Every year I try ( and some I fail) to give some christmas thoughts on this blog.
This year I was struck by people who came to visit Jesus - the first people to witness the Christ child. His birth was well foretold, His birth was the pinnacle and high point of human history. But I know as well as you do there are few co- incidences in the Bible. Each of the gospel writers recorded what they deemed the most important aspects of Jesus life and death. All were of course inspired and breathed by the Holy Spirit and each had a different primary audience but only two of them focus on the circumstances and events surrounding Jesus birth Matthew the one written for a Jewish Audience and Luke the one written by a Greek man for a non Jewish audience. Both record different visitors to the Holy birth.
Considering just how important God's son was and that this was God putting on a tent of flesh and ' tabernacled' amongst us ( John 1:14 ) the people whom visit him at his birth are an odd bunch aside from his parents who are obviously there, one of the first visitors as recorded in Luke's Gospel are the shepherds. I often think it is strange that Luke is the one to record the shepherds and Matthew the wise men because the latter are gentiles and the shepherds are Jewish.
The account of the shepherds visiting the manger is found in Luke 2:8-18. They come because of an encounter with the Angels on their hillside. Of all the professions that could have visited Jesus it is the shepherds that do. Of course we know that Jesus is the lamb of God there is a parallel to the exodus story here that he is good shepherd of course. But I think there is another more powerful parallel, going on, so Jesus was born in Bethlehem because he was in the lineage and the house of David ( Luke 2:4). So if your Old testament history is not fresh David was a shepherd boy from the rural town of Bethlehem he was the youngest in his family and it was his job to go out on the hillside and look after his family's sheep. it is possible some scholars think that David was illegitimate or had a different mother to his brothers because at Jesse's first time of asking he doesn't produce him. ( 1 Samuel 16 :11) he just says ' there is yet the youngest but he is out with the sheep'
Shepherding was in David's time the least desirable job. It was in the field as a shepherd where David was anointed King of Israel probably in the very fields that these angels came and sang. David however looked to the Lord as his shepherd. The Angels tell these shepherds the descendants of David that they are going to find a baby in a place where no baby would normally be, and that this baby was the Christ.God promised David that in his line would be a kingdom and the messiah. In 2 Samuel 7 David is given a covenant but a part of the davidic covenant God tells him that as the Judges ( in the previous 400 years or so - including Samson and Gideon) had shepherded the people 2 Sam 7:7 and in verse 8 he talks about David's role as shepherd and how he had taken him from shepherding sheep to people as prince and that from his line would come an eternal kingdom.
The shepherds coming to the birth of Jesus are no accident. the Angels didn't just appear to the nearest people. they appeared to those who walked in the footsteps of King David to show them a greater king, a greater shepherd, a greater Judge, a greater David this one baby a saviour an anointed King.
Sheep were a fundamental part of the sacrificial system in Israel. in case your Leviticus is a little rusty ( or you got bored half way through the first chapter.) God gave the Israelites the sacrificial system as a way to make themselves right with him without themselves dying - it was supposed to convict them of the cost of sin. We know now that it was a foreshadowing of Christ. Sheep were clean animals and could be sacrificed for atonement for sin or any offering except a grain offering. There were levels of offering based on income and a sheep was the top level. Of course there is the parallel to Exodus where God took the blood of the lamb as a payment instead of the first born child.
Interestingly they did not leave Jesus a Sheep/ lamb contrary to many a christmas carol. If they had it is likely that when he was presented at the temple according to Jewish custom at 33 days it would have been their offering ( not to be confused with the 8 days circumcision) a sin and a burnt offering are made. ( Leviticus 12:6-8) Jesus Mother offers 2 turtle doves or pigeons the poor man's alternative ( Luke 2:24), which means that the lamb of God the one who took all our sins away never had a lamb sacrificed for him. The only gift they left the child was the prophecy of the Angels ( Luke 2:17-20) and from verse 19 my guess it is Mary recounting this to Luke after the Resurrection.
In all it is fitting that the Shepherds came to visit the king born in a Manger. but I do wonder that if those same shepherd boys thirty years later are as convicted by the resurrection as they were on that hillside.
