Song of the Angels – Luke 2:8-14

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In those days, Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world, and everyone went to their own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem, the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. And while they were there, the time came for the baby to be born and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in clothes and placed him in a manger because there was no guest room available for them.

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks. At night, an angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David, a saviour has been born to you.

He is the Messiah, the Lord, and this will be a sign to you. You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. And suddenly, a great company of heavenly hosts appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth, peace to those on whom his favour rests. 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. And so they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph and the baby who was lying in the manger.

And when they'd seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child. And all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherd said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen which were just as they had been told. This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God. Fab. Please do keep your service sheets open to that bit of the Bible that's just been read. And I'm just going to lead us in a quick prayer as we have a look at that. Heavenly Father, I pray that tonight you would do something by your spirit.

I pray that our experience might be something like that of the shepherds. And I pray that our joy may match theirs as we see Jesus even in these next few moments. Amen. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, weird and yet wonderful things Things happen. The other day I was looking out the window just before I went to bed, and it was as if there was this kind of red smudge in the sky.

I don't know how many of you saw it. The aurora borealis, the northern lights. For the first time in my life, I looked out and there you could see with the naked eye the northern lights. And sometimes you can kind of get your phone, can't you, and hold it up and you can see all the extra colours and things, but you could see them with your naked eye. It was amazing, it was wonderful.

And yet I don't think that those northern lights hold a candle to what happened here on this first Christmas, the day that Christians believe God came into this world as a baby. And so all sorts of supernatural stuff happened, as you might imagine, if there was a God who came into the world. And so we see that on the fields around Bethlehem there are some shepherds and they meet an angel. In fact, a whole bunch of angels. And in one sense, shepherds wouldn't be the kind of people who you would expect to have a kind of profound spiritual experience.

The shepherds were the kind of people who were sort of out on the margins of society. They weren't particularly sort of religious folk, and in fact, they were often seen as a little bit sort of untrustworthy. These were the kind of salt of the earth kind of people, the kind of people who call a spade a shovel. These were the kind of people who you wouldn't expect to see an angel. And yet they do.

And when they do, they're perfectly natural. They're terrified, you see, they're not sitting there going, oh, it's Christmas, nice angel. Of course, that's what they're not expecting, that they're not expecting this to be Christmas Day. And so when the angels turn up, they are petrified. But these angels, they turn to the shepherds and they say, don't worry, I bring you good news of great joy.

The news that I'm going to bring you is going to bring joy to the hearts of everyone who truly hears it. He promises that their wildest dreams are going to be met in a child who's just been born. Sometimes weird and yet wonderful things happen in the middle of the night, don't they? Like coming along to a church that's got perfectly working electricity and yet it's lit up by candles. Like seeing a vicar dressed in a silly white robe that he doesn't normally wear, or standing up here in a pulpit that we don't normally do.

And yet, as you look up at a figure clad in white, tonight I bring you good news that will thrill your hearts if you hear it. The one who you have longed for all of your life is here in these pages. Now, you might be sitting there and thinking, actually, I'm not particularly religious. I'm just here because of the candles and the kind of Christmas feelings. And if that's you, thank you for coming.

You're always, always welcome. But humour me. You see, these last 18 months have been unlike any that I've experienced in nearly 15 years of ministry. You see, it's not just here, it's around Sheffield, around the country, my friends and I. Here, I'm finding that people are just turning up at church and you sort of chat to them.

This happened even last week, Sunday, whatever that day was a few days ago. And you sort of chatted to people and you say, what brings you? And they say, I don't really know. I just felt like I should come to church. I felt like I should come back to church.

And you kind of get chatting to some of these people and you hear all sorts of reasons. Sometimes with young people, it's that they say, I just don't know where to find truth anymore. Like, I look around me and it feels like all sorts of opinion all the time. Where is there something that I can base my life upon? Where is there something solid?

And they're finding it in the person of these words, chatting to other people. They say, do you know, I feel like my life has purpose and meaning and I can't quite work out why I would feel that way if I'm only the result of time and chance and evolutionary process. If it's just that it doesn't make sense that I feel like my life has a divine purpose. Chatting to other people and they say, I'm not okay with endings. You know, as humans, we should be used to endings, shouldn't we?

They happen all the time. Ends of books, end of songs, end of TV series, end of life. We all die. And yet there's something that kind of feels wrong about that. Why is it that I'm not okay with endings?

I should be used to that. And they're finding the reason here in the person that the angels sung about. I was chatting to other people and they say, as I look at the news, as I flick on everything that's happening in the world, I look around and it's not just uncomfortable to watch, it feels wrong. It feels like this world is kind of broken. It isn't as it should be.

And even that sentence doesn't make sense unless there's a God who has made things to be a certain way and they're not.

And I wonder even tonight whether there's a part of you that feels the spirit of God saying to you that there's more than this. There's more. There's something here to look at, there's something here to find out.

Sometimes weird and wonderful things happen in the middle of the night. So what do we do if we feel that, if we think, yeah, there might be something here? Well, I think the shepherds are a great example to us as to what to do. What they don't do is throw stuff on the ground, like me. What they do though is they go and cheque it out.

They go and find out all about it. We're told that when the angels left them and had 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. They say, look, if there's something here, we should find out about it. What they don't do is sit there and go, do you know, actually life's kind of busy. We've got a few sheep that have gone missing.

We're going to have to go and look for them tomorrow. I might need to rebuild some of the walls around the place. I mean, that was a weird experience that we just had. But I don't know, maybe we put too many of the mushrooms in the shrogunoff or something. No, they said, you know, we've got to go and see this, we've got to go and cheque this out.

If it's possible that this is true, this is life changing, what of us then? How do we go and cheque it out? Obviously we're in a different day and age. The Son of God is only born into this world once. There are not choirs of angels.

No matter what Neil and I might look like tonight. What we do is we need to go to see what the shepherds saw. The German theologian Martin Luther said, today the cradle of Jesus is in the Bible. If we want to cheque this out, we come to these ancient words written 2000 years ago. True life changing words, like so many before us.

So can I encourage you to do that? If there's a part of you that thinks, do you know there's something here, can I encourage you? Take this away. You've got one with your service sheets. It's a very quick read.

I reckon you could read that whilst the kids are scoffing the chocolate breakfast tomorrow morning or while the turkey's in the oven, a really easy quick read. But maybe you want to look at it a bit more and if so, I'd love to give you your first Christmas present as you leave today. This is a biography of Jesus life written by one of his friends called Mark. And it's a great place to go if you're thinking, do you know what, there might be something more to life than what I'm experiencing at the moment. Follow the shepherd's example, take a look at that.

Or if you know that tomorrow's going to be a busy day and frankly you just need to get to at home and get some sleep tonight, why not scan that QR code on the back of your service sheet, that way you can sign up. We've got a couple of courses starting in January, we won't pester you. I'm going to have a holiday for a couple of weeks and then I'll drop you an email telling you about them and you can find out about this Jesus for yourself. One thing that I'd encourage you not to do is just to walk away. That would have been a crazy thing for the shepherds to do, wouldn't it?

A profound spiritual encounter in the middle of the night and they just forget about it. No, don't do that. But it might be that you're here and you already know this Jesus. Maybe you call yourself a Christian. Well, I think the shepherds are a great example to you as well.

What do they do? Well, verse 17, they spread the word. They tell other people about what had happened and what they'd been told about this child. But verse 20, the shepherds return, glorifying and praising God for the things that they'd heard and seen about which they'd been told the shepherd, that the angels told the shepherds, I bring you good news of great joy. The shepherds go and investigate and they go back with hearts that are full of praise for their Saviour.

Maybe you're a Christian here today. And if you're a Christian here today, I hope this Saviour brings you great joy. You, by the Spirit of God, get to do that thing of holding up the camera and seeing the aurora borealis in all its glorious light. You get to do that with this Saviour. So let me encourage you, why don't you do that this Christmas?

Why not pause and look again at this Saviour? And a great sort of litmus test for doing that is, is this causing me great joy as I delight in a Saviour who has come into the world. That would be a great thing to pray through and think through as we take communion in a few moments time. Sometimes strange and yet wonderful things happen in the middle of the night. It did for them.

Then I wonder will it do so for you tonight? Let me lead us in a prayer and then we'll sing Silent Night together. Heavenly Father, we thank you so very much for the Lord Jesus. Thank you that you stepped into this world in order to save it. Thank you that you've given us all sorts of hints that there is more than the here and now.

Thank you for all those who have come and who found out about Jesus and found in him life. Life that thrills the heart, life that doesn't end in death and life that is full of sins forgiven and Christian hope. I pray that we might find that and rejoice in it tonight. Amen. Let's.