A Third Response: The Shepherds & Good News

December 9, 2011

“After seeing him, the shepherds told everyone what had happened and what the angel had said to them about this child. All who heard the shepherds’ story were astonished…”  (Luke 2: 17-18)

For many years I have wondered why God told the shepherds what He was about to do when He put Christmas in place.  We have seen that the first Christmas happened relatively quietly.  The people who were told about the first Christmas played an important role in that great intervention of God into history.  Zechariah and his wife needed to know because they were to be the parents of John the Baptist, the last and the greatest of the Messianic prophets.  Mary needed to know because she was to be the birth mother of God.  Joseph needed to know how and why his beautiful young fiancé became pregnant.  But why did the shepherds need to know about the miracle of that first Christmas?

I am convinced that a clue to the answer can be found when we realize that unbelief shut the mouth of the first person to know about this miracle.  Mary, who is such a marvelous example for us, was so filled with awe and questions that she did not share the miracle.  However, these lowly simple shepherds told everybody what they had been told and seen for themselves.

As we consider the Christmas that shall be we must follow the example of the shepherds and tell people who have no hope the good news that God is going to do Christmas again when Jesus Christ intersects human history a second time.  Will you prayerfully consider telling people about the Christmas that was and the Christmas that shall be?

Will you give hopeless people a reason to hope?

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Posted by Dick Woodward

Christmas Negligence

December 6, 2011

“But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.” (Luke 2:19)

 After the Angel Gabriel visited the priest Zechariah he went to the village of Nazareth to a peasant girl named Mary.  When he told her she was going to be the mother of God she responded in three ways.  The Scripture states very clearly that she believed and praised God (Luke 1:45-55).  As we might well imagine, we read that she was so filled with awe the first person to question the virgin birth was the virgin. She showed us that honest inquiry is not the sign of a weak faith.  And the verse above tells us that she kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.

When the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament apostles tell us about the Christmas that shall be when Jesus Christ comes back again, they tell us that His coming is the only hope of the world and the blessed hope of the church.  Hope is the conviction that something good exists in this world and we are going to experience it.  Somewhere close to thirty thousand people in America take their life every year because they no longer believe in something good.  In other words, they end their life when they lose hope.

Some believers are so awed by the miracle of the Second Coming they ask questions and experience a “paralysis of analysis” which is followed by much pondering in their hearts.  When we realize that we have a message of hope to tell people without hope about the Christmas that shall be, we simply must share that good news.  It is almost criminal negligence to have this hope and not share it with people who have no hope.

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Posted by Dick Woodward

Unbelief That Shuts Our Mouth

December 2, 2011

“But now, since you didn’t believe what I said, you will be silent and unable to speak until the child is born.” (Luke 1:20)

A teenager once asked me this thoughtful question about Christmas:  “Since there was so much hype about the birth of Jesus Christ, why is it that thirty years later nobody seemed to believe in Him?  You would think everyone would have just been waiting for Him to begin His ministry!”

Actually, there were only a handful of people who knew about that first Christmas.  The first one to know was a priest named Zechariah.  He and his wife Elizabeth were godly people, very advanced in years.  They had no children and the angel Gabriel told Zechariah that he and his wife were going to have a child who would be the last of the prophets to tell us about the coming of the Messiah.  Their son, whom they were to call John, would actually point at Christ and introduce Him to this world.

Zechariah did not believe the angel.  He was therefore told that everything he had heard was going to happen, but he would be smitten mute and not be able to tell anyone until his child was born.  This priest had the greatest sermon to preach that any priest ever had.  God was going to intersect human history!  But he could not preach it because of his unbelief.

Before you are too hard on Zechariah, let me ask you a question.  The New Testament tells us more than three hundred times that God is going to intersect human history a second time when Jesus Christ comes back again.  Have you ever told anybody about that Christmas to be?

 Or does your unbelief shut your mouth?

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Posted by Dick Woodward

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