Celebrating Christmas—Shepherds

A few miles away from Bethlehem, shepherds were watching their flocks.  Deemed by the upper classes as men of naught, the shepherds were nevertheless saviors to the sheep.  Besides assisting in the births, they nourished, gathered, comforted, and protected their flocks, sometimes risking their lives to defend them.  There was deep irony in the fact that Jesus, the Good Shepherd, would be deemed by the Pharisees and Sadducees as a man of naught while in the very act of giving His life to save them.

But there is more to this symbolism of shepherd and sheep.  One scholar notes that a tower called Migdal Eder–the watchtower of the flock–stood on the road between Bethlehem and Jerusalem.  The sheep that where gathered there belonged to the temple flock, from which the sacrificial lambs would be taken.  Some Jews believed that the Savior would be born in Bethlehem and revealed at Migdal Eder (Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament,1:269).

“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11).   

How fitting that the angelic announcement was made to humble men serving the needs of sheep 

that might die in similitude of the Lamb of God.   

But that has not changed.  

 It is still to those who are feeding His sheep that He reveals Himself.  

 It is to those who serve that the testimony is revealed--the testimony that all 

who are unclean have a Savior 

and can come forth from the darkness of their tombs 

into the Light of Life.