Moved to Speak

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Good morning Chapel family. And welcome to the third Sunday of Advent. There is such an outpouring of generosity this time of year, and I just want to show you one example of that. One of our ministry partners in Paterson is called Street Hope Alive—they mentor and disciple kids from Paterson. This afternoon is their annual Christmas in Paterson event, where they give gifts to kids who might not receive much for Christmas. You all have been donating gifts for the past few weeks, and last weekend, our Chapel Students had a wrapping party. So hundreds of gifts were wrapped and prepared for delivery. A good time was had by all. And I want to say a big Thank You to everyone who’s made this possible. Let’s express our thanks (applause). So please pray for a great event this afternoon.

So we are taking this Advent season to look four of the main characters in the Christmas story, and how they reacted when they first heard the news of Christ’s birth. Our mindset at Christmas is so influenced by memories and traditions and nostalgia, but these people had none of that. It was truly news to them. And what I’ve noticed is that every one of them was moved to action. They found themselves doing something they never would have done otherwise. So my goal for this series is to strip away some of the distractions so the message of Christmas can have the same effect on us.

So today we’re going to focus on the very first recipients of the announcement of Jesus’ birth: the shepherds. When the shepherds heard the news, they were moved to speak.

We are living in a culture that teaches us to keep our faith private. When you’re at a dinner party, just don’t bring up politics or…what? Religion. Especially the religion part, because it’s way too personal, and way too controversial. Much better to stick to sports and the weather. So our culture says it’s okay to have faith; just keep it to yourself. And I think if we’re honest, most of us are okay with that. Because we’ve seen too many obnoxious TV evangelists and pushy neighbors like Ned Flanders on the Simpsons. I remember at college, there was a guy who would come and stand outside one of the dining halls with a microphone, and he would argue with students about God and the Bible. He was abrasive and arrogant, and I don’t think he convinced a single person. And I didn’t want anything to do with him. That’s how most of us feel, right? We’re pretty happy to keep our heads down and keep our faith to ourselves. The problem is, when we live that way, we’re doing something very unnatural and we’re missing out on a beautiful part of this faith.

So the shepherds were moved to speak. They didn’t become pushy or arrogant or abrasive. They simply spoke about what they had experienced, and it had a profound effect on the people around them. So let’s look at their story: Luke chapter 2, beginning in verse 8. I invite you now to hear the Word of God…

8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

16 So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. 17 When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. This is the Word of the Lord.

The angel said, “I bring you good news,” and that phrase “good news” can also be translated “gospel.” So as I meditated on this passage last week, there was one, clear thought that crystallized in my mind, and here it is: When the gospel becomes personal, even the most unlikely people speak it powerfully. When the gospel become personal, even the most unlikely people speak it powerfully.

Let’s unpack that big idea, one phrase at a time…

First, When the gospel becomes personal… For a lot of people, the reason they aren’t comfortable speaking about faith is that it’s not really personal for them. Maybe that’s true for you: it’s the faith of your parents, but you’ve never really bought in. Or it’s the faith of your spouse, and you went along with it because you wanted to marry him, or her, but your heart was never truly in it. Or maybe you go through the motions of church, but deep down you don’t actually believe it’s true. There could be lots of reasons it’s not personal for you, but here's the point: if your faith isn’t deeply personal, speaking about it will feel unnatural and awkward, and you probably won’t do it.

For the shepherds on that hillside, the news they heard became very personal very quickly. And I would say that’s for three big reasons.

First, because it was A message of wonder. If you were at last weekend’s Christmas concerts, I spoke about this idea of wonder. And it’s hard to define, but I think we know it when we see it. I experienced wonder four times in hospital delivery rooms, when each of my children was born. I experienced it two days before Thanksgiving in Paterson, standing in a room with hundreds of people of every race and ethnicity, cheering as ten children were baptized. I experienced it last week as I hiked alone in the woods near my house, with the first snowflakes of winter falling around me.

We’ve all had those experiences, haven’t we? Wonder happens when we encounter something that’s mysterious and beautiful and bigger than us. And humans were designed to experience wonder. It seems to be in our DNA. We’re drawn to it. And on that night, on that hill outside of Bethlehem, the shepherds experienced the greatest wonder anyone’s ever seen.

You know, we sometimes think of angels as cute, chubby, little cherubs. What the shepherds saw was nothing like that. All through Scripture, angels are described as powerful and imposing figures; in fact, almost every time someone encounters an angel, the first thing the angel says is, “Do not fear.” So not only were they addressed by the one angel; the sky was lit up with “a great company of the heavenly host,” which means an army of angels, wrapped in light, worshiping the God of the universe. Can you even begin to imagine the wonder?

At that time, the ruler of the vast Roman empire was Caesar Augustus. His power was unrivaled, and people cowered in his presence. And yet, when he was born, the angels didn’t seem impressed. When Jesus was born, the angels could not contain themselves.

So the shepherds might have been simple, uneducated people, but they had a very personal longing to experience wonder—just like we do. And the announcement of this child’s birth filled them with wonder like nothing they had ever experienced.

Will you open up your heart to experience that wonder?

Secondly, this was personal because it was A message of inclusion. Shepherds were not used to being included in things! Their jobs required them to handle sick and dead animals, which made them ceremonially unclean according to Hebrew law, which made them unwelcome in the Jewish temple. There’s historical evidence that the testimony of shepherds was not permitted in court, because they were considered untrustworthy witnesses. So shepherds got used the feeling of being overlooked and left out.

But then this message: I bring you good news. A savior has been born for you. You will find a baby wrapped in cloths. Everything about it was welcoming and inclusive. And sure enough, they hurried off and found the baby, and they were welcomed into his presence. They had always been outsiders, but somehow the arrival of this baby made them insiders. No wonder this was so personal!

Have you felt that inclusion? No matter how popular or unpopular you are, no matter what you’ve done, not matter how successful or unsuccessful you are in the world’s eyes, Jesus came for you and he loves you fiercely. You are included.

And then third, it was personal because it was A message of peace. The angel said, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” There was a kind of peace that was talked about a lot during those times. It was called the Pax Romana—the Roman Peace. It meant the peace between all the nations in the Roman Empire. The problem was, the Pax Romana was maintained through brutal force. If you dared to step out of line, you would be crushed. Those Jewish shepherds knew all about that kind of peace, and it didn’t make them feel particularly peaceful. Their hearts longed for a better kind of peace, and in the announcement of Christ’s birth they heard the promise of that better peace.

How’s your personal level of peace lately? We’re living in a world where there’s not a whole lot of peace, on so many levels. But this child whose birth was announced to the shepherds was the Prince of Peace. He went to the cross to reconcile God and humans, and to give us an inner peace that nothing can take away. Are you experiencing some of that peace, in the midst of the world’s craziness? You desperately need it. I know I do.

When the gospel becomes personal, even the most unlikely people speak it powerfully. So if you never find yourself speaking about your faith, maybe it’s because it’s never been personal with you. On that hillside, the shepherds realized this was not just a message of something that had happened out there; it was a message about them. So if the news of Christ has never been personal for you, it has to start there. You have to see that he came for you, and that the things you most deeply need—wonder and inclusion and peace—are found in him.

When the gospel becomes personal…here’s the next part…even the most unlikely people… If you had a message that you wanted to spread quickly, so it would be embraced by the maximum number of people, what kind of representatives would you entrust the message to? I would pick people with a lot of cultural clout and cultural power. People who are highly respected. This is why we have celebrities endorsing products, right? You should wear Nikes, like Tiger Woods. You should drive a Lincoln, like Matthew McConaughey. You should use a George Foreman grill, like, well, George

Foreman. Because marketers have known for years that even if the product isn’t the best one out there, people will buy it anyway because of the regard they have for the celebrity.

So here’s this message of the birth of Christ that God wants the world to know. If he followed the typical strategy of marketing, you know who he would never pick? Shepherds! They were not the Tiger Woods and Matthew McConaughey of the day. They were uneducated, disrespected and dismissed. So why did God do it that way? Because he knew that the real, life-changing power is not in the carrier of the message; it’s in the message. It’s not in the packaging; it’s in the product. So God has this habit—not just in this case, with the shepherds—God has this habit, through the Bible, of delivering the most precious truth through the most unlikely sources, so there won’t be any mistake where the real power lies.

This is exactly what Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 4:7—listen: But we have this treasure—the message of Christ—in jars of clay… The Bethlehem shepherds were like jars of clay: weak, breakable—very unimpressive. So why would God do that? Here it is…to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. When the shepherds went out and started talking about Jesus, sharing this message of wonder and inclusion and peace, God didn’t want anyone to be distracted by the charm or charisma of the messengers. He wanted the hearers of the message to be completely focused on the message—because that’s where the power is.

Back in the 1970s there was a large Christian convention, with about 17,000 people in attendance. And there were three special guests invited to come and address this huge gathering. One was Jimmy Carter—it was actually the year he was elected president, so he was a pretty popular figure at the time. The second one was Billy Graham. And the third one was a truck driver what no one had ever heard of. Before the men got up to speak, this truck driver leaned over to President Carter, and he said, “I’ve never given a speech in my life. I don’t think I can live through this.”

So Carter spoke, and then Billy Graham got up and gave a powerful talk, like he always did. And the truck driver was next. So he stood in front of this audience. Somebody handed him a glass of water, and he finally started mumbling into the microphone. He said, “I was always drunk, and I didn’t have any friends. The only people I knew were men like me who hung around the bars in the town where I lived.”

He went on to describe how someone told him about Christ. And he was so desperate, that he believed it. And he figured he should tell other people about it. So after he got a little confidence from going to Bible studies, he went back to the bars and started talking to people about how their life could be changed by Christ. Some of the bartenders got annoyed with him—they said it was bad for business. But the truck driver kept on talking to people, and after a while a few guys at the bar started asking questions. And he said, “At first they treated me like a joke, but I kept up with the questions and when I couldn’t answer one, I went and got the answer and came back with it. Fourteen of my friends became Christians.”

So Jimmy Carter was reflecting on this event, and he wrote this: “The truck driver’s speech, of course, was the highlight of the convention. I don’t believe anyone who was there will ever forget that five-minute fumbling statement—or remember what I or even Billy Graham had to say.”

We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. That’s why God chose shepherds. It was the beginning of a very intentional strategy to show the world a message that’s so powerful, even the most unlikely people can deliver it. The reality of the message more than compensates for the weakness of the messenger.

When the gospel becomes personal, even the most unlikely people speak it powerfully. Many of us never talk about faith because we don’t feel qualified. We feel like we’re not educated enough; polished enough; persuasive enough; spiritual enough, etc. The shepherds were not any of those things—but God used them powerfully…because they just spoke honestly about what they had personally experienced. They realized they were just beggars, telling fellow beggars where they had found some bread. And that’s exactly what we are.

When the gospel becomes personal, even the most unlikely people…here’s the last part…speak it powerfully. So after the shepherds paid their visit to the newborn Jesus, verse 17 says When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child. They spread the word. The Greek phrase literally means “they made known” what had been told them about this child. They made it known. They went out to a world that didn’t know anything about God, or who had wrong thoughts about God, and they said, “This is what we’ve experienced from God! Through this Child who was born, you can find the wonder, and the inclusion, and the peace that your heart is looking for.”

And verse 18 says all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. They weren’t necessarily all convinced. They didn’t necessarily all fall to their knees and repent and become worshipers of Jesus. They probably still had some questions. But they were amazed. Because they heard this very intriguing message from some very unlikely people, and it made them stop and question what they thought they knew about the most important things in life.

Let me ask you something: do the words that you speak ever have that effect on people? Where they stop and question what they thought they knew about the most important things in life? If you always play it safe, and you only ever talk about sports and weather and work and things like that, you will never know the joy of being used by God to have that powerful effect on people.

Before we share in communion, let me give you two examples of people who, in response to the message of Christmas, were moved to speak. The first one took place a few weeks ago, and the second one took place about 55 years ago.

The first one is from the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts, Frank Reich. After his team won a game in late November, he was at the post-game press conference, and here’s what he said…

I don’t do this often, but I just wanted to start out by saying something personal…Some people know that our team has been using the metaphor of climbing Mount Everest to parallel our quest to make it to the top. It doesn’t take long to figure out that this metaphor doesn’t merely apply to football… So, I just wanted to offer a word of encouragement really, to anyone out there who’s in the midst of a struggle. In particular, I’m thinking of a few friends who I know are going through some stuff. I want to give a personal account to where I found my strength for the journey…

And the he quoted from the song In Christ Alone…

“In Christ alone I place my trust and I find my glory in the power of the cross. In every victory, let it be said of me, that my source of strength and my source of hope is Christ alone.” … So, my encouragement is to keep climbing and to find the strength and power that you need in Jesus Christ.

If you follow professional sports, you know how rare this is. NFL head coaches rarely get that personal in press conferences, and they even more rarely talk about their faith. But this is so personal for him,

and it’s meant so much to him, that he just did what was natural: he spoke it. And believe me, all who heard it were amazed.

The final example took place actually 56 years ago, in 1965. A cartoonist named Charles Schulz was pitching a new Christmas special to CBS. It was called A Charlie Brown Christmas. Of course, the highlight is where Linus walks onto stage and recites the passage about the shepherds and the angels, directly from the Bible—straight up. When it’s done, he says, “And that, Charlie Brown, is what Christmas is all about.” So Schulz showed a rough cut of the show to CBS network executives in November of 1965, and they hated it. They thought it was way too slow. Executive Producer Lee Mendelson told Schulz, “You can’t read from the Bible on network television.”

It would have been so easy for Schulz to back down or remove that part, but he didn’t. He persisted, and CBS decided to run it. And that first year, it captured an unbelievable 50% of the nation’s TV viewers. It went on to win an Emmy and a Peabody award, and 56 years later it continues to be one of the most beloved Christmas specials in the English-speaking world. Because one man was moved to speak…and people were amazed.

I wonder what it would look like for you to use whatever platform God has given you, to just speak from your heart? It might involve some risk, but you might be surprised at the effect it has.

When the gospel becomes personal, even the most unlikely people—shepherds…truckers…football coaches… cartoonists—speak it powerfully. And so can we.

Let’s take a moment to prepare our hearts for communion.