Exploring the Roles of Shepherds and Wise Men in the Advent Narrative

You know, one of the things that I love about the Christmas season, the Advent season, is that so many of the songs that we sing are songs that many people in the world know, whether they're Christian or not, because they are tradition and you hear them even in the malls and in stores around town.

One of the other challenges is as a worship leader and as somebody who is leading our congregation in songs.

If a song is less familiar, this is the only time of the year we sing them, and so everyone's trying to catch up, and even our musicians are trying to remember what we did last year on those.

But it is a joy, I feel, this time of the year as we wrap our minds around the truths of Advent and the truths of Christmas.

It's a joy for us to even stumble through those moments together as we seek to recall and praise God for all he has done.

Last week, pastor Royce pointed out a very important character in the Advent Christmas story that he claims and is true that is generally absent from our basic understanding and our retelling of the account.

However, pastor Royce made it quite clear that John the Baptist is most certainly an essential person to be seen and remembered as part of the Nativity narrative.

So if I had to boil down what Pastor Royce's message was last week into a simple statement, I would say it would be something like this repent and make a place for John the Baptist in your Nativity set.

Well, one of those things repent, because that was the message that John the Baptist came as the herald of Jesus Christ to prepare the way.

He didn't quite make the point that we need to make a place for him in the Nativity set, although it's not a bad idea, I mean all seriousness.

We must consider that the role of John the Baptist, the role that he played in preparing the way for the Messiah, the Christ, to make his entrance in the world, was significant.

It was the long expected promise won Jesus the Christ, emmanuel, who had changed the world.

It was certainly imperative that mankind did not miss his coming.

So John's message of repentance is important and is essential in preparing the way for Christ to be born.

However, there are certainly some who did show up at Christ's birth.

They didn't miss it.

In fact, it is hard for us to imagine Christmas without these local shepherds and the wise men who traveled from a faraway land.

Today, whether you go to a shopping mall, or whether you go just drive around town and look at people's yards, whether you're just enjoying a night in the city, even down in San Francisco, or if you go to Great America, california's Great America.

The shepherds and the wise men are essential and irreplaceably present in capturing of that first advent scene.

This morning I want to take a little bit of time to examine these irreplaceable characters that fill most, if not all, of our nativity scenes.

But I don't want to stop there, I just want.

I want my hope is that this morning that we would consider circumstances and events that led to these characters making their way to the cradle of Christ.

That we too will discover that each of us, through their stories, we will discover that each of us is welcome also to take a place at the manger of Jesus, because Jesus is the savior of sinners and the king of kings.

All who come to him and truly worship him will find a place reserved for them in this Christmas story.

So as we examine the shepherds and the wise men, let us consider ourselves where we fit in to this story.

I want to take a little deeper look at these surprising characters as they find their way to this barn, this cattle stall.

I want us to look at them first, in contrast to each other.

The two different groups that we have in our nativity contrast to each other and I want to consider carefully what they also have in common with each other.

I believe by examining who they are, where they came from, what the circumstances were surrounding them before they came, I think we will discover that we have a welcome place with them.

So if you have your Bibles, turn to Luke, chapter two, perhaps the most familiar scripture text, the first and most familiar narrative of this Advent Christmas story.

We like the idea of shepherds.

Shepherds like similar to the cross.

The cross is something that has become a jewelry item, a piece, a symbol, a beautifying element, but back in the day, when Jesus died on the cross, it was a form of execution.

It would be similar to us hanging like an electric chair on a chain and wearing it around our neck.

Similar to that, shepherds have also been endearing to us.

We love certain shepherds and the way that their idyllic scene is portrayed in so many places and figurines and movies.

We love this.

But who exactly were the shepherds?

Now it's a little hard to know.

So a lot of what I'm going to say, and a lot of what we're going to draw from today will be historical context, cultural context, but I think it's very, very fitting as we try to understand who these shepherds were In that society back when Jesus was born.

Shepherds were not exactly the cream of the crop of society.

They were not the people that led the trends in that day and age Shepherds in Israel actually at that time.

By their existence and by who they were, they actually created concern for common people.

They caused caution in the average person within their community.

Simply put, shepherds worked with sheep Dumb, smelly, dirty sheep and for people especially concerned with personal and, for Israelites, religious cleanliness, this became very complicated, and so, in addition to that, shepherds not only dealt with the idea of cleanliness and working with sheep, but the job was a 24 hours a day, seven days a week job.

They would watch these sheep day and night.

It was a full-time occupation for them and because the job took them into places where pastures were green and water was fresh, they'd have to continue to move around the countryside.

Jesus alludes to the parable of the shepherd when he talks about him watching the sheep fold at night and how he stands there that he might prevent robbers from breaking in and stealing the sheep.

And here in Luke, in his account, the angels came to the shepherds when, by night and so you have these shepherds that are practically devoted to their work, devoted to their occupation.

They have to focus on that they would travel with their sheep all over the countryside wherever they could find the type of pasture that they would want to give to their sheep, and oftentimes they were actually considered to be a threatening bunch.

They were because they would sit down and hunker down for a place at night.

They would maybe be alongside the road and they would be mistaken for thieves and robbers because they're out in the middle of the night where people were traveling and passing through, and so they got a bad reputation for themselves.

In fact, sometimes shepherds actually turned into thieves and robbers, and so it was easy for them to find a place that was pretty common but yet be able to use it for their advantage.

And so shepherds just didn't have the greatest rapport, they did not have the greatest reputation.

So, due to their occupation, they would often become isolated.

They were nomadic and they just didn't have a fitting place within normal society.

So they were most certainly the furthest from a pristine, upright religious or majestic king or Jewish citizen that you could imagine.

There is good reason, however, to believe that these shepherds were not just normal shepherds, the ones in the story.

It could be because of where they were located.

We know that they were just outside of Bethlehem and Bethlehem was just outside of Jerusalem, where the temple was.

It is suspected that these shepherds were possibly the shepherds that cared for the temple sheep.

So when there were sacrifices that needed to be performed by the priests, they had their own flock of sheep, and there were obviously sacrifices where people would bring their own lambs and their own sacrifices to be sacrificed at the temple, but there were sacrifices that the priests would do daily, and so they had their own flock of sheep.

It is possible that these shepherds that found themselves at the manger of Christ were actually shepherds watching the temple sheep, and if these shepherds were in fact temple shepherds, then they would have, even especially, a more unique awareness of the expectations of cleanliness and purification that came about with religious and sacrificial practices.

The shepherds would regularly, quite obviously, be made aware of their own need for purification, their own uncleanness and, even more so, the fact that the lambs that they were watching the lambs and the sheep that they were being taken care of.

If they were in fact employed by the temple, then they were in charge of taking care of the lambs.

That would eventually have served no other purpose than to be sacrificed for sin, to be made a sacrifice for sinners.

And so here they are, kind of outcasts within society, people committed to a job that took them like nomads around the countryside, and no doubt they were very aware of the fact that sacrifices were needed for sinners like them.

So they were very conscious of their own unworthiness and very conscious of their own unholiness.

Not only did they have society reminding them of how dirty and defiled they were, but their very occupation was a reminder of their sinful condition.

However, this is not I don't want to leave just a poor, depressed story here, because I think that these shepherds probably had bits of stories and legends that kept them optimistic, that kept them hopeful, because when you're out watching sheep and you're with other family members who are watching the sheep, I'm sure, just like it was in the Jewish tradition, they would repeat prophecies and passages from the Old Testament, talking about things that happened and things that were to come.

Jewish shepherds, they had heroes too, and I'm not just talking about like insignificant heroes, I'm talking about like awesome, awesome heroes as kids.

I have a son and I know a number of the kids in the room here.

They you like to play basketball, or perhaps you like football or cricket.

We have a lot of cricket fans on my street, but you have these particular sports that as you play them, you emulate.

You say someone's name before you shoot the ball.

When I was a kid, it was Bill Lambert, like this, because he had this weird and I know some of you don't know who Bill Lambert is, but he had this weird, weird shot or it might be Tom Brady when you're throwing the football.

Well, shepherds had their heroes as well.

Shepherds had somebody like Moses.

Moses was a shepherd.

Yes, he grew up in Egypt, but when he fled Egypt, he took care of the flock of Jethro, who became his father-in-law For 40 years.

He was a shepherd in the wilderness and Moses turned out to be a pretty stellar champion, a pretty stellar hero in the history of Israel.

Right, moses was the one who everyone was looking.

There's going to be another Moses that's going to come and he's going to set them free, and he was a shepherd.

Maybe there's something, maybe there's opportunity for me as a shepherd as well.

Perhaps even more significant to these shepherds was King David.

King David was a shepherd, the greatest king that Israel had ever had, the one whose throne was referred to in the prophecies.

He was a shepherd, and don't miss it.

David was a shepherd on those very hills.

He was a shepherd from Bethlehem.

Bethlehem was a city of David, so it's very likely that, as they would tell stories about walking on the hills, dad, is this where you said that David was when he killed the lion?

Is this where the bear was killed?

Is this where Jesse passed the stories down of his son who was the shepherd?

We know that David didn't start out very like a star.

Matter of fact, he was in a family of boys.

He was the youngest of those boys and when Samuel came to anoint someone from his family, jesse, his father was like yeah, these are all my boys.

They're right here.

Look at them.

They're warriors, they're soldiers, look at them.

And Samuel went through and he was looking at all of them.

He was like none of these.

God has not chosen any of these to be the king.

Well, who do you not have any other sons?

Well, yeah, my youngest, he's out watching the sheep.

Well, we're not going to sit down, we're not going to eat anything until you bring them here, because we need to check in on him.

So he, david, was brought as a shepherd before Samuel and it was anointed, and we know later, to be the king.

So these dirty, smelly, sinful shepherds certainly had stories that might give them hope of their future, of what might come for them.

But in spite of the fact that they were generally outcasts, generally nomadic, generally isolated, they actually had one thing going for them that was very unique, especially in comparison to the wise men.

It was very special to them.

They were, in fact, jewish.

They were, in fact, by blood, part of God's chosen people, and so, although they were downcast and the lower part of society, they were still a part of Israel.

They were still part of his people.

By birth, they could claim the covenants of Abraham, of Jacob, of David.

They were a part of God's chosen people.

So these shepherds possessed very important piece of their identity that made them to be especially shepherd, no matter how low they are.

Well, along with David being this hometown hero, perhaps it was probably true that they were very aware of the prophecy of Micah, because Micah the prophet wrote in chapter 5, he wrote this but you, bethlehem, ephrata, are, though you are small, among the clans of Judah.

Out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.

Therefore, israel will be abandoned until the time when she who is in labor bears a son and the rest of the brothers return to join the Israelites.

He will stand and shepherd the flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord, his God, and they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth.

Here they were, in Bethlehem, this tiny little town, this insignificant place.

Here they were as shepherds, insignificant in society, and the promises of God of hope, of a shepherd who would come and be the ultimate shepherd of shepherds would come from that little town, the one who would lead his people.

So, in their minds, perhaps, they had hope.

So what exactly happened that night out on the countryside?

Let's look at Luke 2.

What exactly happened that night?

The shepherds were out there tending their sheep.

So we read that.

Because there was a census that was being taken.

Everyone had to return to their family's town.

So Joseph and Mary were from Bethlehem and so they had to travel to Bethlehem.

But she was great with child and when they got there there was no place for them to stay.

They were likely a young couple, didn't have a lot of clout, probably didn't have a lot of money, they were expensive to travel and she was pregnant.

So they ended up in a stable and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son, and wrapped him in cloths, placed him in a manger.

Now verse 8, luke 2, verse 8 says this and if you're reading from one of the pew Bibles, you can turn to page 880, which is where we find this account and there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby keeping watch over their flocks.

Luke 2:8

At night, an angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were terrified.

But the angels said to them do not be afraid, I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.

Today, in the town of David, a Savior has been born to you.

He is the Messiah, the Lord.

This will be assigned to you.

You will find a baby wrapped in cloth and lying in a manger, suddenly a great company of the heavenly hosts appeared, with the angel praising God and saying glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth, peace to those on whom his favor rests.

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherd said to one another let us go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.

So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph and the baby who was lying in a manger, and when they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about his child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them.

So here's this story.

I want you to think of it from heaven's perspective for a moment.

I'm making this up.

This is not in the Bible, but God is preparing to send his only begotten Son, his unique Son, incarnate in flesh, into the world.

This was a moment in time that has been planned and predetermined.

Before the world was even formed, there was a plan for God to take on flesh and come down into our existence and to be our redeemer.

This incarnation of God becoming man was nothing like anything that had ever happened in the existence of time and space.

This God would be fully God and yet take on complete human form and become fully man.

He would be both God and man.

This was truly the greatest moment of all time, the moment that we, that the world, had been waiting for.

So what did it look like?

Well, hebrews 1 6 says this when God brings his firstborn into the world, he says let all of God's angels worship him.

So I want you to think about this.

This is a big deal.

So God is like okay, this is the moment in time, this is it.

Guys, everyone's here.

No one has a day off.

We're going down and we've got one job today, just one thing I'm going to send out.

You know, probably not Gabriel, but I'm going to send out one angel to start first and kind of get the frightening part out of the way, but then we're just going to send all of y'all.

You are just all going to go there and just, I mean, proclaim the glory of God.

And so maybe the angels thought well, who, who are we announcing this to?

Who are going to be the people that we're going to go to?

Is it going to be kings, or is there a group of kings that we're going to go to, or maybe the priests?

Maybe the priests are the feeding audience of this announcement.

Or maybe maybe not the priests, but the religious rulers, the scribes and the Pharisees.

Or maybe we would have a lot of influence if it was wealthy and powerful people.

No, actually, y'all are getting prepared now to go down actually in the middle of the night and announce it to some shepherds.

What I mean?

The moment of all of history and time is being announced.

The thing shepherds.

Why shepherds?

Like?

I mean, I think we're missing out on an opportunity here.

We could go in the middle of the day.

Why don't we go down when all the people are in one place and we can just come down right in the middle of them all and just hit them all at one time, but shepherds in the middle of the night in a field?

Now I'm going to tell you a little story.

In 2017, in April NPR has a couple articles about this.

In 2017, it was marketed.

This was marketed as a party of a lifetime.

The Fire Music Festival was billed as a two-week, two-week and immersive experience in paradise, where festival goers would enjoy top musical acts, party with supermodels and a stay in lux accommodations on a private island in the Bahamas, once owned by Pablo Escobar.

This music festival, the Fire Music Festival, was going to be the festival that revolutionized music festivals.

It was going to be the biggest thing that ever happened in the music festival world.

It cost people thousands and even tens of thousands of dollars to go to be attendees at this festival.

People were actually even selling vehicles and giving up homes just to go to be to this place where this festival was taking place.

It was being billed as the thing that you would want to be to.

How did that happen?

How did all of these people from all over the world want to go to this Fire Music Festival in the Bahamas?

The people who created this and the staff that worked with them were very, very innovative.

They were very wise in the way that they did it.

In order to promote this festival, they decided that they were going to use what we now to be very popular, but then not so much influencers.

Influencers were people who lived among us, who represented the kind of things that we want, the kind of things that we are interested in.

It says this in the social media-driven present.

These influencers are one-person marketing vehicles for all types of products, capitalizing on conventionally attractive faces and enviable lifestyles that they portray in their profiles.

One of the statements made by these influencers to draw people to this festival was this come seek, for in searching is the foundation of fortune.

Another thing that they said what if we reimagined what it means to attend a music festival?

The actual experience exceeds all expectations and is something that is hard to put into words.

The plan was to build awareness and attendance by recruiting influencers who would promote it on their social media accounts.

We're not just talking about these ones that are small influencers.

We're talking about big name, world-renowned influencers.

I don't know if you've seen the Netflix documentary on this.

That's not what this is about.

I'm going to give you a spoiler alert.

This was the most epic disaster of all music festivals that ever existed.

The promises that they made they couldn't fulfill.

They had one thing after the other that they promised that they were not able to accomplish.

Now the creator of this musical festival was sentenced to six years in prison for hundreds of millions of dollars of fraud of the people that he scammed into coming to this music festival in the Bahamas.

But it was amazing how the influencers were the one way to bring people to this revolutionary, once in a lifetime sort of experience.

Now let's consider this concept of influencer promotion.

Let's consider it in light of the greatest moment of all times the coming of God into the world.

So, god's staff, or His angels, they were all geared up to recruit the perfect group of influencers that would deliver a message that the Messiah's birth was here and had come to the world.

And God chooses shepherds, shepherds.

So in order to wrap our minds around this, let us consider the message that these angels gave to the shepherds.

What did they sell them?

What was the thing?

What was the message that they were given to take with them to the place and around the countryside?

The angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shown around them, and they were terrified.

But the angels said to them do not be afraid, I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.

Today, in the town of David, a Savior has been born to you.

He is the Messiah, the Lord.

This will be a sign to you.

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

Suddenly, a great company of the heavenly host appeared, with the angel praising God and saying glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth, peace to those with whom favor rest.

First of all, the message was I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.

Wow, what a heavy responsibility, you guys.

I'm telling you the good news that's going to bring great joy for all the people.

Why us?

Secondly, today, in the town of David, a Savior has been born to you, and he is Messiah, the Lord.

And then all everyone, the hosts of all the angels came and they cried in the highest heaven peace on earth with those with whom favor is rest.

The message is clear and simple A Savior, the Savior, has been born to you.

Sinners, who else than to really grasp the news of great joy that a Savior has come, than people who are very self-aware of their sin?

There's no hesitation, there's no reason to pause.

They had nothing to lose.

And so, if a Savior had come into the world, the question has to be asked who desperately needs a Savior?

Well, sinners need a Savior.

Who are the people who will wholeheartedly embrace this message of good news for all the people and spread the news that a Savior is born for the whole world?

Who better than shepherds, self-aware sinners.

And the shepherds did exactly that.

The shepherds, after they visited Mary and Joseph and the baby and the manger.

The scriptures tell us that when they had seen him, they spread the word concerning that which had been told to them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed what the shepherds had said to them.

There was nothing that would stop these people.

They didn't think what happens, what if so-and-so thinks this and what if we don't believe?

No, we're just kidding.

We saw the angels, we saw the baby, exactly as it's been told, and I mean, I don't care if it's still in the middle of the night.

We're waking people up.

We're going to go and give the message of what we had seen.

Jesus later in his ministry said that it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.

He said I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance, and this was repeated over and over and over.

Jesus came not for people who are okay, they're good, they don't need to have their problems addressed.

We don't call a doctor when we're well, when we think that we're fine.

I had this pain in my belly this morning.

It was hurting so bad.

I was like man, if I have to preach.

And I've got this pain, it's gone away now but I was thinking I might need to call a doctor.

But I don't normally think about calling a doctor because I think I'm fine, I think that I feel pretty good.

But people who are sick, they know that they need a doctor.

And Jesus came saying I'm not interested in people who think they're well, I'm interested in sinners, I'm interested in the sick, I'm interested in them.

And so these shepherds were quite possibly the perfect people for which Jesus would come.

A savior comes to earth to announce to dirty, unclean, sinful shepherds that a savior had been born to them.

What did they do?

They immediately responded and ran to see for themselves.

They couldn't help but respond with great joy and praise.

And they go, wake up everyone and tell everything that they had heard and seen.

The initiative to announce the savior coming into the world was a huge success.

It was a big win for the heavenly hosts on that night and that's all in good.

I mean those of us who have grown up around Christianity.

We feel this, we get this.

I mean, one of the things that I say to people when you come to church here is that just by walking in the door of a church this morning, we're admitting our need of something, of hope, of something greater and, specifically, being a Christian church, by walking through the door, we admit that we need a savior, we need Jesus, and so we get this we can connect with the shepherds.

Many of us have grown up in Christian homes or in Christian communities, and so we get that feeling of like I'm not quite the greatest Christian in the world, I'm not the greatest churchgoer in the world, but I'm here and I get the feeling I can connect with the shepherds and that's great for Christian and church people.

But we live in the Silicon Valley.

Do you know who fills the Silicon Valley?

The Silicon Valley are people who some of them in moving here have never heard of Jesus, apart from a swear word in a movie they saw that was made by an American filmmaker.

That's all they know who Jesus is.

Some people who live here that have moved to the Silicon Valley.

They know nothing about Christianity except for the rumors that they might have heard or the movies that they had seen.

The Silicon Valley is filled with smart, wise people from all over the world.

When we think of wisdom, wisdom is often talked about in the New Testament as being a stumbling block.

It's earthly wisdom is something that keeps people from actually finding God, and these shepherds were very different from that.

But when we think of other people outside of that category of society, what hope do they have?

In 1 Corinthians we read that for since, in the wisdom of God, the world, through its wisdom, did not know him.

And then it also goes on to say that not many of you were wise, and he's talking about people who actually made it into the church.

Not many of you.

There's not many people in the church, followers of Christ, that were wise by human standards, not many that were influential, not many that were of noble birth.

These people are not like dirty, simple, sinful shepherds who are desperate for a savior.

Not many who find God are actually wise or influential or noble.

So how will they find a savior?

In fact, even the wisest man who ever lived, solomon, in his what I've heard referred to as his journal, the book of Ecclesiastes, he gives an account of what it was like to employ his wisdom the wisest man on earth to find out where is their value, where is their purpose in the earth.

And he says I gave myself to understanding knowledge in all things and I basically came away and said there's nothing, there's nothing new, there's nothing.

And it drove him to discouragement and depression.

So even a wise person who is part of the people of God says wisdom is an empty thing, and most people are wise just keep searching and searching and searching and searching and never find what they're looking for.

So we live in a place of opportunity, of great wealth, and because we live in a place where there's great wealth, jesus also says that it's easier for a camel to go to an eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into heaven.

So we've talked about the shepherds.

As you know, I'm building up to what about the wise men?

How did they get there?

How did they end up there?

I mean, these guys, these wise men, these kings.

They were likely from Persia or from that area.

They had no Jewish blood in them.

They are from a secular, pagan society.

They had nothing going for them.

They were actually astronomers or, probably even worse, astrologers.

They were looking to the stars for signs and wonders and miracles.

They were wealthy, they were wise, they were almost everything that the shepherds were not.

However, although we don't really know the backside of the story, the back end of the story.

We know that something drove them to leave their home and to caravan hundreds of miles to find who they believed to be the King of Kings.

So what would drive wise, wealthy, pagan, star-reading kings to travel into a distant land to seek an infant king?

Maybe it was an angel, a rogue angel.

On that night, God said I want all the angels to go down there, and the guy's like I'm going to go over to Persia.

I just have this plan, I have this idea.

Well, no, it wasn't that.

It wasn't a rogue angel.

It could have been that parts of the Old Testament, forced Gumped its way into this place, and they had pieces of the Israel prophecies.

It's very likely that that was true.

Daniel was a prince and a prophet in that area of the world at one time, and the people were held captive in that area at the time, so there could have been very much prophecies of the Jewish people that were there.

We don't know exactly, though.

We don't know how they got there.

We don't know exactly what brought them there.

The only thing that we know that brought them there was a star.

There was a star.

Maybe astrology does have something going for it.

Maybe, looking to the stars, we can find things that are significant.

How is it that wise, healthy, wealthy pagan astrologers were convinced to seek a king from a small, oppressed, captive nation and worship him as a king of kings?

The power and the wisdom of a sovereign God.

Wisdom of God is wiser than men.

The foolishness of God makes wisdom of man look like nothing, and God can choose whatever and however he wants to gather worshipers to himself.

You know it's interesting.

Paul on Mars Hill is speaking to a crowd of people that are very, very similar to the type of people that the wise men might have been.

They were people who had all kinds of gods, they had all kinds of pagan practices, they did a lot of things.

They were very, very keen on wisdom and words and ideas.

And Paul is walking around this place on Mars Hill where they have all these monuments and these images that are built to represent different gods that they believe, and they have one that he found that was to the unknown God, and Paul is like I'm going to tell you about this one God that you don't know.

And what did he say?

Part of his description is this the God, who made the world and everything in it, is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built with human hands, and he is not served by human hands as if he needed anything.

Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.

And then he says this from one man.

He made all the nations that they should inhabit the whole earth and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.

God did all this.

Why did God specifically choose for all people who have ever lived where, when they would be born and where they would live?

Why did he do that?

So that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far away from any of us, for in him we live and move and have our being.

The sovereign God has pre-rigged our stories, has pre-rigged our life, with all that we need to seek him and find him.

If it is an astrologer, then God has a way of speaking and drawing an astrologer to find him.

If he's somebody who is caught up in one thing or the next and politics are in being great or what, there are ways in which God has planned everyone's existence so that in their circumstances, in life, in their current situations, they can in fact seek after him and find him, because he is near to all of us.

He is in everything that we see and experience within creation.

So imagine kings, wise kings, who are truly seeking for purpose in life.

They're seeking for fulfillment.

They're hoping that what their efforts will produce will be something great for them.

They're seeking for a king who perhaps is better than themselves, because they know that they have problems.

They're seeking for one who is better than a king or any human that they have ever met.

They're seeking to truly honor the one who is worthy of honor and worship, because all the kings that they have met have their problems, have their issues, and they know themselves that they have problems.

So they're seeking for something greater outside them, and when they discover such a king, they are willing to go to the ends of the earth to worship him themselves.

So, in closing, what do these two groups have in common?

The shepherds and the wise men?

So they're very different in many ways, but they had things in common.

First of all, they were both groups of sinners that needed a savior.

They were both groups of sinners that needed a savior Jesus made it very clear that his kingdom was an upside down kingdom, or perhaps were the ones that are upside down.

In Christ's kingdom, the least or the lowest will be the first and exalted, and the greatest will be made low, jesus said.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven In light fashion.

The shepherds, being the poorest and the lowest, were told first of the newborn king and the blazing splendor of the heavenly host, and it was by God's sovereign kindness that he led the shepherds, a couple years later, to find this baby in a cradle.

The second thing that these groups had in common both groups were quick to respond when God revealed himself to them.

They were quick to respond when God revealed himself to them, whether it was an angelic host declaring the newborn king or an unusual star that gave them reason to believe that something supernatural, that something amazing was happening.

They were very quick to respond to this revelation.

I just want to say this if you're desperate during this Christmas season, if you're desperate and you long for a savior, run to him, go immediately to him, do not fear, do not hesitate, hurry, go with the King James Version, go with haste to the Messiah, and if it includes traveling far, do whatever it can you have to to pursue him and when you come he will bring you great joy and great excitement when you receive him.

Thirdly, both groups responded in worship when they found the King of Kings, the shepherd of shepherds, god in flesh, the infant child who was the savior of the world.

Their response had no other prerequisites, no other pretense.

They didn't have additional expectations.

The wise men weren't disappointed oh man, I thought he'd come with a bunch of books and scrolls and things that would tell us more about the world.

They didn't come and were disappointed with that.

The shepherds didn't come and say, oh man, I thought he'd have money and an army.

No, the little baby, infant Jesus was everything to bring them full joy.

They did not need anything else.

They knew that in this God man, even as an infant, even as a helpless, tiny infant, they knew that in him was everything that they needed.

It would change their world.

Lastly, both groups left spreading the news to those who would join them in their wonder and worship.

The shepherds knew of many like themselves who would join them in their rejoicing.

The wise men were a little different.

If you remember, they first went to Jerusalem to find out where the King of the Jews was to be born.

It kind of surprised the guy who was sitting on the throne, herod.

It surprised him.

He's like, well, what You're coming to do you're not me, you didn't find him here now, me.

And in a very sly way he was like, okay, well, when you find him, come back and tell me.

I want to go and worship him, just like you guys.

I'm going to do what you guys are doing, just let me know, come back here.

Well, god, again in his wisdom, appeared to them in a dream, the wise men in a dream, and told them yeah, don't go back to him, you want to go a different way.

And so they obeyed, they went a different way, and I want to provide this quickly as a warning to us.

Who was Herod, this King?

He had Jewish blood, he was part of the people of God, but he, by the very presence of God, was threatened.

Who he was, his identity, what he had built for himself, was threatened.

And so he did not pursue worshiping him, but instead he wanted to kill him.

And we see one of the most devastating things, one of the most devastating, horrible acts in all the New Testament where he slaughters babies, trying to get rid of this Jesus, this King.

So I want to warn us today if you feel that the presence of Jesus in your life is a threat to you and what you have made and what you have built, then repent.

Listen to John the Baptist, repent and turn to Jesus.

Be like the sinful shepherds, be like the wise men who pursued and when they found him, they responded in great joy.

Don't be like Herod.

Although you might have things going for you, identify with the people of God.

When Jesus is steps into your light, you feel threatened.

Repent and turn away from that.

But instead, let us embrace the fact that we are sinners.

Let us embrace the fact that the message is that there is a Savior for sinners.

Let us embrace the fact that God is sovereignly working in our lives to draw us to himself so that we too can worship him, and let us worship him with great joy.

Jesus, thank you so much for being our Savior.

Thank you for coming to sinful shepherds.

Thank you for making a way for all who are in the world to find you.

Thank you for bringing us hope.

We praise you for this today in Christ's name and man.