A SAVIOR (LUKE 2: 8-11)

Well, are you in the Christmas spirit yet? 

Some people put up Christmas decorations early.  It seems that this year Halloween wasn’t over until the Christmas decorations were out.

At the Collum house we put our decorations out on the day after Thanksgiving, not a day before. We refuse to listen to Christmas music (even though magic 96 has been playing them since Nov 1).

Well, today is the first Sunday in December; we have the Christmas decorations up in the sanctuary.  And so I want to bring you a few words of encouragement from the very familiar Christmas story found in Luke 2: 8-20. Let’s read it together.

Verse 8:  I want you to look at the Shepherds in this story.  I want you not only to look at the shepherds but I want you to compare YOURSELF to these men.

You can hear a good story. You can read it, watch it on TV, see it in a movie or listen as it is told to you but you really don’t CONNECT with the story until you CONNECT with the characters of the story.  So this morning I want you to CONNECT with the shepherds. See how much you are like them.

I. SHEPHERDS:    (NOT IMPORTANT) This profession although a necessary profession, was not a very prestigious profession.  It was not a very impressive profession.  It was not a very well regarded profession. 

Shepherds were around sheep all the time.  Sheep smell.  Which tends to make those around them smell.  In Chilton County terms: Shepherds stink. 

I don’t care who you are and how much you say you don’t care about what people think of you; we all want to be well regarded by our peers.  Oh, I’ve said “I don’t care what people think about me”, you might have said that as well. But deep inside, I really do care what you think about me. I want you to like me.  I want you to think I am important.  I want to have prestige in my life.  AND YOU DO TOO.

If you didn’t care about what people thought about you, you would have gotten up this morning and come to church in you PJ’s or housecoat.  You would have left on your old ragged pants or shirt. You wouldn’t have taken a bath, brushed your teeth, or fixed your hair.  “Who cares what I look like, what I wear?  I don’t care what those people think”…BUT YOU DO.

Can I just be honest?  Some mornings I wake up and I don’t feel very prestigious.  Do you?  Or maybe you get up every morning and just feel like you have the world by the tail and you are large and in charge? 

In this story, the Shepherds were not in that position. How do I know this?  Let’s look closer.

 II. ABIDING:  (BORING) Not only were they SHEPHERDS but they were ABIDING.  Staying.  They were in an everyday, not so exciting, not so rewarding, same ole sheep, same ole co-shepherds, same ole grass, same ole fields, same ole hills.  They were just ABIDING. 

 There used to be a commercial that showed a woman in the “daily-ness” of her life and she suddenly looked up and said “Calgon, take me away”.

The ABIDING, the STAYING, the day to day was pressing down on her.  Are you associating with this?  Am I talking to anyone who is relating to this aspect of the shepherds?

III. IN THE FIELDS: (NOT LIKE EVERYONE ELSE) Not in town with everyone else.  Not in their house like most people.  Not with their families.  Not in their bed but IN THE FIELDS. 

There is something about “fitting in”.  And again, we often say, “I don’t care what other people do.  I am my own person”.  And you may be different from most people.  But I just bet that you may just desire to be “like everyone else” sometimes.

Don’t you imagine that those shepherds would have liked to have had a home and family and nice warm bed to sleep in?  Don’t you think they might have liked to have a 9-5 job? 

I read the other day that one reason people get distressed by FACEBOOK is that they read the stuff that others do (go on vacation, have the family over for lunch, go on a date with their husband /wife), and they realize that they don’t do those things.  And it makes them depressed.  “Why can’t I have that kind of life?”

We don’t like to be SHEPHERDS and we don’t like BEING IN THE FIELDS.

IV. KEEPING WATCH:  (No credit) That sounds exciting doesn’t it?  Keeping watch.  Doing what is necessary, but JUST doing what is necessary.  And again, It’s not exciting. Keeping watch requires faithfulness, steadfast-ness (is that a word?), being there when you are supposed to be there.  Doing the job no one else wants to do. (and getting little or no credit). 

V. BY NIGHT:  (Lonely) I have spent a very large portion of my life’s work in the dark.

In the Coast Guard our rescue missions were not always on a bright sunny day.  Much of the time it was in the middle of the night. 

Working on the ambulance, I worked the midnight shift initially.  ALL of our calls were in the dark. As a fire/medic with the fire department, many of our calls came in the dead of the night.

Even if you don’t have that emergency kind of job, even if you work at a factory or in a store and it’s at night….it is kind of depressing. 

A line from a poem says “creatures of the nighttime watch as creatures of the daytime sleep”.  We don’t like to be in that position.   

 QUESTION:  Are you relating yet?  Are you feeling like a shepherd?

I told you initially that I wanted to bring you words of encouragement.  I don’t think I’ve done that thus far. Let me try harder.

QUESTION:  Why did the angles come with “good news of great joy” to the shepherds and not to the guy that ran the grocery story?  Why did the angles come to the shepherds and not to the business man?  Why did they come to the shepherds and not to the king? 

Because God knew the shepherds needed encouragement.

And if you are relating to the shepherds this morning, God knows you need encouragement.

Let’s see what He did for the shepherds.

VI: V10:  FEAR NOT: “I ain’t afraid of nothing.  I’m a grown man/ woman.  I’m an adult.  I’ve seen it all or most of it.  Why should I be afraid?”

Shepherds weren’t wimps.  They lived in the fields.  They were used to hard work. They were used to danger. Remember David having to fight a lion and bear?  You couldn’t be a shepherd and be a sissy. But these guys were afraid.  NO, more than that, they were sore afraid.  In Chilton County words again, “They were scared to death”.

I don’t know what you are afraid of this morning.  Sickness, bad health, financial problems, family issues, problems with your spouse, issues at the church, issues at work, the future of our world, death, eternity?  If I didn’t hit on yours you feel free to go ahead and add it to the list.

I don’t know what it is but I know this, you and I are afraid just like those shepherds were afraid.  Scared to death, AND GOD KNOWS IT.  And the SAME all-knowing, ever-loving God who sent a band of angles out on that grassy, dark hill that night to send a message of encouragement to those shepherds, is sending you the same message this morning.  Oh, you may not see the heavenly host this morning but don’t doubt it, God wants you to hear this message. DON’T BE AFRAID!

VIL. GOOD NEWS, JOYFUL NEWS, TO EVERYONE:  I didn’t come this morning to bring you a fancy message.  I didn’t come with angles and lights and a choir of heavenly host.  But I came bringing you Good news.  It’s not sad news. It’s not depressing news.  It’s not fearful news.  It’s GOOD NEWS.  And it should bring you GREAT JOY. 

The angles came to announce that a SAVIOR had come.

Let me make this statement.  If you have related in the slightest way this morning to the shepherds, if something I have said has made you realize that in some ways you and the shepherds kind of felt the same way.  Then you need a savior.

I’m not saying that you are lost and unsaved or not a Christian.  Sure, Jesus came to save those in that condition but do you realize that He also came to deliver you, save you from the conditions that we talked about. 

You need a savior to save you from your feeling of being “UNIMPORTANT”.

 You need a savior to save you from being bored.

You need a savior to save you from not feeling a part of the rest of the civilized world.

You need a savior to save you from being faithful but getting no credit or recognition.

You need a savior to save you from being lonely and depressed.

You need a savior to save you from fear.

The encouragement, the good news of great joy, the gospel I came to share with you this morning is simply this:

UNTO YOU IS BORN A SAVIOR, WHO IS CHRIST THE LORD!!!  And if that don’t fill you bucket, you need to check it out because it’s got a really big hole in it.

CONCLUSION:

The holiday season can be one of the most depressing, dismal, sad, lonely times of the entire year.  In EMS we saw more suicides and self-inflicted wounds during the holiday season than any other time of the year. 

You will hear these little verses quoted many times over the next few weeks.  Will you remember what I’ve said this morning?  Will you simply take these 4 verses and sticky note them to your brain. 

Just remember, You are the shepherd, Jesus is the Savior, and THAT’S GOOD NEWS

DAD'S OLD STUFF

I don’t think we realized it really, until after Daddy died.  It’s kind of a funny story in itself.  Dad was always collecting stuff, accumulating stuff and buying stuff.   Stuff from Publishers Clearing House or any place else he could find it. The clearing house stuff, I guess, was his way of playing the lottery.  Maybe, just maybe, if he bought some of their “not seen in store” items, he may have a better chance of winning all that money.  So he bought their “stuff”. 

At the Bill and Keva Collum house we use to have “Christmas in August”.  It was a time when we bought items at the Dollar store, wrapped them in newspaper and gave them to each other in August on a designated "Christmas in August" day.  We put up a “Charlie Brown” Christmas tree, hung the lights and just got together with the family to have a good time.  Well, the year maybe two years after Dad died, instead of buying stuff, we just gave each other the stuff out of Dad’s boxes. 

You see we started going through his belongings and cleaning out some of the boxes he had accumulated and found box after box of what Dad thought was useful “stuff”.  To us it was junk but in Dad’s eyes it just might be useful to someone someday. And it was, it was useful for us to laugh at and have a good time with and it helped us remember Dad for a little while longer. Dad saw the good in things that most of us would just ignore and think was junk.

But back to what I  started to say, I can distinctly remember one year a gift that Dad gave me.  He was still in business at the old cab company in Alabaster.  I visited him one day and as I started to leave he stopped me and wanted to give me something.  He always did that.  He would reach in his desk, or in his old cab and find something he thought I might use. This day he pulled out an old calendar.  It was a kind of calendar / journal thing.  It had the month laid out on one side and on the other were pages to be used for notes. 

Well, even though the calendar was last year’s calendar, the little book was nicely bound and no one had written in it so Dad, knowing that I was one to write down lots of stuff, gave me the little book.  In the inside cover he wrote, “To Bill, to use not just save”. (In spite of what Dad said, I still have that little book saved away somewhere.)

I guess Dad knew that I was a packrat too.  Because that little book was his, I would just save it and not write in it. So he had made the distinction that I was to “use it” and not “just save it”. 

You know without me telling you this that I do the same stuff Daddy did.  When my children and now grandchildren come to visit, I may not always do it, but I always think of it.  I try to find something just lying around the house that I think you would “use”.  Heck, you will probably see it in the gifts I give.  The old ragged pallet furniture, the “hand-made” bowls and such are all examples of stuff that you are probably embarrassed by but will take and thank me and then it will end up collecting dust somewhere.

As I was thinking about these crazy traits that I have inherited from my Dad I suddenly realized that perhaps Dad and I had inherited this trait from our Heavenly Father.  You see, Father God looked down and saw some really ragged stuff.  In the eyes of others it was nothing more than junk.  But He loved that junk and saw the usefulness in that junk and so He sent His Son (what an enormous sum to pay for junk) to buy it and save it.  That which was ruined by neglect, and selfishness and misuse, He saw as salvageable and “useful”, He bought the junk and with the pen of the writers of the New Testament, across the pages of that junk He wrote “To use, not just save”. 

I am so thankful that the Almighty God of Heaven looked at Dad and me and saw that even though we were broken, ruined, and in the eyes of men, useless, chose to save us.  But even more this morning, I am thankful that He didn’t just “save” us but He put a little note on our hearts.  I think it might have been the same note that Dad put in that little book; “To use, not just to save”.

Lord, my prayer this morning is that you will use me.