You might expect that when God has something important to announce, He would tell it

to

the

So God came not to a princess but to a lowly maiden, not to the home of a high ranking officer,

but to the home of the village carpenter, and not as we now see to the halls of learning,

but to the fields of shepherds, and to a group of individuals who as a class were actually

despised by those who were religiously orthodox in their day. The shepherds were not anywhere

close to the top of the social spectrum, and in religious terms they didn't fare much better.

On account of their duties, they missed far too many of the services, and they tended to

wash their hands a little less than they were supposed to in relationship to the ceremonial

and judicial law. Yet despite that, when God dispatched his angelic host, it is to the fields

he sends them, and it is as we have seen directly to this group of shepherds, the one of whom

the angels sing their message to the shepherds, is one who in the years of his manhood is going

to stand upon the stage of human history, and take to himself as one of the descriptions

of his person nothing other than that of a shepherd. It will be this one of whom the angels

are singing that will stand and say, I am the good shepherd, and I know my sheep, and they know me.

At this point in time, when a son was born into a Jewish home, or at least into a mid-eastern home,

it was a cause of great celebration. I wish I could say in all honesty that when a girl was born

into the home, it was a cause of equal celebration. It was not. That was a mistake, something that we

wouldn't want to emulate, but nevertheless the distinction was clear. And the birth of a son

brought out the minstrels, and friends and neighbors would gather at the home of the individual

in order to make music and to sing songs. Mary and Joseph, of course, have moved from the locality

...