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