opportunity to go hear him.

And it was awesome.

And while we were telling, while he was there speaking, he shared a story, and I won't go into all the details for time's sake.

If you want to hear him, catch me later, because I love to tell it.

But anyway, basically, here's what he wound up telling us.

One season of his professional career, he wound up calling pitches from the shortstop position.

Now, if you don't know baseball, you go say, you're safe.

So what?

But listen, in baseball, usually, if you watched it enough, you know who calls the pitchers.

It's the catcher.

He's squatted back there behind the plate and he does his fingers and tells the pitcher what he's going to throw, and that's how they communicate.

So the pitcher and catcher, they're on the same page, so the catcher's not expecting a fastball, and he throws a curveball in the dirt and it goes.

There's a lot of communication that has to take place.

And the pitcher and catcher, they just didn't know what to throw.

They didn't know what to pitch.

And he wound up in one game calling pitches for the rest of the game, and then he did such a great job, everybody wanted him to call the pitchers.

So from shortstop, he calls the pitches.

Now listen, if I'm telling you that, you go, yeah, right, Grant.

Some of you right now are going, no way.

But when I heard Cal Ripkin Jr.

tell me that story, I believed it because he's Cal Ripkin Jr.

When we are awed and amazed by the messenger, listen, we hear the message.

These shepherds are awed and amazed by these angels.

They're so awed and amazed they fall down with fear before him.

I promise you, they heard the message.

But then there's another little statement that lets us know that they heard the message.

If you go over down to verse 15, here's what it says: the angels go away, and in verse 15 it says, 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 made known to us.

It's a big statement.

Angels, warriors of light, surrounded by the glory of God, proclaim this message that the Savior has been born.

They go away, and what the shepherds get out of it is this the Lord made this known to us.

Listen, they've done away with the intermediaries.

The angels, that awesome sight that they saw was nothing compared to the fact that God had made known to them.

God had spoken to them.

God had shown them that the Savior was in Bethlehem.

Let us go see him.

They heard it.

They didn't just hear it because an angel said it.

They heard it because God shared with them.

And listen, this year, I challenge you.

I gave you a shameless plug last week.

Another shameless plug here.

I've challenged you to read through God's word together as a church for us to do that using the Bible recap tool.

There's things available out at the Welcome Center.

You can check that.

But I want us to do this, and I want you to understand this as we read through the Bible together and why we are doing it.

While the Bible is special, it is God's revelation to us.

What we need to catch is not that the Bible is God's revelation to us.

What we need to catch is that God has revealed Himself to us.

And the way that we see Him is through His Word.

The angels heard.

The shepherds heard the message from the angels.

May we prepare our hearts and humbly come before the Lord as we open His word and hear his message to us.

First thing they did is heard this message.

The second thing that we see in here is that they believed the message.

They didn't just hear it, they believed it.

Again, you may ask Grant, how do we know that they believed this message?

Well, we heard what they said in verse 15.

Let us go see what the Lord has made known to us, but then see what they did in verse 16.

And they went with haste.

How do we know they believed it?

They went.

They got up and they left and they went.

They obeyed this message.

They heard the message and then they obeyed it.

It reminds me so much of when Jesus was talking to his disciples in John chapter 14.

John 14 · chapter mention

In John chapter 14, and verses uh 15 down through verse 24.

John 14 · chapter mention

In those 10 verses, here's what we see in those 10 verses.

Three times Jesus says, if you love Me, you'll keep my commandments.

One of them is in John chapter 14, verse 15.

John 14:15

He says it directly.

If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

Down in verse 21, he says, Whoever has my commands and keeps them, he it is who loves me, and he who loves me will be loved by my father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.

Verse 23.

Jesus answered him, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home to him.

Now you say, Grant, that says if you love me, you'll keep my commandments.

It says nothing about believing.

Okay, I give it to you.

But understand this belief in God leads to love of God, and love leads to obedience.

These shepherds not only heard this word, but they believed this word.

And they went.

Another way I think we know that they found that they believed this message though, is if you continue on in verse 16, not only did they go with haste, but they also found Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in a manger.

They found him.

See, look, I'm convinced of this.

When we search for Jesus, we're going to find him.

The prophet Jeremiah, way back years before Jesus, Babylon had was taking Judah, the southern kingdom.

They were taking them into captivity.

And Jeremiah is a prophet who is prophesying to them.

And in Jeremiah chapter 29, starting in verse 10, here's what he writes to them.

Jeremiah 29 · chapter mention

For thus says the Lord, when seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place.

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord.

Plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you.

You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart.

I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I which I sent you into exile.

Now, we we love to quote Jeremiah 29, 11, for I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you, to give you a hope and a future.

And we love to quote that verse is and help to help us understand that God has good things in store for us.

But this is a prophecy to Israel.

The prophecy is you're gonna be exiled for 70 years, and when that 70 years is over, I'm gonna come get you.

Because I know what plans I have for you, I know what good things I have in store for Israel.

I'm gonna come get you and I'm gonna bring you back.

And while that was the promise to Israel, listen, God has promised us things as well.

He has promised.

He has promised that he would never leave us nor forsake us.

He has promised that he would make our burdens light.

He has promised that he would walk with us.

He has promised that he would send the Holy Spirit to walk along with us.

And here's what we understand because he kept that promise so many years ago with Israel, and he did bring them back.

Because he kept those promises, we can be assured that he will keep these promises as well.

But that promise, the promise he made to them, the promise he made to them in verse 13, you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

I will be found by you, declares the Lord, is a promise for believers.

That when we seek the Lord with all of our hearts, he will be found by us.

Do you know why?

Because he wants to be found by us.

God is not out hiding.

God is not out trying to say, good luck finding me.

Hope you catch me.

It's not what he's doing.

God wants to be found by us.

He has revealed himself over and over and over and over to us to be found by us.

What we must do is seek him.

And when we seek him, we will find him just like the shepherds.

The shepherds responded by hearing the message.

They responded by believing the message.

And finally, this morning, they responded by declaring the message.

See what it says towards the end there.

If you go down to verse 17.

And when they saw it, what did they see?

They saw Mary and Joseph and the baby back in verse 16.

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.

Then if you go down to verse 20, and the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen as it had been told to them.

Here's what happened.

The shepherds had that moment.

That moment that changed everything for their life.

That moment where they encountered the Savior, the Messiah, the one who had come to die for their sins.

They encountered him, they saw him, they touched him, though as fragile as he may be, lying in that manger, and they believed that he was the Christ, the Son of God, who had come to die for their sins.

And then you know what they did?

Because they couldn't help it, they went and they told everyone that they saw.

They came and adored.

And then told about the one that they adored.

Kind of reminds me of a message in Acts.

In Acts chapter 1, verse 8.

Acts 1:8

Jesus told his apostles this, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria to the end of the earth.

See, they weren't just witnesses, the shepherds weren't just witnesses of this miracle.

They bore witness about this miracle.

Because God had changed their life.

Oh, come, let us adore Him.

Let us be overwhelmed by Jesus.

And then may we go and declare and tell everyone about the one that we adore.

But if you have never trusted Christ as your Savior, understand what has happened.

Jesus came.

What we celebrate on Christmas is that Jesus came.

And then don't forget what he did after he was born.

Sometimes we we like to celebrate Christmas Jesus from Easter Jesus.

Same one.

That little baby that was born, he grew up.

He lived a perfect life and he grew up and he died on a cross to save me and to save you from our sins.

He arose from the grave and gives us life.

And if you have never trusted him as your savior, oh, may today be the day of salvation for you.

Oh, may you come and adore him.

But if you have, here's my challenge to you.

Oh, come and adore him.

And then go and tell about the one that you adore.

Church, may we be silent no longer.

May we declare to the world our Savior has come.

As we stand and sing.

If you've never trusted Christ, we invite you to come.

I'll be down here to receive you.

Would love to share with you.

There are counselors who will take you out and share with you how you can trust Christ as your Savior.

If you have, but you recognize this morning you have not truly been adoring him, and you really haven't been declaring him, but today's the day.

I know that from your seed you can do that.

Or maybe you want to come forward and let me pray for you.

And pray that this morning, though, we will be committed to declaring to people the one that we adore.

To be his witnesses.

Jerusalem, Judea, to the uttermost parts of the earth.

If you're looking for a church home, we would love to have you here at DeSoda Hills.

Because here's the thing we don't have to declare by ourselves.

We can come on a door together and go into the world together.

Let's pray together.

God, I thank you for today.

I thank you for all you've done for us.

Jesus, I thank you for coming.

For leaving your place in heaven.

Being born among us.

So you could die for us and arise to give us life.

I pray for those who have never trusted you that today will be the day of salvation.

God, I pray for those who have.

That we will not just come and adore, but we will go and declare the one that we adore.

God, work among us as only you can.

Give us the faith that we need to make any decision you have for us.

Jesus is in your name we pray.

Amen.

Thanks for listening to this week's sermon.

If you have any questions for our pastor, feel free to reach out at DeSotoHills.com.