The transcript of a Sermon on Luke 2:15-20 has been lightly edited.
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If you have your Bibles, please take them and turn with me to the Gospel of Luke. Today we are in Luke chapter 2. Once again, we are going to look at verses 15 through 20 in Luke chapter 2, the account of the shepherds after they saw the heavenly angel choirs. And so please, if you have your Bible, please follow along with me as we read from Luke chapter 2, beginning in verse 15.
“15 When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” 16 And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. 17 And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. 18 And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. 19 But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. 20 And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.”
Let’s pray. Father, as I have asked for Your Spirit to give us eyes and ears that can see and hear, I also ask that Your Spirit would give me the words that Your people need to hear today, or not to puff up my own reputation, but so that You might be glorified and so that Your people might be changed. And Lord, lead us to the glorious truth that You have for us today. I pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
INTRODUCTION
We are in the season of Advent, and Advent is a time on the liturgical calendar, which we here in the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church don’t typically follow very tightly.
But here at Fairlea, we do typically celebrate Advent. Advent is a time of joyful expectation. It’s a time where we remember that the Israelites were at one point waiting for a Messiah, waiting for God’s servant to come and to bring redemption, to bring salvation, to bring rescue from all of their hardship and all of their trial.
But we also are waiting as well expectantly for that same Messiah, that same Savior to return. That second coming where all the promises of the new heavens and the new earth will be yes and amen as Jesus returns. He brings the new Jerusalem, those new heavens and new earth with Him.
And those promises that we often read at funerals, those promises found in Revelation 21 are finally and fully realized. No more pain, no more sickness, no more dying. God wipes every tear from our eyes.
But most importantly, God will dwell with His people forever. We will forever be His people and He will forever be our God. It is into this moment of waiting and the shepherds waiting that the angels burst in to that hillside with the glory of God, giving them the joyful message that that Savior, that Messiah has been born and they can run into the city of Bethlehem and find Him.
And then after the angel gave the good news, the heavenly host joined with the angel to lift up these words of praise and prayer to God. Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among those with whom He is pleased. And then the angels went away.
Today, what I want us to look at is the response mainly of the shepherds, but we will also consider Mary’s response and the response of the citizens of the city of Bethlehem. And as we look at this response to the news that something they had waited for so long was finally there, I hope that we will see that the Gospel demands a response.
THE SHEPHERDS RESPOND
So first, how do the shepherds respond? Well, I want us to put ourselves in the shoes of the shepherds here for just a moment.
You are likely poor. You are looked down upon by the other citizens of the country and of the city. And into the midst of this dark night, angels appear to you and tell you the glorious news that the Savior has been born in Bethlehem. The Messiah has arrived. How would you respond to that glorious message?
As I sat here and thought about this, it didn’t happen this way, but you know, the shepherds could have responded with, “Oh wow, that was neat. Alright, so who’s got dinner tonight?” But that’s not how they responded. And Luke records for us five ways in which they responded to this angel message.
Obedience
The first is that they had a quick obedience. When it says there in v. 16, it says they went with haste. Typically when we see this portrayed, we portray the shepherds as running from where the sheep were, running into Bethlehem looking for what the angels had told them they were looking for, and they may have. But the haste there is focused more on the obedient response to what the angels told them to do. In describing what they would find when they found the baby, the angels are telling the shepherds, go and look for this Savior.
And the shepherds quickly respond in obedience to what they have been told by these messengers of God.
Checking the Story
Secondly, they respond by checking on the story. In v. 20 it says that they were telling people, praising God for all that they had seen as it had been told them.
This was not a blind faith. This was not a blind response. They went looking for confirmation that what they had been told was true.
As a Christian, have you ever been accused of living life according to blind faith? Or have you been told that faith is nothing more than looking at the evidence and believing something else because you want that something else to be true? It’s not what faith is about at all. Biblical faith is not blind faith. It is not empty faith.
It is a faith that weighs the evidence. It is a faith that weighs the words. And then by the power of the Holy Spirit, the decision is made to embrace the truth.
And these shepherds went looking for confirmation that what the angels had told them was true and they found it.
Worship
They also responded with worship. It says there in v. 20, the shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen.
They found the baby. They heard the angel choirs worshiping the Lord. They heard the angel messenger telling them about salvation that had come to Israel.
And when they found it to be true, they worshiped the Lord. In the devotionals that I’m posting, we are going through John 1. And this week in one of the devotionals, we looked at how John uses the word world. And yes, there are times like at the end of John where he says the world could not contain everything that Jesus did if it was all written down.
And there, John means the created order. But most of the time in his Gospel when John uses the word world, he is talking about humanity that is in rebellion against God. Humanity who has decided to do things their way rather than follow God.
And when we see that truth of how John uses the word world, well, it changes how we read John 3.16, does it not? For God so loved the world. For God so loved rebellious humanity. That He sent His only Son so that whoever believes in Him would not perish, but would have everlasting life.
And as you consider that, is your heart not moved to worship God? For the truth that He loved you when you were rebellious humanity. He loved you enough to do the horribly hard work of salvation for you. We should be moved to glorify and to praise God when we consider what it is that He has done to secure our salvation.
They quickly obeyed. They went looking for confirmation. They worshiped.
Telling
And they told. When they went, in v. 17, it says, when they saw it, they may have known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. They told Mary and Joseph what they had seen and heard from the angels.
And as they left, they also told what they had seen and what they heard.
Get Back to Life
And the last thing they did in response to this, which may sound a little odd, they got back on with their life. They went back to their flocks.
Martin Luther, as he looked at this particular passage and as he considered the way the church was set up at the time to where the clergy was an extra level of holy above everybody else, an extra level of sacred above everybody else in the secular. Martin Luther looked at this passage and said, no, because two things did not happen.
Number one, the angels did not come to the clergy, to the priesthood of the day. The angel came to shepherds out in their fields. He also did not turn them after they saw Jesus into a new clergy. They went back to work and they sought to be shepherds to the glory of God.
Gavin Childress, paraphrasing one of his quotes, Gavin Childress says, we often think we must gain power in order to make a difference in our culture. Luke repeatedly shows us that God uses and empowers obscure and poor people to change the world.
One popular minister says that his goal in his life is to proclaim Jesus, to die, and to be forgotten. Why would he want to be forgotten? Because his main message is the glorious message that God saves sinners through Jesus. And so we are called to go about our daily lives to the glory of God. Giving the Gospel message when we have opportunity.
Not thinking that we have to be raised to a certain position of power within the culture, within the community, within the church before we can proclaim the good news and before we can serve God according to His glory and His honor. And so the shepherds responded through a quick obedience, through a verification, through worship, through proclamation, and through returning to their lives.
MARY’S RESPONSE
Well, next we see Mary’s response to this.
And Mary’s response is twofold. It says in verse 19, it says, but Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. We even learn later on in verse 51 of Luke 2, and his mother treasured up all of these things in her heart.
Mary actively worked in this treasuring in her heart. She actively worked to remember what she had seen, what she had heard. And then she pondered these things.
Pondering is a word related to meditation. It’s a word that means that we ruminate on, we think about, we seek to apply something that we may not necessarily understand. Think about Mary and Joseph.
Both in separate instances had been visited by an angel. Both had been told that Mary would conceive in a way that nobody else had ever conceived before. Mary was pregnant.
She met her cousin who was too old really to become pregnant and yet became pregnant with John, and then Elizabeth declares that John had leapt in her womb when Mary entered the room with Jesus in her womb. She had taken a long trip from Nazareth to Jerusalem while great with child. She had given birth in a manger and then these mangy shepherds showed up talking about angels and songs and worshiping God and praising Him.
Mary had a lot to think about, didn’t she? She had a lot to ponder. She knew that her child would be the Savior of the world, but she didn’t know what that would look like. The answer to the question, Mary, did you know? Is sometimes yes, sometimes maybe, sometimes no.
She didn’t. But she ponders these things. She thinks about these things because they were new to her.
They were strange to her and she’s trying to filter all this through what she knows about God, what she knows about her child, and what she knows because she’s been told by the angels.
You know, you and I are not omniscient. We think we are because we have Google and chatGPT and access to the Internet.
Number one, we’re not designed to have access to that much information as a human beings, but we really are not omniscient because we don’t know everything, even though we have access to the information. And many times God reveals to us new information. Sometimes it’s new information because we’ve never heard it before.
Sometimes it’s new information because yeah, we’ve read that before, but we didn’t quite understand it the way we do today because life has changed or we’ve matured as a Christian or the Holy Spirit is shining the light of old but new knowledge to us as we study the Scriptures.
How do you react to that new information? The temptation sometimes is to think that we know it all. And when we are given new information that maybe changes how we understand something in the Scripture, sometimes we are tempted to be intimidated by that new information or get angry because we really didn’t want the new information.
And yet, Mary teaches us that the response to the new information that God gives us as we mature, as we study, as we meditate, is to continue that process of maturing, studying, and meditating. Pondering on that information as we study it.
It’s easy, brothers and sisters, as we’re reading our Bible, to think, okay, I’ve finished whatever my reading plan is for the day and it’s time for me to move on.
Or at least that’s a temptation for me. But do we take something out of what we are reading today? Do we pick a verse or a phrase or a statement out of that? And do we ponder it throughout the day? Do we seek to apply it to our lives or to pray through it throughout the day? Are we just reading to check off a task in our day? Or are we studying to understand and to ponder what it is that God would have us to know and then treasure up His Word in our hearts?
BETHLEHEM RESPONDS
So the shepherds respond. Mary responds. And the people of Bethlehem respond. It says here, all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. Some of your translations say that all who heard it were amazed.
And that word can be translated either way, and it’s a word that includes a sense of fear, a sense of awe, a sense of wonder at a divine action. In the Greek version of the Old Testament when the Hebrew was translated into Greek, it’s called the Septuagint and it was published about 250 years before Jesus was born. In that version, this word is typically used to describe the Israelites’ response whenever God shows up miraculously.
But we know throughout the Gospels, whether it’s the Gospel of Luke or the Gospel of John or Matthew or Mark, we know that many people were amazed at the works, the signs, and the wonders that Jesus did. But not all of them went beyond that amazement to belief. And so that leads us to the conclusion of this.
CONCLUSION
This is an open-ended statement. It just tells us that they were amazed. It doesn’t tell us whether or not they fully believed and that leaves us with the question, how do you respond to the good news of salvation? If you have heard something about the Gospel for the first time today, a Gospel that maybe you’ve rejected other times that you’ve heard it, but something is new and fresh in this, that is the Holy Spirit at work in you calling you to put your hope, your faith, your trust in the good news of salvation through Jesus, maybe for the first time.
But maybe you’ve believed for a long time. Maybe you have put your hope, your faith, your trust in that, but the Holy Spirit is calling you to respond yet again, not in salvation because you’ve lost your salvation, because we can’t do that. We can never be taken from the arms of God.
But maybe God is calling you in what you’ve heard today to respond in repentance for a sin that you are harboring. To respond in obedience for an area where you have refused obedience in the past. Or maybe He’s just calling you to respond in glory and praise and worship in a way that you haven’t either ever or in a long time.
Because the glorious truth of what Jesus has done has been made fresh and real for you. How will you respond to the proclamation that Jesus has come into this world to save sinners? Let’s pray. Father above, we do thank You for the shepherds and their example to us.
And we ask, O Lord, that You would help us to respond well to the truths that You have given. May we love You enough to ponder and to treasure Your truth. And may we love our neighbors enough to tell them of Your glorious salvation. We pray all this in Jesus’ name, Amen.
BENEDICTION
As we leave this place today, take the blessing upon you that we begin our service with.
“Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely. And may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful. He will surely do it.”
He who testifies to these things says, yes, I am coming soon.
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
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