Christmas Questions
What was the Shepherd's Sign?
Luke 2:12
One of the things I enjoy most about studying the Bible is finding the messages in the details. It
s relatively easy to see the big pictures and messages it provides, but finding the story in the lesser seen circumstances is very fulfilling.
That is certainly true of the Christmas story. After preaching for 34 years, I've looked at Christmas from just about every angle imaginable. I've done sermon series on prophecy and carols and single verses and extended passages, and tried approach after approach to make it fresh and new.
And while Christmas is a challenge for preachers, it's also a challenge for long-time church-goers. After you've attended 20 or 30 or 40 or more Christmas pageants, and after you have listened to at least that many Christmas sermons, and heard and sung every Christmas carol a few hundred times, we sometimes wonder what more is left to be said that hasn’t been said before?
If you know about Christmas at all, you know about Mary and the angel Gabriel, about the dangerous journey to Bethlehem, about Caesar’s decree, about Herod’s insane jealousy, about the inn with a “No Vacancy” sign, about the angels and the shepherds,
and about the mysterious Wise Men from the east, and the last-second flight into Egypt.
All of these stories are so well known that when we hear them again, we don’t really hear them at all because we’ve heard them all before. We hear but we don’t hear.
That is indeed a problem because, as the old saying goes, familiarity can breed, if not contempt, at least a kind of casual disinterest. Which is sad because the story of Christmas is indeed full of surprises. There are unexpected miracles on every hand. And after all, it tells the most amazing story: That God invaded human history in the form of a tiny, helpless baby.
I've discovered that one of the best ways to fight against the tendency to sleep through a Christmas sermon is to focus on the details. Sometimes it helps to take out the microscope and study just one tiny fragment of the story. By looking closely at a small part, we may see the whole thing in a new light.
With that in mind, I've designed this sermon series to help us focus on some specific questions that arise from the familiar story, and my goal is that, as we focus our attention on those details, we gain a new appreciation for the story.
This morning, I want to once again, focus on one specific verse of Scripture and see what it says to us.
Luke 2:12
So here we have the very first Christmas sermon ever preached. The preacher is an angel and the congregation is some very frightened shepherds.
After the message is delivered, an invitation is extended that includes some very specific instructions as the angel tells them how to identify the baby.
The angels say, “This will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger”.
Once again, for those of us who are familiar with the story, we read the verse and assume we know what it's saying. The shepherds would need a "sign" to identify the baby, and the sign would be a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.
So why would they need a sign to begin with? Well, it's just possible that Jesus wasn't the only baby born in Bethlehem that night.
In fact, Matthew tells us Herod was so concerned about the possibility of a threat to his throne that he did some time calculations and determined to kill all the male children 2 years of age and under that were born in Bethlehem and the surrounding districts, and the implication is there were a bunch.
So obviously, the sign is swaddling cloths and a manger. But to assume that is to miss the sign because the sign God gives is much more obvious than that. In fact, listen to what the angel says, and you can't miss it
verses 10-11
The message was not that a baby had been born. The message was that a Savior had been born, and the sign to them that they had found the Savior would be when they found a Baby that meets the description given.
That means the Baby Himself is the sign. The sign is not so the shepherds can identify a Baby who is wrapped up and lying in a manger, the sign is so they can identify a Savior who came as a Baby wrapped up and lying in a manger.
Think about it this way: Let’s suppose that you have just come to America from another country. You know that our chief executive is called the president, but you don’t know who he is or where he lives.
You’d like to meet him or see him if you could, but you don’t know where to find him. So when you ask for help, someone says, “Go to a place called Washington, D.C. and look for a large building called the White House.
Look for a plane called Air Force One. Listen for a band playing “Hail to the Chief.” When you see a man coming out of the White House surrounded by police officers and secret servicemen, that’s the sign that you’ve found the president.
You’ll know for sure when you see him get in the presidential limousine and drive away. He’s not hard to spot because he’s always surrounded by cameras and reporters. The “sign” of the president is the pomp, ceremony, security, and publicity that surround him wherever he goes.
What is the “sign” that an heir has been born to the throne of England? The answer is: Look on the cover of People magazine and you will see a picture of Prince William. That is the sign. And read the gossip columns. That’s part of the sign too.
And what sign did God choose to signify His coming to the earth? He chose a baby wrapped in strips of cloth lying in a manger. But somehow, outside of the shepherds, the world missed God’s sign. We know that the Jews were looking for a Messiah. Even Herod’s scribes knew that Micah 5:2 predicted that Christ would be born in Bethlehem.
So why didn’t they recognize him when he came? They could not see the divine in the ordinary. They missed him altogether! They wanted something spectacular, a political messiah who would deliver them from Roman domination.
The Jews wanted “a sign,” but they weren’t expecting a swaddled baby in a manger. God gave them a sign and they missed it. It was too simple then and for many people it is still too simple today.
So just for a moment, let’s suppose we don’t know anything about Christmas, and God wants us to know about the Savior, and instead of to the shepherds, it is to us that He says, "Here's a sign so you can know you've found the Savior. He will center the world as a baby and be wrapped in strips of cloth and laid in a feeding trough.
If Luke 2:12 were the only verse we had, what would we discover about the Savior through God's sign?
First, we would know something about
1. His Humanity
"You will find a baby”
“A baby.” That’s all the Greek says. The word means “an infant” or a “newborn child.” It is a totally ordinary word used to describe a newborn child.
That reminds us that Christ came into the world just as we all do. We've already explored the truth of the Virgin Birth, but better said, it was a virgin conception. The real miracle took place nine months before the birth. Everything else was very natural and ordinary.
Jesus grew in Mary's womb for nine months, just like every other human embryo. He entered the world through a birth canal, just like every other baby. He had an umbilical cord that had to be cut, just like you did. By the way, that means Jesus had a belly button. I don't know if it was an "inny" or an "outey", but He had one.
Jesus’ physical birth was completely normal—or as normal as it could be given the unique circumstances.
Now, to acknowledge that Christ was born as a baby, forces us to deal with the truth of the Incarnation. Although he was fully and truly God from all eternity, the Son of God took on true humanity, human flesh, when he was conceived in Mary’s womb and born in Bethlehem. He was not half-God and half-man, but fully God and fully man. He did not cease to be God, although he laid aside the outward glory of his deity. There was never a time when He was not fully God.
And in some mysterious way that is foreign to us, the Lord Jesus Christ was the God-man, two natures joining together in his one Person. In fact, God was so determined we understand that, the Angel of the Lord spoke to Joseph in a dream with instructions to call the baby Immanuel, which means "God with us."
It is the central truth of the Christian faith that God has entered human history to be our Savior. What we could not do for ourselves, He did for us through his Son. Everything else flows from this truth. If He had not been born, He could not have died for our sins. And He would not have risen from the dead. He had to become like us in order to save us. There was no other way.
Many battles have been fought over this basic truth. In the first century the battle raged over his genuine humanity. Did God really become a man? Some people said no.
But listen to what we read in
1 John 4:1-6
John says to deny the humanity of Jesus Christ is to place yourself outside the boundary of Christianity. The defining doctrine between Christianity and every other system of faith in the world is whether or not you believe God invaded human history in a human body.
In our day the debate tends to be over his deity. Few people deny that Christ was a man, but many deny that he was also fully God.
They believe he was a teacher, a leader, an example, and even a man sent from God but they do not believe he was God in the flesh.
The Jews certainly don't believe that, even though many hold Jesus in high esteem.
The Muslims don't believe it. They say he was a great prophet sent by Allah, but they violently deny He was the Son of God. Such a thought is blasphemy to them.
The Hindus don't believe it. In their religion, Jesus might be a god, one among millions of gods, but they do not believe that Jesus is the one-and-only Son of God who was God in human flesh.
But this is what Christians believe. And this verse teaches us that the Lord from heaven entered this earth as a tiny, helpless human baby.
But let's take that a step further and think about
2. His Identity
What does this sign of a baby wrapped in swaddling lying in a manger tell us about Who this Savior is?.
First, notice the phrase, "wrapped in swaddling cloths”.
In that day newborn babies were wrapped in strips of cloth to protect them from the harsh elements. Usually mothers would wrap the arms and legs separately and then wrap the torso until the baby looked liked a little Egyptian mummy.
This seems cruel, and indeed it did severely restrict the child’s movements, but in a world with little medical care, where babies routinely died before their first birthday, it was a way to provide a crude kind of protection.
But those swaddling cloths are a very practical reminder that Mary and Joseph cared for and loved that Baby. They cared that He was warm, they cared that He was safe. So they wrapped Him in the best they had, and made a bed for Him. The swaddling clothes and the manger symbolize the idea that they loved Him.
But in more spiritual terms, those swaddling cloths are a reminder that when God sent Jesus to earth, He was one of us. Hwore our clothes. He walked in our shoes. He dressed as we dressed. He experienced what we experience.
And that he was one of us, qualified Him to be our
- Priest
The priestly role is filled by someone who can connect God and man. And those swaddling cloths are a reminder that God understands us. He has been dressed in our clothes. The swaddling cloths are our baby cloths. Jesus understands what it means to be fully human. When you go through hard times, remember that Jesus knows about this. Jesus understands what we are going through.
He experienced every human emotion and feeling. He felt joy like you and I feel joy. He knew disappointment and tragedy and the betrayal of friends and the disappointments of relationships.
Jesus has gone through what we go through, all the way from the cradle to the cross, and He did it as God in the flesh. He not only understands us, He can take us to where we need to be, where we can be helped and nurtured and cared for. ,
He came to show us that the sorrows and the grief are not the last word. That the last word is triumph, the last word is good. That the last word is life because God has the last word. That is the message of Jesus as our priest.
Another part of His identity is
- provider
It's not by accident that the One Who would one day say, "I am the Bread of Life" would be born in the Bethlehem, the City of Bread, and laid in a feeding trough where sheep and oxen ate grain.
He is the same One that began His ministry by teaching His followers to ask God to provide their "daily bread".
He fed thousands of people by having the disciples distribute loaves and fish. After everyone had enough to eat, there were still multiple baskets of food left over.
At the Last Supper the night before he died, he held bread in his hands and said to his friends, “This is my body that is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me”.
Jesus, the living bread sustains us and provides for us until one day, we live with Him in eternity.
He is our priest and provider, but through those swaddling cloths, we also see that He is also our
- provision
According to Jimmy DeYoung, who is a Jewish scholar, the swaddling clothes were typically used on new-born lambs that were bred for sacrifice. The shepherd would swaddle the lamb and place it in a manger until it settled down from the birth. This would protect it from possible injury that would disqualify it as a sacrificial lamb. When the lamb calmed, it was released to feed from its mother.
To any other passerby, seeing the babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger may not mean much to them, except that the baby was delivered in a less than ideal and sparse location, in a hard stone cold manger.
But when the shepherds saw that baby, it would be a significant sign to shepherds who helped to care for sacrificial lambs, used in Jewish worship to take away sin.
The sign to the shepherds of the baby wrapped in swaddling cloths was that Jesus was born as the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world! He was the ultimate fulfillment of every lamb they had ever tended.
And just like those lambs, this Lamb was also born to die, delivered to the world like a sacrificial lamb. He is the Son of God, yet was delivered not in palaces and wrapped fine linen and laid in a gilded cradle, but in an humble feeding trough.
By the way, that wasn't the last time the body of Jesus would be wrapped in cloths. Thirty three years after His birth, He would be wrapped in linen cloths and laid in a tomb. Matthew, Mark and Luke all record the event as Joseph of Arimathea comes to Pilate after the death of Jesus and asks to take care of His crucified body.
Every one of the gospel writers who record the event give the same details. Joseph took the body, wrapped it in linen cloths, and laid it in a tomb that had been carved out of rock.
The similarities are startling. The same body, once at His birth, and once at His death, is wrapped in cloths and laid in a place carved out of stone. One instance is celebrated as new life is born, and one is mourned as that same life comes to an end.
That reminds us that Christmas is not the end of the story. Jesus did not stay a tiny baby. He was soon kicking off his swaddling blankets and crawling around the feet of Mary and Joseph rather than just being held in their arms.
The only thing scripture that really tells me about Jesus growing up is Luke 2:52, “And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.”
The next thing we read about Jesus is his baptism and ministry when he is 30 years old. And three years later Jesus is again wrapped up in cloths, but this time it is after he has died on the cross.
And once again, Jesus kicked off those grave cloths as three days later at his resurrection, He rose from the grave. So in the moments we have left, let's think about
3. His Destiny
The shepherds would find this Baby "lying in a manger”.
We took a brief look at the manger last week and what it says about us, but think about what it tells us about the Savior.
I find there a subtle hint of His upcoming death because in the very first moments of His life, He was already bearing the only cross a baby can bear—extreme poverty and the contempt and indifference of mankind.
In the words of Francis of Assissi, “For our sakes he was born a stranger in an open stable; he lived without a place of His own wherein to lay his head, subsisting by the charity of good people; and he died naked on a cross in the close embrace of holy poverty.”
This baby lying forgotten in a a feeding-trough is God’s appointed “sign” to us all. This is a true Incarnation. God has come to the world in a most unlikely way.
This is what Philippians 2:7 means when it says that he “made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.”
Nothing about the baby Jesus appeared supernatural. There were no halos, no angels hovering around and no choirs singing. If you had been there, and if you had no other information, you would have concluded that this was just a baby born to a poor young couple down on their luck. Nothing about the outward circumstances pointed to God.
But our God is a God of great surprises! In fact, study the activity of God and you will discover that almost nothing God does makes sense. You can very seldom discover what God is up to by observing the circumstances that are taking place!
And when I consider God's sign of a Baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and laid in a manger, I find it profoundly reassuring that behind Christmas stands a God of great surprises. He does what he wants and he doesn’t ask for human counsel. And from our limited perspective, His ways sometimes make no sense at all.
So let's go back to our original thesis for just a moment. What if Luke 2:12 were the only verse we had regarding the birth of Christ? What would we know and what could we reasonably deduce from this one verse? Here are a few answers.
We would see
- Just how far down Jesus was willing to come to become one of us.
We would see
- the shadow of the cross falling across this Baby sleeping in the manger
And we would see
- the glory of a resurrected Savior Who would one day leave the death cloths that wrapped His body laying in a tomb.
And ultimately, we would see
- The simplicity of the gospel.
That night if you had walked by wherever that manger was located, you would have seen nothing supernatural. Unusual, but not supernatural. Chances are your heart might have been touched by this poor family that had to use a feed trough to let their baby rest.
But if you had hung around long enough, when you heard that baby cry, you would have heard the voice of God. No wonder the world missed him then and still misses him today. And it's a shame they did and do because the sign God provided is so obvious. They see a baby, but not a Savior.
Why do so many miss God's Savior? They don't look at the sign with eyes of faith, and without faith, it is impossible to see God, to know God, or to understand the things of God.
Without faith you can watch a thousand Christmas pageants and never be converted. You can hear and read the Christmas story all your life and still die and go to hell. You can know all the words to all the carols and miss the Savior.
At Christmas time especially, Christ is the elephant in the room. Can you imagine a man who is invited to a formal banquet. Upon entering the room, he is shocked to see that the middle of the room is occupied by an enormous gray elephant. Not a picture of an elephant or a stuffed elephant, but a real, live, moving, breathing, enormous gray elephant lumbering around the room, knocking tables over and generally creating havoc.
When the man goes to the head table, he asks the emcee, “Why is that elephant in the room?” “What are you talking about?” comes the reply. “I don’t see any elephant.” “But he’s right in front of us,” the man says. “I’m sorry, old chap. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Down the line he goes, asking each person about the elephant, and getting the same answer. Can no one else see the elephant but him? Finally, he comes to a man who can see the elephant too. “Why is that elephant here?” Answer: “We don’t talk about the elephant. That’s too divisive. Some people say there’s an elephant, others say there isn’t. So we decided to leave the subject alone.”
So the banquet commences and they spend three hours talking about the meal, the service, and the lovely tableware. But no one ever mentions the gray elephant.
That’s what happens all over the world every Christmas. We get together and talk about Santa Claus and gift-giving and music and lights and sales and any and everything else that has to do with Christmas.
But we don’t dare mention the Christ of Christmas. Instead, we talk about the snowmen and reindeer and elves.
But God sent a sign. And surprisingly, His sign is a baby wrapped in strips of cloth and resting in a feeding-trough in a place called Bethlehem.
To be honest, it’s not a very likely beginning for a movement that will change the world. No doubt, this is a very strange way for a Savior to enter the world. And yet, there He lies, the elephant in the room, God’s appointed “sign” from heaven.
Some of you recognize the name of Bill Engvall. He became famous along with comedians like Jeff Foxworthy and Larry the Cable Guy a few years back.
Engvall has enjoyed great success as a comedian, but perhaps his best known routine is a piece that peaked in the top 5 on both the Heatseekers and Hot Country Albums charts, as well as the top-50 on the Billboard 200. In fact, it is the act that caused his career to take off, and he still remains one of the most popular comedians of the past decade.
The title of the album was called "Here's Your Sign", and the premise is that stupid people should have to wear warning signs that simply state "I'm stupid."
He has several examples of those who should have to wear the sign, and they prove it by asking some asinine question, and then, the question is answered sarcastically, followed by the statement: "Here's your sign!"
For example, a trucker gets his truck stuck under an overpass, and the responding policeman asks "Hey, you get your truck stuck?" The trucker answers, "No sir, I was delivering that overpass and I ran out of gas. Here's your sign."
I was in a hallway, waiting for an elevator when a stranger walks up and asks, “Excuse me, are these the elevators that go up?” Engvall replies, “No, these are the ones that go side to side. Here's your sign."
He and a buddy were getting off of a boat with a stringer full of bass when a guy asks, “You catch all those fish?” Engvall’s reply: “Nope. Talked ’em into givin’ up. Here’s your sign.”
He is on the phone at an airport talking to his wife explaining that the plane hit a deer, when she says, “Oh my! Were you on the ground?” Engvall’s reply: “Nope, Santa was making one last run. Here’s your sign”.
We had one of those moments last week traveling home from Oklahoma City. I was telling Caleb that President Bush had died. He said, "Wasn't he just alive?" Here's your sign!
In similar way, through the birth of Jesus, God says, "Here's your sign!", not because we are stupid but because we are lost. And the greatest message someone who is spiritually lost can ever hear is "There is born to you this day in the city of David, a Savior, Who is Christ the Lord." The world is filled with the sign of His coming, and today, you can be saved.
Let's pray.
