The Shepherds: Where do I Stand with God?

Well, Merry Christmas Salt Church. How you doing? So glad you're here with us. We've successfully done two services for the first time. Salt Church is Christmas season.

Thank you so much for being with us today. From my family to yours, I want to wish you a very, very Merry Christmas. I'm so excited about this season. And listen, it's, it's, it's a different time, right? It's a different era.

And I know for you out online, you're, you're at home right now watching because you're quarantining for your family to go see your family this Christmas. I know we have a few families that are doing that. We also have a few of you that contacted me this week that are in the military that have tested positive and you really want to be with us here at the, at the Christmas service. But we're just praying for you guys that, that you're, you're healthy and well, and we want you back with us. Healthy and well.

So we can't wait to see you because I'm believing that 2021 is going to be a great year. Amen. I'm believing that for our church and for our family. If you're a guest with us today, we'd love for you to connect with us by filling out an online card at saltchurch.org slash connect.

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Merry Christmas to you. And we are in a series called Hark and we're ending it today, a Christmas series. And as you heard Hark the Herald Angel, we all recognize that song. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a very popular Christmas song. And, and we, we've taken that idea of Hark, an old English term that was used to say, hey, listen, there's something important here.

Listen up. Here's what I want to tell you. And, and so we, we, we, we've been looking at different perspectives of the Christmas story, different, different points of view. In the first week, we looked at where the angel visited Mary and told her to fear not. And, and, and gave her this message about, um, how she was going to be, to carry the Christ child, the Messiah, and what a task it was for her.

And what we learned from that is to overcome our fear of what God is asking us to do. You can go back and listen to that at some point. The second week, we talked about Joseph and the fear of what other people think, because Joseph had a lot of fear there, I'm sure. And we learned that pleasing God often means pleasing people, displeasing people. And we want to be more concerned about pleasing God.

Amen. Last week, we learned about the wise men from their perspective, a star that, that came to them that led them to the Christ child. And wise men do two things. They come bearing gifts and they go way out of their way. Men and women go way out of their way to find God, to find God.

Well, today I want to take the last angle of the Christmas story. And this also is a visitation by the angels. And there's the subculture of people in that day called shepherds. Shepherds were different type of people. And these men tended to have this feeling that they didn't stand clear with God, that they weren't right with God.

They had this fear of where they stood with God. That's what I want to talk about today as we are in this Christmas season. An honest moment. Many of you would probably ask that question. Where do I stand with God?

Really? Am I good enough? Am I good enough to stand before God? If I were to leave this earth today, if I were to leave this world today, would I be good enough? Would I be good enough?

Stand before God. When I was young, I know it's kind of silly, but when I was young, I had a lot of fears about what God thought of me, you know, and whether I was right with Him. In fact, I saw Him like He was Santa Claus. He was keeping a list of do's and don'ts, you know, and if I get more do's on that side, then maybe God likes me a little more. Maybe it was because of my age and not understanding, you know, who God was at the time, or maybe it was just the preachers that were preaching around me, you know, the evangelists that would come into town and scare you to death and doing right, you know, and they would use words like hail, you know, instead of hell.

It's like, you're going to hail unless you get right, you know. That's how they did it in North Carolina. They put a lot of two syllables on one syllable words. So, you know, you got all of that going on. And then you have these prayers that you pray when you're a kid, right, Stefan?

I mean, it's like, as I lay my head to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. And if I die before I wake, and then you're afraid to go to sleep. What if I die, you know? I pray the Lord my soul to take. Is God going to take my soul?

Or is He going to, you know, where do we come up with these rhymes anyway as children? So, it's kind of funny, but for many, that might be a fear. And perhaps there are some of us here in an honest moment that could say, you know, am I right with God? And I think this all results from an unhealthy understanding of who God is. So, we're going to look at this popular piece of the Christmas story where the angels visit the shepherds and tell them to, what, fear not.

There's a lot of fear in the world today, right? There's a lot of fear right now. There's a lot of things out there that could make us afraid, but the angel is telling the shepherds to fear not because he's getting ready to share something incredible with them. So, if you'll follow along with me in Luke 2, beginning with verse 8, and it says, This isn't the angel that you see in your nativity scene. This isn't the angel that you see painted on Michelangelo's beautiful artwork.

This is not the type of angel. This was a terrifying presence in front of them. But the angel said to them, and I can imagine the angel with his tender voice says, Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all people. Today in the town of David, a Savior has been born to you.

He is the Messiah, the Lord. So, the question is, what is this good news? What is this good news? And if we need a Savior, what do we need a Savior from? What do we need a Savior from?

What's interesting about this story, and when we hear, Hark the herald angel, I'm not even going to try to sing today. My voice is all over the place, and that was way too high, anyway, for me. I used to lead the worship here, by the way. I used to have a voice. You know, just put it out there.

But I did it with Salt Church for so long, I lost it. Okay. So, angels were, when you hear this word, herald, you got this angel, a herald in general. In that day, a king would have a herald. People would hire heralds to go and share messages with family members, with people in the city.

And a king would send a herald out to announce to everyone, especially if there was a firstborn that would be the next king, a prince that was born. And here we got God sending a herald, an angel, to Israel's elite. Not necessarily. To the religious people of that day. To the religious people of that day.

To the religious people of that day. To the religious people of that day. Okay. The Sanhedrin? Did he show up to the Sanhedrin?

Did he show up to the kings of the world? Did he tell those people? No, he came to shepherds. He told shepherds who were abiding in the field. He chose to announce the birth of Jesus, the Son of God, the one who would be the Savior of the world, to shepherds.

And they were not these pretty nativity-seeing, blonde-headed, fair-skinned shepherds that you see in your nativity setting, okay? These were rough people. And there's three things I want to share about what the shepherds were feeling in that day, possibly about themselves and how they felt about their standing with God. Three things they felt distant from God with, and that was the first one, they felt unworthy. Why would a shepherd feel unworthy?

Well, they were nomads. They were wanderers. They were people without homes. They were like truckers, you know, they were out for months at a time. Or they were like cowboys.

I don't know if anybody relates to cowboys today, but they just were out and about, and they weren't around. And they were made ceremonially unclean because of this, because they couldn't perform a lot of the ceremonial and civil rituals that were required that day. And more so, religious people considered them spiritually dirty. They were disgusting, and you didn't touch them, you didn't spend time with them, because they were ceremonially unclean. They felt very unworthy.

Unworthy. Religiously, in every way, unworthy. Unworthy. And if we're honest with ourselves, many of us here today may have those experiences where we, or maybe you're experiencing it right now, where you feel a little unworthy. I mean, you go to church, you play the part, you know.

If you're a mother or father, you know how this is. You come dressed up in your Sunday's best, and you're coming to Christmas service, you know, here at Salt Church. But you walk in the door with a smile, but you just had an argument with your wife. You about killed your firstborn on the way here, and you have to walk in and put on the part. So many of us feel unworthy.

They also felt very inadequate, because they weren't educated people. They weren't given a chance to be educated. They didn't feel that they could measure up to society. And it's amazing how we can feel inadequate as well when we compare ourselves to others. The comparison trap.

I talked about that a few weeks ago. But we feel inadequate. Maybe you're a mother, and you compare yourself to other mothers, right? I'll go to their house, and they have it all together. Their kids are listening to them.

The house is kept up. But my house is a disaster, and my kids will not respect me. They don't listen to me, and I can't keep them in shape. Maybe that's you. Or maybe you're jealous or envious of somebody else because they're more successful than you, and you look at them.

I've done everything. I've done A, B, and C just like them. How are they here? And I'm here. And you feel a bit inadequate.

Like, am I really designed to do this? For me, it's Christmas lights in our little cul-de-sac out there. I feel so inadequate when I look at everybody else's lights on this cul-de-sac and realize that I just have my little draped lights and my little Christmas tree in the window. The guy across the street, I want to throw something at him because my kids look at him and say, well, that's a cool house. Why can't we do ours like that, Daddy?

That Clark Griswold messes me up. I'm a Tim DeToolman Taylor fan, you know, home improvement. I watched all the Christmas episodes. The competition with Doc, the guy next door. Not me.

Or comparing my living room to my mom's, who has currently about 30 trees sitting in her house. And she said, oh, it's no thanks. She's got a real strong southern room. It's no thanks. Just get a little tree here, a little tree there, a little tree here, put it all around, you know.

And it's like, I feel so inadequate. Better homes and gardens. All right. See, Shepherds felt a lot like that. They felt inadequate.

In fact, they felt a little spiritually inadequate. They couldn't go to the temple to perform the rituals. They couldn't pray. And they didn't, you know, maybe we feel that way. Maybe, maybe we, we pray.

We, we do devotions. But, but you look at somebody else and you try to, you compare yourself spiritually to someone else, right? You look at someone else. Oh, they've got all the, the devotions. She knows, you know, she's got her little devotion week one, week two, week three.

And she's talking about it. She's elaborating on it. And I just, I don't even have time to do that. And, and, and then you look at the neighbors next door, you know, diddly-do, knit and Flanders people. Am I dating myself this morning, okay, with the Simpsons?

All right. We have any Simpsons fans in here that remember that? If you don't want to, I got a few claps here. The young people were like, what are y'all talking about, you know? Yeah.

Yeah. But, the shepherds felt unworthy, inadequate, and most importantly, and I'm going to lean into this, they felt unloved. They felt unloved. They were thieves. They were not trusted.

Highly distrusted. In fact, so much that they could not even give a testimony in the courts if they were, if there was ever an eyewitness of anything. They didn't trust them. If they wanted to marry, no father would want their daughter marrying a shepherd. So, they were often alone, never had a family, and they had no hope for a future or anything different.

In fact, the actual occupation of a shepherd was so offensive in some way that they passed it down to the youngest son, if not the youngest son, a slave in the family. Because, think of David, the shepherd boy, the young shepherd boy, had all the brothers and passed it down. They just didn't think well of shepherds, and they felt very unloved and treated unloved. And the reality is, for many of us, we may feel that way from time to time. Maybe you've been there for a while.

Maybe you had a parent, a mother, a father that failed you, that didn't love you the way that you should have been loved. Or maybe you have a spouse that left you suddenly, and you feel very, very unloved right now. Maybe you've been betrayed by a really, really close friend. And nothing hurts worse than betrayal, and you've felt that, and you feel so unloved. Maybe you don't even love yourself, and you're like, how can I even love God if I can't love myself?

And how do I know that God actually loves me? How do I know that God actually loves me? And what's interesting is that the perception we have of church people is that we have it all together. But if we're honest, we have no idea what pain people are going through right here in this place, right there online. They're watching me right now.

We have no idea what people are going through. Unworthy, inadequate, and unloved. Unworthy, inadequate, and unloved. But I want to lean into this for a minute. Bottom line is, I've got good news for you.

We'll see you next time. The bottom line is I got good news for you. Religion did not work for the shepherds. The do's and don'ts of life didn't work for the shepherds. Religion made them feel far from God.

Religion made them feel inadequate. Religion made them feel unloved. But religion didn't work for them and it won't work for you. It won't work for us. God did not send Jesus to bring religion into the world but to set us free from religion and to give us something way way way better.

Religion reduces Christianity to a list of do's and don'ts. If I obey the law, if I don't drink, if I don't swear, if I don't do this and do that, if I tithe, if I pray enough, if I do this, maybe God will have favor on me. And while those are all worthy causes, that's religion. Jesus came to break us free from the do's and don'ts because we cannot add up to a worthy and holy God. Jesus was so disgusted with religion that he looked at the Pharisees and he says, you people, you vipers, on the outside you look so clean and so churchy and so good, but on the inside you're filthy, you're dirty.

God has good news and I have good news for you because I'm sharing this good news with you that he gave you. The good news is you don't have to be good enough. Did you know that? You do not have. That's what Christmas is about.

That you don't have to be good enough. That God sent his son to the world so that the world isn't condemned, but that through him they would live. They would be saved. They would experience the light of life in them. And that's Jesus Christ.

So how does this good news apply to our lives today? How does this good news work? See, Paul, the apostle, was a persecutor of Christians. He was the most religious of the religious. He obeyed every law, every civil and ceremonial law.

He knew. He knew and he obeyed, but he wrote this because Jesus Christ met him and showed him that it's not a list of do and don'ts. It's just about him and nothing else. He said this, For no one can ever be made right by God by doing what the law commands. The law simply shows us how sinful we are, but now God has shown us a way to be made right with him without the requirements of the law, and we are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ.

And this is true for everyone, not just some people, not just a few, but this is for everyone who believes, no matter where they are. We can get three things out of this real quick. First of all, you cannot earn God's acceptance by observing the law. You cannot earn God's approval, God's acceptance by earning the law, because there's 613 laws that you have to follow in order to even get remotely right with God. And I say remotely right with God.

God gave us ten. Jesus even brought it down to two. Love God and love people. But 613 laws could not be honored by the shepherds, and it cannot be honored by you. It's impossible.

For no one can ever be made right with God by doing what the law commands, according to verse 20. Nobody. So what is the purpose of the law? Why do we have the law? Because Jesus obviously said that he fulfills the law.

He didn't come to abolish the law. The purpose of the law is to show us you are in need of a Savior. The purpose of the law is to show you your need for saving. That's the purpose of the law. It reveals to us who we are.

In verse 20, the second part of that says, the law simply shows us how sinful we are. It shows us that we do in fact need a Savior. How do you know that you need a Savior unless you know that you cannot meet God's standard and in His standard you are sinful. You are a sinner. One of the fundamental flaws of our culture today is that people think that they're just naturally good.

And comparing yourself to others, oh yeah, it would make sense, right? Like, I'm not a murderer. I'm not hateful like them. I don't act like that. I go to church and things like that.

But if you're honest with yourself, define good. Define what good is. I think of the kid's t-shirt, Dear Santa, define good, you know? Define good. What does that mean, you know?

Like your do's and don't list. Well define good. What does good mean? Well, the Ten Commandments say this, you can't lie. How many have lied?

Commandments say, how many have cheated? Okay, we got some liars and cheaters in here. How many of you have stole anything, you know? But just some bubble gum at the store. I mean, some baseball cards, you know, when I was in the store nobody was looking.

I mean, that was a long time ago. But how many of you have ever looked on someone lustfully? It's as good as committing adultery, right? So we got a bunch of lying, cheating, stealing adulterers in this place. Everybody is a sinner, right?

And when we compare ourselves to God, we are all sinners. But here's the thing. It's good that we know that we cannot meet God's standards. See, that's the good news because if we know that we're sinners, we know that we need somebody and that God actually brought somebody to us to give us hope and give us purpose. The purpose of the law is to show us that we need a savior.

So how can we be made right with God? So here's the good news today. Here's the good news today. Righteousness with God comes by faith in Christ alone. See, that's the Christmas story, really.

It comes by Christ alone. It doesn't come by Christ in religion. It doesn't come by Christ in church membership. It doesn't come by Christ in money. It doesn't come by Christ and good deeds.

It's Christ and nothing. It's Christ and Christ alone. Christ is the one who changes everything. You put your faith in him. You put your trust in him.

And you can have a relationship with him. For we are made right with God by placing our faith in Christ Jesus. And this is true for everyone who believes no matter who we are. Romans 3, 22. See, Jesus gave his life on the cross.

He gave the perfect sacrifice. The blood sacrifice. So that we no longer have to be religious. See, all that other stuff comes later. As we work and grow towards him.

And we're not negating that the law is not important. But for so many people, you've lived in these states of loneliness. These states of darkness. These states of hopelessness. Because we've tried to live in a way we can't possibly live.

So that's why God the Father, on Christmas, 2,000 years ago, sent his son to the earth. He was the light of life. He was a light to the world. And then this honest moment now. I ask you.

Do you know who God is? You don't have to feel far from God anymore. You don't have to be disconnected from him. He has made himself available to you through the cross. Crossed through the blood of Jesus Christ.

By believing in Him, by committing to Him, He says, He who calls on the name of the Lord will be what's saved. Saved from what? Saved from my sin because I couldn't add up. That's why He did it, because He loved you so much. God loved you so much that He gave His Son that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life.

God sent not His Son into the world to condemn you with the religion, but that through Him you will live and live life abundantly. So with all heads bowed and all eyes closed, I just want to offer this opportunity and that honest moment right now as you're before God. Are you right with Him? Are you like the Shepherds? Let me give you a healthy view of God.

He loves you and you can submit your life to Him. Pray this with me. Jesus, I know that I'm a sinner. I know that I'm far from you. I know that I don't add up.

But today, Lord, I commit my life to you. I put my life in your hands. I put my hope in your hands today. Come into my life. Come into my heart.

Save me, Lord. I'm calling on your name. I'm calling on your name right now. Holy Spirit, come and change me. Transform me from the inside out.

In Jesus' name. Amen.