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Christ Community Chapel is a church in Hudson, OH, that invites people to reimagine life because of Jesus. Learn more about us at ccchapel.com.
This is a reading from Luke
2:1-14.
In those days, a decree
went out from Caesar Augustus
that all the world should be registered.
This was the first registration
when Carinus was governor of Syria,
and all went to be registered, each
to his own town.
And Joseph also went up from Galilee,
from the town of Nazareth
to Judea, to the city of David,
which is called Bethlehem,
because he was of the house and lineage
of David to be registered with Mary,
his betrothed, who was with child.
And while they were there,
the time came for her to give birth,
and she gave birth to her firstborn son,
and wrapped him in swaddling
clothes, and laid him in a manger,
because there was no place for them in.
And in the same region
there were shepherds out in the field,
keeping watch over their flock by night.
And an angel of the Lord appeared to them.
And the glory of the Lord shone
around them, and they were filled
with great fear.
And the angel said to them, fear not,
for behold,
I bring you good news of great joy
that will be for all the people.
For unto you is born
this day in the city of David, a Savior,
who is Christ the Lord.
And this will be a sign for you.
You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling
clothes and lying in a manger.
And suddenly there was with the angel
a multitude of the heavenly host, praising
God and saying, Glory
to God in the highest,
and on earth peace
among those with whom he is pleased.
Hey everybody, good morning
and welcome to Christ Community Chapel.
My name is Joe. I'm
one of the pastors here.
Thanks for coming.
All right.
This is our third week of our Advent
series.
Christmas is right around the corner,
and our theme for Advent
this year is simply joy. Joy.
And the title of this message
is the Joy of Sharing
Jesus, the Joy of Sharing Jesus.
And we get to look at the story
of the shepherds
and I have
I love the story of the shepherds.
I have for a long time,
I think ever since I was a little kid and,
watched the Charlie Brown
Christmas special, Linus
quoted, that passage.
So the reason that I like the shepherds
so much
now, though,
is that I realize they're so unnecessary.
They're not a critical part of the story.
Like, Mary, super important.
Right?
Joseph.
Not as much,
but still really important role.
The wise men.
They bring gifts. That's good.
They're like,
the only ones that realize that Jesus
should have some sort of baby shower.
And they bring high end gifts
gold, frankincense and myrrh.
But Joseph and Mary
don't realize at this point
is that they're going to have to flee
to Egypt and live there
for a couple of years,
and the gold probably came in handy.
It probably financed their trip,
so God was way ahead of them.
But God was not just way ahead of Mary
and Joseph.
God is always way ahead of you and and me.
And usually the only time that we realize
what God has done in our lives
when we take the time to look back.
Probably a good discipline to do that
every once while.
Take a look back
so you can recognize what you didn't
recognize
when God was doing it, because now you do.
But the
shepherds, the shepherds are extra.
And you know, we're so used
to the shepherds being a part of the story
that it kind of makes sense to us,
but it really shouldn't the
like a modern day equivalent of shepherds
would be like truck drivers.
Like if the story started out
and they were in the same region,
truck drivers at a rest stop,
keeping watch over the rigs
at night, right in the glory of the Lord
shown around them.
And they were terribly
frightened of going, why?
Why truck drivers? Why shepherds?
We don't know any of their names.
We don't know how many shepherds there
were.
Right?
None of them circle back into the story
like they would in a good novel.
Like, it'd be very cool
if one of the shepherds became a disciple.
Or even if one of the shepherds
was at the feeding of the 5000
and stood up and said,
I knew you when you were a baby, right?
Nothing
right.
That this.
We end this reading at verse 14,
where the angels cry out, Glory
to God in the highest,
and on earth peace
among those whom with whom he is pleased.
And then the shepherds
take off to try to find Jesus.
And they go to a stable.
And we don't know how many stables
there were in Bethlehem,
but they finally find Jesus.
And then we pick up the story
about the shepherds.
In verse 16 it says,
and they went with haste,
and found Mary and Joseph,
and the baby lying in a manger.
And when they saw it,
they made known the saying that had been
told them concerning this child.
And all who heard it wondered
at what the shepherds told them.
The shepherds.
Right.
That's their their cameo ends right there.
The shepherds were the first ones
to know that Jesus had come.
Shepherds by blue collar men, illiterate,
who spent most of their time,
most of their lives outdoors with sheep
when burned faces, calloused hands, hard
living shepherds
come bouncing out of a barn
with a wild story
about angels and a baby being born
in a manger and a Savior coming in.
The God of God's
visiting.
Finally shepherds
the very first ones
with the joy of sharing Jesus.
I love the story of the shepherds.
If you have your Bibles, you can go ahead
and turn to Luke chapter two.
If you're going to use one of our Bibles,
it's on page 805.
But you could just wait.
And, the verses come up on the screen.
Here are my three points.
This is why it's a joy to share.
Jesus. All right.
The first is that it's a joy to share
Jesus because
it's news, not advice.
It's news not advice.
Number two, it's good and not bad.
And number three,
if it's for them, it's for you.
If it's for you, it's for them.
That's my long way of saying it's
for everyone, right?
It's news, not advice.
It's good, not bad.
And it's for everyone.
First, it's news, not advice.
Sweat. It says in verse eight.
In the same region,
there was shepherds out in the field
keeping watch over their flock by night.
And an angel of the Lord appeared to them
in the glory of the Lord shone
around them,
and they were filled with great fear.
And the angel said to them, fear not,
for behold, I bring you good
news of great joy
that will be for all the people.
There's a big difference
between news and advice.
News is something that has happened.
Advice is something someone gives you
that you should or ought do.
There's a difference between
how it feels to give advice,
how it feels to receive advice.
I spent six years teaching Bible
and being the chaplain
at Cog Valley Christian Academy,
and while I was there,
I learned a lot about communicating.
If I am any good at speaking at all, it's
because of those six years,
because teenagers are so brutal
and honest
and immediate with their feedback.
Like as adults, you guys are much nicer.
Like, I could give you a bad sermon
and you wouldn't say anything.
You'd still be nice.
You would wait until you got in your cars
to say what you really thought
about the message.
But teenagers, they don't.
They don't wait.
They don't know to wait. Right.
So if you're boring and you're
talking to teenagers, they'll just go.
They'll just do this,
or they'll
put their head down on their desk
or anything.
You try to give advice to a teenager
that don't want.
They will show you and your face and
their face what adults feel on the inside.
And let's face it, you know,
most advice you try to give teenagers
is something they don't want.
But when you're giving advice
to a teenager, you'll see their eyes
just kind of go
blank, go dead like shark eyes.
And then, you know, whatever you're saying
is going into the back
of their skull and bouncing
right back at you.
And the reason for that
is, whether you realize it or not.
Advice is direction less.
Why it feels different.
Receiving advice and giving advice.
When I say it's directional,
what I mean is this.
That when you're giving advice,
whether you realize it or not,
you're above a person.
You're saying this is something you
should do, you ought to do
right?
And one of the most interesting things
about this passage
is that the angels come
and they don't give advice.
It says they they give notes, right?
Completely different.
And what struck me is
they could have given advice, right?
They they could have come and given advice
to those shepherds
in virtually any area of their lives
that could have given good
spiritual advice to them,
and it would have made their lives better.
They could have said, listen, you guys.
God sent us to tell you,
you should pray more.
You're out here with sheep.
You got nothing to do.
Just go ahead and strengthen
your relationship with God.
They could have given relational advice.
They could have said, listen, you guys
spend a lot of time away from home.
When you're at home, be present.
Quit looking at your phones, right?
Just be there.
They could have given physical advice.
It could have said, listen, you guys got
to lay off the carbs you're getting here.
You look like sheep, right?
But they don't.
They.
They give news, right?
And that feels completely different
when you give news
that.
Listen, this is what I want you to know
is that virtually every
religion in the world has a lot of advice.
Right? And advice.
Is this the way to make your life better?
But only Christianity has,
at its very core, news
that a Savior has come for you.
If you are trying to share Jesus
with a friend
or a neighbor
or a classmate or a family member,
and you start to feel yourself shift
to advice
and you can see it in their eyes
and you're trying to tell them,
this is really what God wants for you.
This is how God wants you to live. Stop,
stop.
Before Christianity gives any advice,
it gives news.
It gives news.
You know that there's a story
in John chapter one where there's a
a guy named Philip
who comes into contact with Jesus,
and he runs to get a friend,
his friend Nathaniel.
And he says to Nathaniel,
I found the Messiah
and Nathaniel.
And Philip says, It's Jesus of Nazareth.
And Nathaniel says,
can any good thing come from Nazareth?
And Philip fought the urge,
I'm sure to say, why are you so critical
all the time?
You're never going to find the Messiah
if you act like that.
That's not what he said.
All he did was say, come and see.
Come and see.
If you want joy in sharing Jesus,
make sure you're making him news
and not advice.
That's the first thing.
The second thing is that it's good,
not bad.
It's good, not bad.
I don't know how you picture it
with shepherds
out in the field,
I think, you know, it's dark.
They're laying down
or just standing there watching the sheep
and the sheep are lazily grazing
or they're laying, laying down.
All sudden the sky splits
and there are angels riding.
And it says that they were terribly
frightened.
The King
James Version says they were sore afraid.
Now, I think there's probably
a lot of things that made them afraid, but
at least one of them
was the brightness of the light,
because it says, the glory
of the Lord shone around them.
And there's something about light
that can be scary,
because light shows
things as they really are.
If if I meet
you for the first time,
if, let's say we're out in the atrium
and somebody brings you over,
they say, hey, this is Pastor Joe and I.
And I say, oh, hey, nice to meet you.
Why don't you come into the light
so I can take a good look at you?
You'd be like, okay, that's weird.
It would also make you feel uncomfortable
because there's something about light
where you see things as they are.
When I was in college,
I got into the habit
of taking a shower every night before
I went to bed.
Every single night I would take a shower
and then I go to bed.
And in my college mind,
I felt like since I was clean
when I went to bed,
there'd be no reason to wash my sheets
ever.
So in the spring of that year,
it was a beautiful spring day
and the sun was shining in the window.
My bedspread was pulled back
and I looked at my sheet
and I could see the outline of my body.
I looked it looked like the Shroud
of Turin right there, right?
Light shows things
as they really are in this passage.
The angels show up
and there is blinding light,
and the shepherds are in this blinding
light,
completely exposed.
And the angel says
it's good news.
I bring you good news.
You know, there's a,
an old story about a man
who decided
to play a practical joke in a village,
and he ran through the village
shouting, flee!
All is known.
Flee all is known.
And everybody in the town took off
because everybody had something to hide.
Right when the angels show up
and they say, this is good news in a way,
what they're saying is
this all is known,
but it's okay
because now all can be forgiven.
All is known,
but it's
okay because a child has been born.
Run to him, run to him.
In John chapter four, Jesus is by a well
and he begins to talk with a woman
that's simply called the Samaritan woman.
And during that conversation,
he ends up telling her,
you've had five husbands and the man
you're living with is not your husband.
It's like Jesus says, here,
come into the light.
Let me take a good look at you.
And he tells her what she is really like.
By the end of that story,
she goes back to her town
and she is telling everyone about Jesus.
What was she saying?
What she was saying is, listen,
this is there's a guy out there
who told me what I was really like,
who told me who I really
was, and he loved me anyway.
It's what I've longed for my whole life.
Do you want to come see him?
And everybody in the town
ran out to see her.
That's what
this passage with the shepherds
is about.
I mean, the first is that it's.
It's news, not advice.
The shepherds were in no position
to give anyone advice,
but they had great news for them.
The second it is, it's good and not bad.
And the third is if it's for you,
is for them, and if it's for them,
it's for you.
Which is my way of saying
it's for everyone.
But it's not just my way, it's
what the Bible says,
because the shepherds
were at the lowest rung.
Like if it was if the angels went to anybody else to give them the news of Jesus,
somebody
would feel there'd be a segment of society
that would feel left out,
but not the shepherds.
Like when I say that, what I mean is
Jerusalem was six miles away.
Jerusalem
was the religious capital of the nation.
You go to Jerusalem,
you couldn't throw a rock
without hitting a really religious person.
There were Pharisees
and Sadducees and scribes and priests.
They're all over the place.
But that's not who the angels went to.
The angels went to shepherds,
the lowest rung.
And the shepherds
were the ones with this wild story.
And they're telling everybody,
you can't believe what happened.
We're out in the field.
Angels showed up.
They told us there was a baby in a manger.
Told us
the Savior had come. God of God's eyes.
And we saw him.
And I'm sure they ran into people
who said,
we get this straight.
So angels showed up to you guys,
and I think the shepherds probably went,
yeah, in a crazy
us of all people.
He showed up to us,
but he said it's good news for everyone,
and that must be in us too.
And it means you
means he's come for everyone.
Listen, I love good news.
I will I will spread good news
if you give me good news
and you don't want me to tell somebody,
you better make that clear.
And I think that's true of all of us.
A problem that we have
with with good news is, a lot of times,
what's good news for
somebody is not good news for everybody.
Like Ohio State beats Michigan.
Don't mean to kick Michigan
while they're down.
It is what it is.
But Ohio State beats Michigan.
Good news for Ohio State fans.
Bad news for Michigan fans
Indiana beats Ohio State.
Good news for Indiana fans.
Bad news for Ohio State fans.
But here
the angel says
it's good news for everyone.
And the angel tells shepherds
who are at the lowest
rung of the social ladder.
I think it's like
if you've worked for a company
and you're at the lowest
rung of the company
and you happen to run into the CEO,
and the CEO said to you, hey, listen,
I haven't told anybody else this,
but we had an amazing year.
And so everybody in our company,
every single person is going to receive
a Christmas bonus
equal to their annual salary.
And I'm telling you first,
you can tell whoever you want,
what would you do?
Would you go to everybody?
You go to your friends.
You go you you tell people you didn't.
You'd go, hey,
what's your name? Curtis. You work here?
I got good news for you, right?
They may not believe you,
but all you have is good news.
So that's what happens here.
That's what Christmas is about, joy.
That's what
this whole series has been about.
There is joy in sharing Jesus.
It's not that hard.
If you realize
that it's news and not advice
that is good and not bad.
And if it's for you,
it means it's for them.
It's for them, it's for you.
It's for everyone. You know
and everyone you meet
and everyone
you're sitting beside right now.
Joy to the world.
The hymn says the King has come.
Let earth receive her King.
Let's let's have joy this Christmas
and let's go into 2026
sharing with everyone
the good news of Jesus.
Did you pray with me?
Father in heaven,
we come to you and I am so grateful.
I'm grateful that the shepherds
were included in this story,
that even though they weren't necessary
to tell the story,
at least it didn't seem that at first.
It is so good that you pulled them in.
And Lord, I pray for all of us
that you would give us the joy
of sharing the news of Jesus,
that we would keep it news and not advice
that we would tell people it's good
and not bad, that for the first time
there is a God who knows them,
but who still loves them and is.
And they know that because of Jesus.
And I pray
that, you will bring more and more people
and reconcile them to you through your son
Jesus.
We pray this in his name. Amen.