Today we are here to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Can we just stop and thank God right now for loving us enough to come to this earth and save us?

In this series, Immanuel, I pray you’ve been able to see the beauty of what it means that God didn’t think it enough to simply say he wanted us to constantly experience his presence. He actually did it, and really in four ways.
- The Garden, where God walked with us.
- The Tabernacle/Temple where God dwelt with us.
- Jesus where God became us.
- And the Holy Spirit where God chose to live inside us.

If you really want to understand the Gospel in a simple way, it is this:
- He loves us so much he created us.
- He loves us so much he endured us.
- He loves us so much he died for us.
- He loves us so much he chose to live within us.
- And the love that makes all of this possible is Jesus Christ.

Jesus wasn’t born to give us another holiday to celebrate. Jesus was born to die in our place so that we could be made right again. That is love. That is Jesus. That is what we’re celebrating at Christmas.

Last week we talked about the Wise Men and how powerful their gifts were, those gifts that were declarations of who God was to them: King, God, Savior.

Let’s read a portion of the the story of Jesus’ birth from the viewpoint of the shepherds.

Luke 2:1-20
1 At that time the Roman emperor, Augustus, decreed that a census should be taken throughout the Roman Empire. 2 This was the first census taken when Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3 All returned to their own ancestral towns to register for this census. 4 And because Joseph was a descendant of King David, he had to go to Bethlehem in Judea, David’s ancient home. He traveled there from the village of Nazareth in Galilee. 5 He took with him Mary, to whom he was engaged, who was now expecting a child. 6 And while they were there, the time came for her baby to be born. 7 She gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him snugly in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no lodging available for them.
8 That night there were shepherds staying in the fields nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep. 9 Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord’s glory surrounded them. They were terrified, 10 but the angel reassured them. “Don’t be afraid!” he said. “I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. 11 The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David! 12 And you will recognize him by this sign: You will find a baby wrapped snugly in strips of cloth, lying in a manger.”
13 Suddenly, the angel was joined by a vast host of others—the armies of heaven—praising God and saying, 14 “Glory to God in highest heaven, and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased. 15 When the angels had returned to heaven, the shepherds said to each other, “Let’s go to Bethlehem! Let’s see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.” 16 They hurried to the village and found Mary and Joseph. And there was the baby, lying in the manger. 17 After seeing him, the shepherds told everyone what had happened and what the angel had said to them about this child. 18 All who heard the shepherds’ story were astonished, 19 but Mary kept all these things in her heart and thought about them often. 20 The shepherds went back to their flocks, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen. It was just as the angel had told them.

What a tremendous story of God’s promise fulfilled! He put his money where his mouth was and we are the beneficiaries! This alone is encouraging enough, but I want to further encourage you today with three things we can learn that will make a difference in our relationship with Jesus this season.

1. The Shepherds were the first to hear the news.
This is something God does often.
- Abraham heard God’s voice even though he wasn’t the patriarch in that moment we know him now to be.
- Joseph heard God’s voice even as a younger brother with low status in his home.
- Samuel heard God’s voice as a boy when God’s voice had been silent when even the high priest’s ears didn’t hear God.
- The woman at the well was the first to hear Jesus confess he was the Messiah before anyone else.
- Mary Magdalene was the first to see Jesus resurrected.

God constantly uses people who we’d least expect to fulfill his purpose. The shepherds were precisely the same.

We can pretty easily understand why those like Abraham and Joseph and Samuel heard God’s voice even though they were the least likely in their homes to be the ones. Even with the woman at the well, knowing she was a Samaritan, part Israelite and part Gentile, it makes sense why she was the first to hear, “I am the Messiah” as she would be the first to evangelize.
Incredible that the first evangelist was precisely genetically the people God was after - both Jew and Gentile.

What about the shepherds?
I’ve said before that when you read the Bible, you cannot read it as a book about yourself, but rather, for what it is, a book about Jesus. Everything in the Old Testament points to Jesus and everything in the New Testament points to Jesus. So the Bible is not a book that is a linear from Genesis to Revelation, but rather, one that points inward, by design, to the person of Jesus. That means what you read in the Old Testament that leads us to Jesus, its essentially God foretelling how big of a deal this sacrifice that Jesus would be is, and every time you read the New Testament, you are learning how to apply that sacrifice to your life through salvation and discipleship. That’s the Bible.

Enter the shepherds.
The shepherds at that specific field where Jesus was born were the very shepherds who raised the lambs that would be used for sacrifice. They were “Watchtower” shepherds at a place called Migdal Eder who scholars believe were more aggressive in staying ritually clean as they tended the flocks. Why? These were the shepherds that raised the lambs fit for sacrifice. They were the shepherds that knew how to recognize a lamb fit for sacrifice. They were the experts.

The shepherds in this field were the very first ones beyond Mary and Joseph to ever lay eyes upon baby Jesus, who would be the sacrificial lamb. And not just a sacrifice, but the sacrifice to end all sacrifices.

How fitting that God would reveal his birth to the very people who were experts at identifying the sacrificial lamb?

What is my point? When you are looking for God, you’ll find him.

I don’t mean to say that the shepherds were actively looking for the Messiah, but their entire existence was shaped by the atonement sacrifice. When you put their role in identifying the sacrificial lamb, keeping them safe, embracing the responsibility of that role, it makes sense that their hearts would be leaning towards God more earnestly.

I know you want to hear God. I know you want to be in his will. I know you want to honor him and live for him. So let the shepherds being the first to hear remind you that:proximity to God is the key.

John 10:27
My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.

‘They follow me.” That’s proximity. The sheep stay close to the shepherd. FYI the voice you hear loudest is the shepherd you’re following, good or bad

If you want to be in the middle of the will of God for your life, it has to begin with you being willing to draw near to him. The closer you are, the clearer his voice, and the more impactful the relationship. How impactful? This is the result of Jesus as your shepherd:

John 10:28
I give them eternal life, and they will never perish

I am convinced the shepherds heard the news first because they had ears that were listening. “He who has an ear, let him hear.”

2. The Shepherds were the first to worship.
I love that before the shepherds worshipped, worship was modeled to them.
Luke 2:13-14
13 Suddenly, the angel was joined by a vast host of others—the armies of heaven—praising God and saying, 14 “Glory to God in highest heaven, and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased.”

What response would you have given in that moment? If you think about it from the shepherd’s perspective, this kid in the manger was threatening their livelihood! No more sacrifices meant no more sheep.

I think two interesting things happened that we can draw from this.
First, they had an encounter with Heaven.
Psalm 34:8 Taste and see that the Lord is good;

They got a foretaste of what Heaven would be as the hosts of Heaven sang over them. The result was not just astonishment and awe, but action.

When was the last time you had an encounter with Heaven?
Sundays for an hour aren’t enough. Have you slowed down enough this week to get lost in an encounter with God? That encounter made them not only stand in awe, but rush to Jesus’ side.

Second, they saw him.
This might not sound like much, but when you understand the moment, you’ll understand how important it was. Remember he wasn’t just a baby, but the sacrifice, the long awaited Messiah. It would have been one thing for a person to reveal this news, but for them, the army of Heaven appeared and told them. They were looking at God’s promise fulfilled, Immanuel.

When was the last time you really saw Jesus? And I don’t mean the little baby Jesus’ we see all over our campus from time to time.

I mean when is the last time you really saw him as, for instance:
your provision when you were stressed about finances?
your healing when you were broken i heart or body?
your comfort when you were grieving or overwhelmed?
your grace when you were feeling conviction for sin?
your peace in the midst of the storm and struggle?

When was the last time you saw Jesus as the one of the over 3000 promises in the Bible he is to us?

The natural result when we see our problems is doubt. The natural result when we see his promises is worship. Which are you seeing this morning?

Their ears were open so they heard it first. They had a touch from heaven and saw Jesus and they worshipped.

3. The Shepherds were the first to tell it.
The shepherds left rejoicing. You might think they would want to just stay. I would have. They’d just encountered the King of Kings, the Savior of the World. I would want to stay in that moment.

But what the shepherds realized is now that the King had come, the Savior was here, they didn’t need to stay there at the manger, but Jesus went with them. He wasn’t God with us for a moment, but God with us constantly. From this moment on, “would he” stopped being the question. Now it was time to declare from the rooftops and mountaintops. They had to go and tell the Good News, the Gospel, Jesus had come.

And that’s what they did. Interestingly enough, that’s what we do when we encounter something amazing. You tell it.

This week I installed one of those HVAC whole house scent machines. In 10 seconds, Fall Farmhouse filled the entire building. You see, I’m doing it now. I’m telling it.

You want to know one of the things missing the most from church today? Telling it. In one sense, telling people about Jesus. It is hard for us to evangelize, but there’s a reason why. Let me punch a little here.

If someone walked up to you today and gave you a paid vacation to the Bahamas, you’d probably tell someone about it. If someone paid off your car, you wouldn’t be able to keep quiet. If I gave you a Christmas ham today, you'd probably say something about it as you were eating it on Christmas. In fact, let’s give a ham away this morning.

Now what’s my point?
The more moments where heaven touches earth and you truly see Jesus in your life, evangelism stops being an issue and starts being a compulsion.
I just think we don’t experience him regularly enough to motivate us to tell others about him.

A few weeks ago we bought a trailer for the church. The lady we bought it from at Big Tex in Beaumont and I started talking about faith because we were buying it for the church. She said she was raised by pagans who were in witchcraft. She’d tried church once but wasn’t really welcomed. Before I left the table, I had to say something. I couldn’t stop it. “I don’t want to force anything on you, but I would be remised if I didn’t tell you how very precious you are to God.” I told her I was sorry for the bad experience before, but if she would open her heart to him, he’d make himself known.
I didn’t force it, but I was in tears telling her about Jesus. “He has changed my life for eternity and I can’t say I love you as a fellow human being without telling you about him before I leave today.”

I am definitely not perfect in how much I witness to people and I could always do it more, but in that moment, I saw her heart and how Jesus saw it, and the tears were the result of me seeing Jesus and how he saw mine.
The result was that I had to tell her. HAD to.

1 Peter 3:15
in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect

That’s all I was doing. It wasn’t, “I’m morally superior and you need to get right.” It was, “Jesus loved unlovable me. I have to share him with you.”

We can’t truly tell someone about a God who we rarely experience personally. That’s when telling it is tough.

In the other sense, what’s missing is how much we tell each other about what God is doing in our lives. It could be because, like I mentioned before, we aren’t having experiences with him, but it could also be a weird sense of false humility that permeates the church as if when you tell how good God is, people see it as boasting.

Why do we think that? That’s not boasting! It is telling the good news!

Jeremiah 9:23-24
23 This is what the Lord says: “Don’t let the wise boast in their wisdom, or the powerful boast in their power, or the rich boast in their riches.
24 But those who wish to boast should boast in this alone: that they truly know me and understand that I am the Lord who demonstrates unfailing love and who brings justice and righteousness to the earth, and that I delight in these things.

The shepherds weren’t screaming, “WE SAW HIM FIRST!” They were just screaming, “WE SAW HIM!”

So what am I encouraging us to do with this today?
Tell the Good News that Jesus was born, lived a perfect life, died in our place, rose again so we could have his life, and that if we confess him as Lord, believe in our hearts, and repent of our sins, we’re saved.

But also tell the good news that God is still active and working in our lives.
When we hear of what God is doing in others, it gives us confidence that what he’s done in others he can do in us! The result is that we hear God, we worship, and we tell it.

I have good news to tell you today.
Not only did God fulfill his promise of Immanuel, God with us, but that Jesus was born, he did die, he was raised again.

I have Good News that if you will simply confess him, believe on him, and repent of your sins, you will be saved, and you’ll not only get Heaven someday, but heaven now as well.

I have good news today that God is still speaking to us, and if we’ll listen, we’ll hear him, good news that he is still good and faithful, worthy of our worship, and good news that the more we experience him, the more we’ll love telling it.

How do you need to experience him this Christmas?

There’s no better time than right now to give your life to Jesus. It isn’t hard: “Jesus I confess you are Lord. I believe in you. I repent of my sin. Save me.”

Maybe your experiencing him needs to happen more.
Commit to leaning into him more than ever this Christmas. Get close.

Maybe those close moments with Jesus are what’s missing.
the closer you get, the easier it is to worship and tell the good news.

However you need to respond, let’s pray.

What is the Holy Spirit saying to you through this message?

How does he want you to respond?