Dennis Tuuri

While they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you. You shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, 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, goodwill toward men.”

Let’s pray.

Almighty God, we thank you for your scriptures. Help us to understand, Lord God, and to hear the message the angels brought that evening—to understand it and its implications for ourselves, for our families, for our communities, and for the entire created order. Almighty God, help us to sing your praises more fully this day in Jesus’ name. Amen.

It came upon the midnight clear, and that’s what we’re going to be speaking of this morning.

What was it that the shepherds heard? Why was it important? What was this birth announcement? What did it contain in it? What relevance does it have for us today? It’s been said by some that this sermon—kind of look at it that way—by the angels that came to the shepherds was the perfect example of a sermon: it was short, concise, to the point, and powerful. Well, I’m no angel, and you’re probably not as attentive as those shepherds were either.

But we’ll try to understand what they said and the implications of it for ourselves now by spending a little time going through it. I do want to move through it fairly quickly though. Really what I have to say this morning, it’s a joy to me to say that probably most of you already understand much of these implications, and that’s a great thing, and we can hurry through some of this perhaps and talk about the central aspect of peace on earth.

And I’m just so pleased to be in the context of a church that’s understood in all its implications and ramifications. But it’s good for us to set aside this morning a consideration of just what it is that we celebrate at Christmas time. What did the birth of Jesus Christ mean for ourselves and for the world? And we’ll get an understanding of the implications of that if we just look at this royal birth announcement that is talked about in Luke 2.

And that’s what it is really. It’s a birth announcement. Now, first we want to talk about the message itself, the birth announcement itself. You know, a lot of us are homeschooling, and my one of my younger girls was writing an essay the other day—a little story on Indians—and my wife helped her to write it. And she taught her, you know, you have to figure out who, what, where, and when. And if you had those components of the story down, you can understand what’s being said.

And so we’re going to kind of approach it that way for a little while here with this birth announcement. Who, what, where, when, and why is this said.

Now, what is rather easy? It’s a birth. We said this is a birth announcement. The what is obviously a birth. But when did this occur? And that’s our first point under the message itself. This occurred on this night the angel said that this evening—this very evening itself, this day rather—that the Savior was born.

Now the day of course in the terminology used ended and began with sunset, and we know it was nighttime because the shepherds were guarding their flocks at night. So we know it was nighttime when they came to them, and that’s pretty clear. The question is: is this really December 25th? That’s one question we want to know if we’re going to say when did this birth announcement take place? We can’t know with any kind of definite answer whether it was December 25th or not.

Many of the reasons though why people say it couldn’t have been December 25th are really not that appropriate. Some people say the roads were not really passable at that time of the year in that part of the country. Well, they really are passable that time of the year. If there was any kind of winter—like winters are somewhat similar to our winters—they could have been ahead of quite a mild winter. The roads would have been very passable. So that’s not really an argument against a winter dating for this announcement.

Additionally, it’s said that the emperor or Caesar Augustus would not have decreed that all people should go to their homes during the winter season when travel might have been tougher in other parts of the region. Well, the problem with that is that the decree really gave them the whole year apparently to go to their towns to be taxed. And it just seems like Mary and Joseph were probably like a lot of us. They were kind of late filers, I guess, is the way to think of it. They didn’t go to their hometown till pretty late in the year, so that’s not really an argument against it either.

Another argument is that well, it didn’t really start being celebrated by the church until the mid-300s. And while there is an official establishment by Constantine in the 300s of December 25th as the day of the celebration of our Lord’s birth, it’s true also that many people earlier than that time—much earlier—also referred to that date. This one example: Hippolitus himself referred to December 25th as the birthday of our Lord. He was a disciple of Irenaeus, who was a disciple of Polycarp, who himself was a disciple of the Apostle John. And so we have some good evidence from the early church fathers prior to 300 that indeed this was the date already considered as the date for our Lord.

Now all this doesn’t really prove the case. It really says that it’s the traditional date. But as Lensky in his commentary on this passage points out, December 25th is only a traditional date, but it is at least traditional. Okay. And most of the arguments against December 25th posit no other date, and they have no founding in anything other than speculation. And so at least it is a tradition of the date.

So the when of the birth itself may well have occurred December 25th. There are many reasons to think it did occur then. If you’re more interested in pursuing that, Greg Skipper found a real good book at a used bookstore where a man who’s a good scholar dealt with the date of Christmas itself and shows the evidences for it probably being that time of year. Okay, so that’s the when. It happened at night. This birth definitely occurred at night. That’s when the angel came as well.

What’s the where of this story? The where of the birth and the announcement. There it says that it happened this evening. The where was the city of David. Now it’s interesting that the angels refer to Bethlehem as the city of David. When you hear the term city of David, many people would think initially of Jerusalem, that was where David reigned, that’s where he set up his reign and his center of the nation that he established. And so many people would associate Jerusalem with the city of David. Why is this called the city of David—Bethlehem?

We find out one reason in 1 Samuel 17:12. We’re told specifically that David was a son of the Ephrathite of Bethlehem. So Bethlehem was David’s hometown actually. Okay. And so it was David’s hometown. That’s another way to look at it: the where of this. It happened in David’s hometown.

Now it’s interesting, if you’re into a little oddities about Bethlehem in the scriptures, that Bethlehem is mentioned a couple of other times. Of course it’s mentioned in the book of Micah as the birthplace of the coming Messiah. That’s really important. We get to that in a minute. But it’s also mentioned in Jeremiah 41:17.

Now to explain that though, we got to go back to 2 Samuel 19:38. In 2 Samuel 19:38, we see David is now returning to Jerusalem after the death of Absalom. And he’s going back across into the region where he had to get taken out of because of his son and his rebellion. And he promises an ally that he had on the other side of territory there across the river. He promises this ally that he’ll give this blessing to a man that this ally has chosen. This man’s name is Chimham. He wanted to give this ally a blessing or gift of some type. The man said, “No, don’t worry about me, but give Chimham. He’s a good man. I want you to give him something.”

Well, the only other occurrence we have, I think, of that name Chimham is in Jeremiah 41:17. And it’s recorded there that Chimham apparently had a lodging place or an inn at Bethlehem, which is kind of interesting. So David gives Chimham—many people think this is in his hometown—as the gift for the support he had from his old ally who was a friend of Chimham. And later on we read about Bethlehem in the account of the nativity, and we read that Mary and Joseph were there in an inn. Was it the same inn? I don’t know, but it’s interesting.

More importantly though, I think, the reason why it’s called the city of David here as opposed to just identifying the city as Bethlehem is because we see here the beginning of a contrast. In chapter 2 in the very first verse, it says that there’s this decree that came out from Caesar Augustus. Now Caesar Augustus was the first emperor—true emperor—of the Roman Empire, and he had established a rule over the entire known world at that time. And so we have here a great king being talked about in verse one. And our Lord’s parents are seen as moving in obedience to the decree of the king Caesar, who came to reign about 20 or 30 years before this time apparently.

And so now, when the angels come to pronounce this birth, they point out that it’s a royal birth announcement that they’re giving. It’s from the city. The birth has occurred in the city of David. David was the king. And so we have a reference here back to the kingly status of the city and the person that’s being born in that city that evening.

Additionally, the angel goes on to talk about Bethlehem. And as we said from Micah, Bethlehem was said that a ruler would come forth to rule Israel, a king. And of course the wise men understood that as well. They knew that one was born king of the Jews. And so they came later on in chronology of matters. But they recognized that the city of David, Bethlehem, contained a king. And so what we see here in the where of the announcement, the city of David, is a contrast with the other king, Caesar Augustus. We have a new king being born here. And that’s very important.

Jeremiah 23:5 says, “I’ll raise up from David a righteous branch, and he will reign as king and act wisely and do just justice and righteousness in the land.” And so now in the city of David, one was born of David’s lineage and he was going to be raised up a king. And so it’s a royal birth announcement.

Well, they go on to identify the person that the birth announcement speaks to. Having identified now the time and the place, we now move to the person, the who of the birth announcement and the why. It is said that there’s born this evening a Savior. Now, it’s important to recognize here that the article—the word “a”—which is in the King James version in the Greek, there’s no article placed to the term Savior. It’s an assumed word. The importance of that is that the angels are telling the shepherds then that primarily what we have here is Savior. What’s born is Savior. Okay. The Savior, the ultimate Savior.

And that characterizes his whole life and ministry as being the Savior. But they go on from then to move into other terms for him as well. They go on to say that unto you was born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. Now that’s an interesting construction there as well. Christ refers to Messiah, the anointed one of the Old Testament. And Lord means ruler, king, sovereign. Okay, the person that exercises dominion in an ultimate sense.

And so what we have here is identification of the one being born is a Savior, and he’s royal. As we said before, he’s Lord, and he’s Messiah. He’s the hope of the Old Testament. And all those references to Messiah are now coming to completion that evening with the birth of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is Savior first and foremost. And the implications of that are that Jesus Christ is Messiah, the anointed one, and he is the Lord. He is the king. And then again, that contrast this birth with the pronouncement of the decree in the first part of the chapter in terms of Caesar Augustus.

We have here the true King of Kings who is being born. And that is important to realize at this point. The Benedictus and the Magnificat that we’ve talked about so much over the last few weeks—that we recited earlier this morning—are finding fruition now. They’ve come together. Jesus the Savior, Christ the Lord has been born. And that’s who the birth is announced of.

Let’s look now—having looked at the who and who was born, where he was born, and when he was born—now let’s look at the wrappings of the birth announcement itself. In a way, the envelope that it came in, if you’ll just indulge me there for a moment.

We’re told here that in verse 9 that the angel of the Lord came upon them and the glory of the Lord shone round about them. Now, that’s important, too. That glory being spoken of there is the Shekinah glory of God. And that had been so long absent from the people in the intertestamental times. And now, the glory of God appears in the middle of the night to announce the birth of God’s only son. And so the envelope was the Shekinah glory of God. This glory revealing the person of God himself and a manifestation of the holiness and righteousness of God.

It’s interesting that if you ponder on this for a moment here: the shepherds were incredibly afraid. It got very bright. This was not just a soft glow in the night. This was the glory of God being manifested in physical form. This tremendous brightness roared up in front of the shepherds who were in the middle of a dark night.

And it’s interesting to me that the birth of Jesus Christ is accompanied by the turning of darkness—nighttime—into daylight. And we remember that when our Savior dies on the cross, daylight is turned into nighttime. Darkness falls on the land for a period of time in the middle of the day. And this is the reverse of that. You see, this is important because we see that all nature now witnesses to this birth and to the events in our Savior’s life.

Nature is seen as controlled, governed, and manifesting Jesus Christ, who of course created everything to begin with. That’s important to recognize. The shepherd’s response was great fear. Not just a little bit of fear. They feared with great fear is the meaning of this term here. They were really afraid. And the angel’s first thing he says is, “Fear not.” That is interesting, too.

Zechariah and Mary also were greatly afraid when the angels appeared to them. And the first thing they’re told is, “Fear not. We bring you good tidings of great joy.” The angels are there to help the shepherds. So, part of the envelope, the wrapping around this birth announcement is this glory of God. The other side of it—after the birth announcement is completed—then we see myriads of angels appear all at once praising and glorifying God.

Some births at this time in the history of the nation Israel, births were frequently announced with the singing of people at the door of the couple that had been given birth. We have today kind of an equivalent. We have like singing greeting cards, you know, send somebody a guy singing a song if you want to announce the birth of your baby. Well, this is like the ultimate singing card, okay? Singing greeting card. And today we have, you know, in this time of year, we have singing Christmas trees, right? People get up and they form a big tree. Well, this is like thousands of God’s heavenly host roaring forth the glory and praise of God. This is the ultimate singing Christmas tree, I guess, too, is the way to think of it.

This is a whole host, a plethora, a tremendous multitude of heavenly hosts. The word host there is properly translated army in many translations. We have here the army of God coming to announce peace on earth and singing forth the praises of God. The great heavenly host has arrived.

Now the angels—it’s interesting how this reads. When you read these angels suddenly bursting forth into the scene after the announcement is made and singing this great song, or chanting it, or saying it, whatever they were doing. And it’s interesting, it seems to me, the way it’s written here: the angels understood the implications of what was going on here. They’re the ones who beheld God’s face, who stood in the presence of God. They were God’s creatures and creating his glory around him.

And these angels now recognized that God had done a tremendous thing in sending his only begotten son, one member of the Trinity to earth as a little child born in a manger to save mankind. And it’s like the angels understood the implication of what God had done, and they burst forth into the scene singing the praises of God. And they also understood the implications of what it would mean for mankind as well. First they glorified God, and they also talked about the glory and the peace that would come to mankind as well on the basis of that.

And let’s move to that then—the result of the birth announcement—and that’s found in verses 10 and 14.

Verse 10, the angel says to them, “I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people.” Okay. Good tidings of great joy. The word good tidings is good news. It’s evangelize. Okay. I evangelize you. I evangelize to you. Great joy is the way Matthew Henry and other translators interpret that phrase. They’re preaching the gospel here. They’re evangelizing. They’re proclaiming the good news. And the good news is to be of great joy to the recipients of the good news.

It says to all people, but actually there is the term in there—all the people. It’s a specific group of people. And the people is frequently used of course, that term, in the gospel accounts to indicate the people of Israel. So this coming was to be great joy to God’s covenant people specifically and primarily—has implications for all the world and all people. And so Calvin says that it’s proper to translate it “all people” because with the expansion of the gospel age it does affect all peoples in that sense—it’s an invitation to all the world. But primarily here the Greek is very specific: it’s the people, the covenant people of God, that are being talked of here.

I evangelize you with good news bringing you the great joy which shall be to the covenant people of God. And then in verse 14 the heavenly host appears and sings, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.” And this is the title of this morning’s sermon: the Gloria in Excelsis. The royal birth announcement and the Gloria in Excelsis.

Gloria in Excelsis—glory in the highest—is the term for this specific song of the angels. Now the early church had the Gloria in Excelsis in many of their early liturgies. They expanded it, however. I’ll read you the form as it appeared in many of the liturgies of the early church:

“Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace, goodwill towards men. We praise thee. We bless thee. We worship thee. We glorify thee. We give thanks to thee for thy great glory. O Lord God, heavenly king, God the Father Almighty, O Lord, the only begotten son, Jesus Christ, O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. Thou that takest away the sins of the world, receive our prayer. Thou that sitest at the right hand of God the Father, have mercy on us. For thou only art holy, thou only art the Lord, thou only, Christ, with the Holy Ghost are most high in the glory of God the Father. Amen.”

That’s the Gloria in Excelsis. And that is an expanded form of what the angel saying here. Somehow, when you’re struck with the simplicity of this great message that the angels beam forth in this royal birth announcement, when men start to deal with this—like I’m doing this morning—you tend to get kind of wordy about the whole thing. It’s hard to capture all the beauty and the magnificence of what God has said in the simple statement that the angels beam forth that evening to a group of shepherds.

Efforts go on to say, “Glory to God in the highest. And on earth peace. Goodwill to men.” This is a phrase that many interpreters argue about. The word here—the phrase that’s difficult—is what does it mean in terms of goodwill? Okay. “On earth peace, goodwill toward men.”

Does that mean that goodwill goes to all men? Well, no, that’s not theologically correct, because this peace isn’t for all men. Isaiah tells us clearly that the righteous—or the wicked rather—have no peace. They’re like the sea always churned up. So what does it mean?

Well, without getting into a lot of detail, I hope there are two different Greek words here. It’s either Eudokia or Eudokias. And there are two different sets of texts that have these two different variant readings. The importance of that little “s” at the end of the second reading is that it changes the case of the thing and it modifies then “men.” Otherwise, it says “goodwill toward men.” One voice that says “men of good will.”

Another way that this group here that believes in Eudokias believes it to be translated is “men on whom God has taken pleasure” or “men of God’s good will.” In other words, men on whom God has given his goodwill to—that particular set of men. To those men, the peace comes. Now, I think that’s probably a better translation. I don’t think it’s important theologically one way or the other, but I think it’s probably a better translation for several reasons.

First of all, the majority of the accepted texts have that “s” at the end of the term. Secondly, it was a frequent Hebraism. The frequent use of the Hebrew term was “men of God,” “men upon whom God is well pleased,” “men of God’s good pleasure.” That was a frequent term as found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, for instance. And so it would have been an accepted and understood thing to these Hebrew shepherds guarding their flocks at night. They would have understood that phrase. That’s another reason to suppose it’s correct.

And then third, I think this is really important to consider too. It preserves a parallelism here in these two lines. There’s a kinetic parallelism in these two lines of text. You know, when we do responsive readings, there’s a statement in the Psalms, then there’s a response on the part of the people that mirrors that basically and says it again in a different form, or from a different perspective, I guess. Well, the same thing’s going on here.

There’s a parallelism. We have, “Glory to God in the highest.” Okay? So we got the highest contrasted with “on earth peace” as opposed to “glory to God” and “peace to men of goodwill.” So you have two separate statements here: “Glory to God in the highest” and “Peace to men of goodwill on earth.”

And so there’s a parallelism here that I think is very probable. I think it’s probable that that’s the way the verse is written here. It should be understood. The peace to men of God’s good pleasure on earth is a result of the same thing that is resulting in the glory of God in the highest. Okay. So there’s a parallelism there that I think is important to preserve.

The important question though, and the real question I want to talk about this morning, is what’s the nature of that peace? What does it mean—peace on earth? Okay, forget the fact that we’re not sure if goodwill modifies man or if it’s God’s election. We know it’s God’s election ultimately. We don’t know the sense of the text necessarily definitively today. But the important thing is: what does it mean that peace is given to those men? What is this great announcement that this whole host of angels burst forth in praise to God of?

Now certainly one aspect of this is the peace of the Benedictus—the peace of God which surpasses all understanding. Peace with God through the covenant mediator who had now arrived to make covenant peace for his elect community, the people, the people of God’s own choosing and with whom God is well pleased.

Now, it’s interesting that in Mark 1:13, we find Jesus in the wilderness and it’s temptation, and he’s amongst beasts. It said he’s out there with the wild beasts. And Jesus at his birth is in a manger. He’s in a stable, which is the place of beasts—wild animals, not wild but tame animals, but still animals. And I bring that up as it’s a little illustration, I think, of this peace of salvation. It’s a restoration, a reconciliation with God.

We are in a sense beasts in the fallen state. We’ve denied the image of God in ourselves. We’ve rejected that. We’ve worshiped the created thing. We’ve become a beast. The way that Nebuchadnezzar, for instance, was another good picture of that. Crawling around on all fours for a number of times, acting like a beast, eating the dew on the grass. That’s fallen man. He’s a beast. He’s given up his humanity as it were.

And Jesus comes back in the midst of beasts and brings them back to being man. He transforms them back from beasts into men. And that’s part of the peace that’s being spoken of here. Salvation—a restoration to man in terms of right covenant relationship to God and a restoration of them then as true men and women of God, born of the second birth.

Man’s peace and reconciliation with God is certainly being declared here. But I think there’s more.

The Hebrew word shalom from the Old Testament. And let’s remember of course that what they’re announcing here, among other things, is the Messiah. The fulfillment of all the Old Covenant prophecies of Messiah. They say Messiah is born tonight. And so it’s appropriate to look at their message and what it would mean in the Hebrew from the Old Testament which spoke to the Messiah. What was the peace Messiah would bring?

Well, the Hebrew word is shalom. And that word is important for us to remember to consider what it means. That word translated shalom in its root form speaks to a state of whole—of wholeness. Fullness, salvation, and unity, a restored relationship. It doesn’t just speak to a cessation of hostilities or to man’s personal peace. It speaks instead, quoting now from the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament:

“The root meaning of this verb better expresses the true concept of peace. Completeness, wholeness, harmony, fulfillment are closer to the meaning. Implicit in shalom or peace is the idea of unimpaired relationship with others and fulfillment in one’s undertaking.”

Now that’s how the term peace is used throughout the Old Covenant writings. It’s a completeness, a wholeness, a concord, a bringing back to true life in all of its manifestations.

The second thing we find out about peace in the Old Covenant is that it was the peace of the covenant. The covenant itself is said to be a covenant of peace in various texts of the Old Testament. And so the peace, the shalom that’s to come comes in the context of the covenant. And so peace is seen as all the blessings of covenant life lived in relationship to God, the Lord of the covenant, of course. And so peace is to be understood covenantally as flowing from the flowing forth of the blessings of correct covenant relationship to God.

Additionally, in the Old Testament, as I said before, peace was an eschatological term that referred to the coming time of the Messiah. We sang a song earlier, and it’s a quote from the Old Testament, that his name will be called Prince of Peace. There are churches today that are called Prince of Peace. It’s an Old Testament term. And it meant that the one becoming the Messiah would be a prince. He would be a king, and his kingly reign would produce peace.

All these blessings of wholeness, salvation, completeness, harmony, total fulfillment. One picture of that in the Old Covenant is of the man sitting under his vine. That was a common picture of peace in the Old Covenant. And that implies a couple of things. One, he doesn’t have to be worried that somebody’s going to break in and steal the fruit off his vine. So there’s freedom then from danger from enemies. And there’s also a freedom then to pursue prosperity. The vine is a symbol of prosperity and dominion under God and the blessings of that. All those things are wrapped up in the term peace according to the scriptures.

Peace means essentially then wholeness, health, salvation, completeness, concord, covenantal blessings in all of its forms. It meant peace with God certainly, but it also meant peace with man and with nature itself. Again, our Lord embodied that peace with nature that was to be progressively worked down the world after his coming. When he was out, the wild beasts and he didn’t get torn up. He had peace with nature. Remember the waves obeyed him. There was peace between himself and nature.

That had been once true of man in his calling in the garden, but man had fallen, and as a result produced enmity between himself and the created order as well.

Now this concept of peace—being holistic, I guess, to use a modern term—being one of wholeness and completeness is not really something that was understood commonly, I think, in years past. It sounds a little different to us today. We think of peace today as a cessation of hostility, or at most peace with God in terms of salvation and then we can go to heaven and everything will be great. But this idea of earthly peace and a wholeness to our lives once we’re in correct relationship to God—this was understood, and the implications of that for the nation were understood throughout really the history of Western man.

We have an anachronism of it when we have laws against disturbing the peace in our land today, right? It’s a you know, to break—there’s a category of crimes known as disturbing the peace. And you may think that’s stretching it a bit, but if you look at the origins of disturbing the peace, it goes back to the legal codes of England which were based largely upon the scriptures, of course. And for instance in the 13th century, we read the following:

In the 13th century in England, it was a common form to charge—what I’m going to read you now—charges were described in the following terms: “Whereas the said person was in the peace of God and of our Lord the king, there came this other said person feloniously to commit this felony.”

And so a crime was seen as a crime against the peace of God that was supposed to now characterize normatively life in the nation that saw the Lord God as the giver of all life and was now trying to move in concord with it, as England was trying to do at this time. Now at this time there was already somewhat of a confusion in terms of understanding that peace. And you’ll notice they said “the peace of God,” but he was also in “the peace of the sovereign king.” And so there was already the king’s peace was already eating up God’s peace to a certain degree.

But the point is that the legal codes we have, and prior before this, there were much more explicit references to crimes as being a violation of the peace of the nation that they enjoyed because of the fact that the Messiah had come and introduced peace to men of goodwill.

It’s important to recognize then that sense of peace. This proclamation then of the angels means also the peace of the Magnificat—the progressive reordering of the world under the Messiah King Jesus Christ. Peace prevailed in the garden between man and God certainly, but also between man and man, and between man and nature. And that peace is what is spoken of here. Reconciliation to God and restoration to true life as men and women of God. God’s order—not a simple cessation of hostilities.

Now, cessation of hostilities can be accomplished in a variety of ways. And by that, for the children, I mean cessation of hostilities means to stop people from fighting. If you got a couple people warring, there’s lots of ways to end that hostility. Jack Phelps, you know, my friend up in Alaska, quoted Conrad Adenauer, the late chancellor of West Germany, as saying that an infallible method of conciliating a tiger is to allow oneself to be devoured.

Well, if you have a tiger facing you and you’ve got a lack of peace—now, you can certainly come to a sensation of hostilities by letting that tiger eat you up. There are no hostilities left. That’s peace if you look at it from that perspective. That may be peace in that sense of the word, but it’s certainly not good news. Nor does that picture bring much joy to our minds as we consider the implications what God said in terms of his peace.

A better image of peace is given in the scriptures. Again, those Old Testament references to the coming Messiah. That picture, of course, is that the wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together. And a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed, and their young one shall lie down together. And the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp. And the wean child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’s den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

That’s the peace. That’s the image of peace we should have in our mind that the angels brought the good news of to those shepherds. And that’s why they cried out to God, praising him and glorifying him for what he had accomplished, bringing that peace progressively to be worked out in the created order through the coming of the Messiah and the birth that evening.

That’s the peace of God that’s spoken of here. That’s the peace that brings joy and that is indeed good news to us. The great reversal of the Magnificat and the progressive manifestation of peace that would issue forth from it was now taking place. And what more fitting way for God to illustrate the extent of the peace of his blessed nativity than these verses in Luke?

I said before that the first part of Luke 2 referred to Caesar Augustus. And what was he doing? He was reordering the entire world. It says specifically that all the world should be taxed. And to accomplish that, he reordered it. He wanted to do it nice, neat, and orderly, and he reordered the world then according to his purposes. He sent every man back to where he was born. He reordered the entire world. That’s the picture of the king here—the Caesar Augustus who had come.

Caesar Augustus was the initiator of the Pax Romana, the great peace of Rome that lasted some 200 years and began 25 years or so before the birth of our Lord. But that was not the peace that was announced to the shepherds. The peace that was announced to the shepherds was true peace—not reordering the world under the image of man, as emblemed as is signified in Caesar Augustus—but under the image of God manifesting God’s heavenly order on earth. That was the peace that was spoken of.

One of the Stoics speaking of the Pax Romana said that the message of the Gloria in Excelsis was one of a peace, not of Caesar’s proclamation. This was God’s proclamation, and it was more extensive. And whereas the Pax Romana—the cessation of hostilities—lasted 200 years, the peace that our Lord ushered in has continued to grow for 2,000 years and shall grow for thousands upon thousands of years to come and will increasingly be worked out in the entire created order. This was the peace of God’s proclamation, not the royal birth of a royal man’s seed. And it’s interesting that Caesar Augustus at his birth had these same sorts of words proclaimed about him. Good news, evangelism, tidings of great joy to the people. That was accompanied by the birth of Caesar Augustus. Those were the accompaniments, though, of the true king—the true Caesar—the true king of kings, Jesus Christ.

And that’s what we worship God for this morning. Not the coming of the royal man’s seed to be Caesar Augustus, but rather the coming of the king of kings—of the great and royal God-man of history—come to earth to affect salvation in all spheres of his very creation.

This week I heard a I was meeting with a group of businessmen, and they were being motivated to have a concern for Portland and to preach the gospel. And that’s okay. That’s good to tell businessmen to preach the gospel, isn’t it? But what gospel do people preach? That’s the vital question here. The angels had brought a gospel of good news and evangelism. And what was that gospel? The arrival on earth of the Savior King. The Savior that is Christ the Lord. Could anything be clearer than this?

Our gospel is the same today as those angels sang of 2,000 years ago in that night sky. Christ has come to accomplish the peace between God and man that was looked forward to for 4,000 years and which now was seen as providing the basis for peace on earth. How dare we reduce or limit the peace of the gospel to one of personal peace and affluence, or to fire insurance, as we spoke about last week? Christ didn’t come to affect what one author has put it as a flight from humanity. Christ came to redeem humanity, to restore it to true humanity under God.

Dominion men and women—not to provide a gnostic flight from it into a higher non-material plane. That’s some of the ways that this gospel was being talked about at this meeting I went to. But that’s not what Christ came to do. He came to redeem humanity. And he announced that the peace that had already existed in heaven was now going to be manifested in the earth. And that it might be accomplished on earth as it is in heaven. And that’s the gospel of Christmas, of Good Friday, of Easter, of all events celebrating every aspect of our Lord’s life.

As St. Ephraim the Syrian wrote over a thousand years ago in his study on the incarnation:

“Let us praise him that prevailed and quickened us by his stripes. Praise be him that took away the curse by his thorns. Praise we him that put death to death by his dying. Praise be him that held his peace and justified us. Praise we him who rebuked death that had overcome us. Glory be to God that cured weak humanity. His son became a medicine that showeth sinners mercy. Blessed be he that dwelt in the womb and wrought therein a perfect temple that he might dwell in it, a throne that he might rule in it, a garment that he might be arrayed in it, and a weapon that he might conquer in it.”

That’s the great message that the angel sang that evening. And to whom was the message delivered? Is it to the royal family of Herod, to the ruling family rather of Herod, or the royal family of Caesar Augustus? Or was it to the priestly cast? Was it to the wise men of the world? No, that’s not who the message was given to.

G.K. Chesterton said that some things, quote, are too important to be entrusted to the educated classes. These shepherds were as little children before God. They heard the message. They responded in obedience. They responded in simple faith, not questioning the way Zechariah had done in the temple when the angel had appeared to him.

We must be as those little children. The recipients then of that birth announcement were shepherds. Now, shepherds were not the romantic ideal that we often think of when we think about biblical times. No, their reputation was quite the reverse. They were generally a despised group of men. We have good evidence that their testimony was specifically barred from court proceedings at the time of the writing of the gospel. They couldn’t even testify in a court of law. People despised them that much and didn’t trust them.

It’s hard to explain this really in terms of all the Old Testament pictures of God as a shepherd, and many godly figures from the Old Testament of course who also were shepherds. Israel and all their fathers are said to be shepherds when they come to Pharaoh in Egypt in Genesis 47. Others include of course David himself was a shepherd. In Micah 5, the references to Bethlehem: Christ is said to come to shepherd his people and to give them peace.

It appears that the low opinion then of the shepherds must be seen as a rejection of the lowly, of the humble, a rejection of the simple and responsible men of life, men of work and dominion. These were certainly people of seemingly unimportant position. It’s interesting to note here, by the way, that in our country as well, according to many writings, the same attitude has existed toward shepherds in the west. They were looked down upon. And instead, the priests that were idealized, or the heroes made of, were the cowboys, who were basically fairly irresponsible folk. But the shepherds were the ones to whom God chose to give the royal birth announcement with all its accoutrements and glory.

Now that’s reassuring to me, and it’s exciting as well. Here we had simple men—simple men being the recipients of God’s highest blessings. Another picture of this great reversal we’ve spoken of over the last few weeks. And year after year, the message has gone out, as it does this morning. The message of the gospel of the Savior King and its implications for man and culture. And this message has gone out, as it does this morning, to simple and yet responsible men and women.

We don’t have any powerful civil magistrates in our midst. We don’t have any millionaires. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s good to have lots of money. It’s good to be exalted into a position of power in God’s blessing. We expect that. But it is important that we recognize from the attention given to those here of seemingly low estate that God does find people of ordinary means important, and it’s probably ultimately more important in terms of the expansion of the kingdom. If the simple men and women of simple life don’t respond to the gospel, then all the millionaires and civil magistrates will not be able to reform the land.

God says that simple people are important. Also, the shepherds needed the great reversal that was being preached to them. I thought of this last night. John asked me to write a letter to a church in the Honduran refugee camp of Nicaraguan refugees, and I thought about what I was going to write to them and I talked about how we shared in their sorrows. We prayed for them, but also I tried to give them some encouragement.

They were kind of like those shepherds or Mary or Zechariah at the time of our Lord. Remember the world was under the heel of Augustus Caesar. You could tell them go back to the place you came from for a while now and had to get up, pick up all their possessions, go back for a while. They were oppressed. They were in an invaded country by a usurper to the throne, Caesar Augustus. And yet the shepherds shared—that the shepherds needed that great reversal that was being preached to them.

And also notice here that they were—that these shepherds were working in the fields when the message came to them. They were working. Now, we probably wouldn’t have written the story this way. Maybe we would have had them praying or maybe meditating in the middle of the starry night, maybe reading their Bibles, or sleeping. But certainly not engaged in that dreary work-a-day world. But that’s what they were doing.

It was to men of work that God’s special message appeared that evening, and in fact had appeared so many times before. Think of Moses tending his flocks when God appears to him in the burning bush. Think of Gideon visited by the angel of the Lord while he was beating out wheat. Simple, creaturely tasks. Or Zechariah himself visited by the angel of God while he was doing his task of burning incense in the temple.

These men were men of faithfulness. They were faithful in the small task that God had given them. They were dominion men. No instant heroes are seen here. Dominion men working out the implications of God’s reign in their lives. This teaches us that our work and our simple obedience to the call of God is of great importance and in fact becomes the vehicle through which the great reversal is accomplished as we proclaim the gospel of a restored work life as well.

Those businessmen—important that I mentioned earlier—need to know that all of their lives can be a song of praise to God and effectual for the purpose of proclaiming the good news of the reigning Savior King and for extending the visible reign of Christ over the face of the earth. In fact, without reforming and reconstructing our vocational spheres into an area in overt compliance to the lordship of Jesus Christ, societal and cultural reconstruction and reformation shall never occur.

Those shepherds, by the way, in terms of work they were doing, were tending sheep. Now, sheep are interesting. You don’t normally think of this, but why were they out there tending sheep in the middle of the winter? I’ll tell you why. We know this from historical records at the time. Those sheep were destined for temple use. They were destined to be sent to the temple as symbols of the Messiah whose very birth was being announced to shepherds that night.

They went there to the temple to be sacrificed, picturing the Messiah to come. And that was now being announced to these very shepherds who tended the image, the picture of Jesus Christ that God had given to us in the sacrificial system. What they tended in their fields then was more important than all the riches of Caesar’s household. What do we tend today as men and women under God? Isn’t that also the substance of our gifts and our sacrifices to God?

When we come up with our tithes and offerings in a couple of minutes here, we’re bringing ourselves forward and acknowledging God’s reign over all of our lives. That we are the acceptable sacrifice now. That we’re the sheep ourselves, bringing ourselves again before the great shepherd and pledging our love and obedience to him and all that we are. And in so doing, saying glory to God in the highest. We are thus to be the unblemished offering that’s called for in Romans 12.

Our response to all this must also be—the image the angels now—who glorified God for what he had accomplished. We are to let the glory of God sound forth in all that we do. Throughout the book of Luke, this is the theme. The Pharisee man in Luke 5:25 and 26, when healed, departed to his house glorifying God. The witnesses of Jesus raising a dead man in Luke 7 left glorifying God. The woman in Luke 13 who had been healed of an incapacitating illness of over 18 years in length by our Lord, after she was made straight and could walk straight again, glorified God.

The grateful leper in Luke 17 turned back to our Lord and in a loud voice glorified God. The blind man of Luke 18, after receiving his sight, followed after Jesus glorifying God. And the centurion witnessing the manner of our Savior’s death glorified God. Should not we who have been healed, who have been given back our sight, who have been forgiven and restored to following after…