WHAT a wonderful message was that which rang out over the sleeping earth that midnight long ago! Well might the shepherds look up with mingled fear and amazement as the flashing light shone around, glorifying all the scene, but a moment before dark and lonely and silent! Well, has it been said, “the angels broke bounds that night” as they trooped out “a multitude of the heavenly host” — to witness and celebrate with praise the most wonderful of all scenes — save the cross — ever enacted upon this earth; and to deliver the most wonderful of all messages — that God had sent forth His Son, “made of a woman” — that a Babe was born in Bethlehem whose name was to be called “Jesus, because He shall save His people from their sins” (Matt. 1). Let us see the effect which it had upon the shepherds, when the angels, after giving them minute particulars as to where they would find the Babe, returned to heaven.
First, we notice how every act on their part was the result of their unhesitating acceptance of the divine message. Scarcely had the last notes of the rapturous burst of praise died away upon their ears, than they determined individually to prove its truth. Did they first go to look after their sheep? Did they say, “Let us now go, and put things right at home, and tomorrow we will start for Bethlehem?” Such, indeed, is the conduct of but too many in these days of infidelity and indifference. Many who have heard the same message of “a Saviour, Christ the Lord,” not from angelic lips, but from God Himself, through His Word, yet neglect or despise it, or if in a measure they believe it, yet put off from year to year making it their own, and thus letting it bring them into direct personal contact with the Christ whom it proclaims.
Not so with these poor shepherds. The tidings were to them too momentous to be thus lightly treated. With them all should be neglected, all set aside, until their hearts had been satisfied, and forever set at rest, by a personal interview with the Christ of God. True, their households might be startled by their unwonted absence; their sheep might stray away over the plains and be lost. It mattered not to them; they delayed not to calculate, or to cavil; they stayed not to consider or weigh results; but with the one thought filling their souls of the divine reality of the message, “they said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see those things which the Lord hath made known unto us.”
True, the night was dark, and the distance long; but eyes which have once been opened to see “the glory of the Lord,” can discern a path unknown and unnoticed by the children of this world, and can move on with unhesitating footsteps under His own conducting hand.
“And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the Babe lying in a manger.” The earnest seeker most surely becomes the rejoicing finder. This is ever the result of unquestioning faith in the Word of God. “God is not a man, that He should lie,” and the soul that rests in simple faith on any word of His will find Him remain true to it. So faith in these poor shepherds (as with us now) gazed upon the wondrous sight of the Son of God “a Saviour, Christ the Lord” — lying in His mother’s arms. The only place He was allowed as shelter for His head, the “manger” of a lowly stable; for we read, “There was no room for them in the inn.” There was “no room” for the Son of God in that world which He had created, and which He came to save! Thus early in His life on earth did He experience that rejection at the hands of man which was afterward expressed more openly in the furious cry of hatred — “Away with Him”— “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” But the faith of these men is beautifully shown out in the next record which we get of them.
“Then” — when they had for themselves seen “God’s salvation” — when they had had a personal interview with the Lord of glory; when they had “looked upon,” and their hands had “handled the word of life” (1 John 1); when the angel’s message had become consciously their own, and a sweet reality to their souls — then they could no longer keep to themselves the glorious fact that “a Saviour” had been born; but “they made known abroad the saying which had been told them concerning this child; and all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds.” Beautiful illustration of the apostle’s words, “With the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Rom. 10). Once the heart has found Him as an all-absorbing, and all-satisfying object for itself, it cannot do aught but “speak of Him” to others.
It was so with these early — may we not say first? — followers of the Lord Jesus. And let us notice the next result of the work of grace in their souls — “worship.” “They returned, glorifying and praising God, for all the things which they had heard and seen.” Surely this is all that remains for those who have once seen the Christ of God — once had a personal dealing with Him as their Saviour, and responded to His loving call, “Come unto Me” — “praising and glorifying God” for what they have seen and heard of His beloved Son; and confessing Him gladly before an unbelieving and rejecting world.
Thus as we follow step by step the pathway trodden by these true-hearted seekers of Christ, we may view it as one begun, continued, and ended in communion with the mind of God. The last notice which we get of them is simply this — “They returned, glorifying and praising God.” They “returned” in the spirit of those who later on sought one another with the joyful intelligence, “We have found the Christ.” Back to their suddenly deserted households and their daily employment, back to the plains of Judæa, and, it may be, the midnight tending of their sheep again. But back with a new glad light in their eyes, a new song upon their lips, and the course and tenor of their life forever changed!
And this, and nothing short of it, should ever be the result of the soul’s reception of God’s “glad tidings”— His gracious announcement of salvation and a Saviour to poor needy sinners. The echoes of that midnight message have rolled and resounded throughout the length and breadth of the universe! Not now telling of One who was coming to do a work; but of how completely and gloriously He has accomplished it! How perfectly He has “finished the work” which God gave Him to, do. Not now proclaimed to a few poor, simple shepherds merely, but wherever there is an ear to hear, or a heart to receive it. “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
“O ever-homeless Stranger, Thou dearest Friend to me,
An outcast in the manger, that Thou might’st with us be!
“How rightly rose the praises of heaven that wondrous night,
When shepherds hid their faces, in brightest angel light!
We cling to Thee in weakness, the manger and the cross:
We gaze upon Thy meekness, through suffering, shame, and loss;
There, see the Godhead glory shine through the human veil,
And willing hear the story of love that’s come to heal!”
A. S. M.