{"id":7341,"date":"2014-04-01T10:54:56","date_gmt":"2014-04-01T09:54:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/?page_id=7341"},"modified":"2014-04-01T10:54:56","modified_gmt":"2014-04-01T09:54:56","slug":"shepherds-returned","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/shepherds-returned\/","title":{"rendered":"AND THE SHEPHERDS RETURNED"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Luke 2:8-19<\/span><\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
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By Stephen Green. (First Published in\u00a0<\/span>Christian Voice<\/i>\u00a0January 2007)<\/span><\/p>\n

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They were the first to hear.\u00a0 A group of shepherds gathered in a field probably on a hillside near\u00a0Bethlehem\u00a0staying out all night to look after the sheep.\u00a0 We don’t do that in\u00a0Britain\u00a0, except maybe at lambing time, and the sheep would not be lambing in the autumn or the winter anywhere.\u00a0 We don’t do it and they did, because we obviously don’t have the predators they had.<\/p>\n

Luke 2:8 And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.<\/b><\/p>\n

So there they were, and there they saw, then they heard at first one angel, then the angelic host.\u00a0 Out in the field, doing their ordinary work, was where the glory of the Lord came upon them.\u00a0 They were keeping the night watches and as they watched, they saw the unexpected.\u00a0 If we are to see angels, we will normally see them unawares, so this group of men had an experience granted to very few indeed.<\/p>\n

9 And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.<\/b><\/p>\n

And who wouldn’t be?<\/p>\n

10 And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.<\/b><\/p>\n

This is the first indication I can see in Luke’s gospel that the divine message of salvation in Jesus Christ is for the Gentiles as well as the Jews.\u00a0 And it was a group of humble shepherds who heard it first.\u00a0 In them we see an echo of the humility of God Himself, coming as one of us.<\/p>\n

11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.<\/b><\/p>\n

12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.<\/b><\/p>\n

13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,<\/b><\/p>\n

14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.<\/b><\/p>\n

15 And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

We learn nothing of any discussion the shepherds may have had, we just hear their decision.\u00a0 Possibly one at least was for staying put with the sheep, but presumably they worked out that if God was powerful enough and close enough to them to entrust them with this momentous news, and with the directions to find the Saviour, Christ the Lord, then He could also be relied upon to keep the sheep while they went to see.\u00a0 They were doing trust and faith and I like that.<\/div>\n
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16 And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.<\/b><\/p>\n

17 And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.<\/b><\/p>\n

18 And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds.<\/b><\/p>\n

19 But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.<\/b><\/p>\n

So the shepherds are more than dumb bystanders.\u00a0 They have carried a message to Mary and Joseph about the nature of the child lying before them wrapped up in a feeding-trough.\u00a0 Even though her cousin Elizabeth described Mary’s embryonic child as ‘my Lord’, the last time Mary heard the fullness of things like that was when the Angel Gabriel told her:<\/p>\n

\u00a0He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David:<\/b><\/p>\n

\u00a0And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.\u00a0 (Luke 1:32-33)<\/b><\/p>\n

That He is a Saviour is of course contained in His name in Hebrew: Yeshua, meaning ‘He saves’.\u00a0 Here that meaning is confirmed by the shepherds.\u00a0 And that this salvation is to bring great joy ‘to all people’?\u00a0 Even the Gentiles?\u00a0 Even the Roman soldiers marching about outside?\u00a0 This is radical for Mary and Joseph.\u00a0 Almost as confirmation of her own thanksgiving prayer, sung in Anglican churches as the Magnificat, God is taking the foolish things to confound the wise, exalting those of low degree.\u00a0 A stable, a manger, shepherds and a young Jewish girl called Miriam.\u00a0 According to the old rhyme, ‘How odd of God to choose the Jews.’\u00a0 Even more telling of God’s sense of humour is to choose a woman whose very name means ‘rebellion’ to bear his only-begotten Son.\u00a0 God making a tabernacle in rebellious mankind.\u00a0 Who would have thought it?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I notice the shepherds made all they had been told by the angel ‘known abroad.’\u00a0 And ‘all they that heard it wondered.’\u00a0 Is this just Mary and Joseph who have been told?\u00a0 ‘Known abroad’ and ‘all they’ seems to imply that there were more than two and possibly quite a gathering in that lowly stable already.\u00a0 Perhaps some women from the inn had helped deliver the baby.\u00a0 Perhaps others had come to do ordinary ‘baby-worship’ and now found they were worshipping for a quite different reason.\u00a0 As the song says, ‘Let’s make a baby King!’\u00a0 Maybe a young man, or a doctor had dropped in, or an elderly fellow had popped his head around the door.\u00a0 There would normally be segregation between men and women in strict Jewish society, but inBethlehem\u00a0at that time, who knows?\u00a0 Luke does not tell us, he just says things like ‘all they that heard,’ and keeps us guessing.<\/div>\n
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‘Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.’\u00a0 I’m sure she did.\u00a0 There was a lot there to think about.\u00a0 Tradition is that she kept these things close, learnt to heart or written down and in time told the historian Dr Luke who recorded them for our benefit.<\/p>\n

But what of our shepherds?\u00a0 Their job was done.\u00a0 They didn’t know they had to deliver a message, but they had delivered it just the same.\u00a0 They had also seen the glory of God for a second time that night, this time in the person of a baby, just as they were told they would.<\/p>\n

So they returned.\u00a0 They returned glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen.\u00a0 But they returned nevertheless.\u00a0 There is a time for everything.\u00a0 A time in this earthly realm to spend time wondering and worshipping in the presence of God, and a time to return to work, in this case, to watching over the sheep, keeping them safe.<\/p>\n

God has his timing.\u00a0 Go before He calls, and nothing will be there.\u00a0 Go too late, and they will have gone.\u00a0 Go in His time, and see the Christ-child.\u00a0 Equally, stay too long, after God’s time, and who will keep those sheep safe?<\/p>\n

In an age when too many people yearn for continuous spiritual excitement, let us remember that the shepherds never had a repeat of that glorious night.\u00a0 It happened just once for them.\u00a0 It only had to happen once for them to be able to tell their grandchildren what happened in a field near\u00a0Bethlehem\u00a0one night.<\/p>\n

‘We were watching the sheep, then there were all these angels, and we had to go to Bethlehem, and we saw a baby, just like they said, the Messiah, and we told those already at the stable what we had been told.\u00a0 Then we got the feeling we had been there long enough, so we went back to the sheep.’<\/p>\n

Luke\u00a02:20\u00a0And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.<\/b><\/p>\n

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Luke 2:8-19 By Stephen Green. (First Published in\u00a0Christian Voice\u00a0January 2007) They were the first to hear.\u00a0 A group of shepherds gathered in a field probably on a hillside near\u00a0Bethlehem\u00a0staying out all night to look after the sheep.\u00a0 We don’t do that in\u00a0Britain\u00a0, except maybe at lambing time, and the sheep would not be lambing in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":117,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-7341","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"rttpg_featured_image_url":null,"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"Stephen","author_link":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/author\/stephen\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":null,"rttpg_excerpt":"Luke 2:8-19 By Stephen Green. (First Published in\u00a0Christian Voice\u00a0January 2007) They were the first to hear.\u00a0 A group of shepherds gathered in a field probably on a hillside near\u00a0Bethlehem\u00a0staying out all night to look after the sheep.\u00a0 We don’t do that in\u00a0Britain\u00a0, except maybe at lambing time, and the sheep would not be lambing in…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7341\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}