The good news of great joy is for all the people, and the good news is that has been

born for you, that is individualizing this universal good news, a savior.

The angel proclaims the good news of great joy, which is for you, that is to say it's

for everybody and anybody.

Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson.

With all the decorating and cooking and last minute shopping and traveling that are so often part of the Christmas season,

there certainly are plenty of things that can shift your attention from the important truth

that Christmas is meant to commemorate. Well, today, John MacArthur helps redirect your focus,

showing you how to keep your eyes on the profound, transforming reality of Christmas. In his study, the promise of Christmas.

So with today's lesson, here's John. In the second chapter of Luke, of course, the first seven

verses described for us the birth of Jesus Christ, born to the Virgin Mary. We remember the circumstances

born in a little village of Bethlehem, no place for them

in the inn so that basically they were having to lay the child in a feed trough in a stable.

And the birth of Jesus Christ, as we remember, was anonymous at first.

Nobody really knew anything about this child, as far as people around were concerned, it was just another young couple and another baby

born.

No one at first really understood what was going on.

Didn't take long, however, because we come to the text of Luke 2.8 on the very same day that

the Lord Jesus Christ was born, we read, and in the same region

there were some shepherds staying out in the fields and keeping watch over their flock

by night, and an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them, and the glory of the Lord

...