After seeing him, the shepherds told everyone what had happened and what the angel had said to them about this child. All who heard the shepherds’ story were astonished. Luke 2:17-18 NLT
Think with me for a moment. Who did Jesus choose to announce his coming, the coming of the Messiah, to the earth? Well, we all know the answer to that, don’t we? It was legions of angels. Wesley (with a little help from George Whitfield) got it right: “Hark, the herald angels sing, ‘Glory to the newborn King.’”
But wait a minute. Who heard, “Glory to God in the highest”? Did anybody in Jerusalem hear the angels? Did anybody in Bethlehem, even? No, the only people who heard the angels were a half dozen illiterate lie-abouts, men on the very bottom rung of the social ladder, good only to follow around a bunch of stupid sheep, trying to keep them out of trouble.
These guys were the ones chosen by God to tell the folks of Bethlehem, and the rest of us, that the Savior of the World has come, and is lying in a feed-trough in a barn. Oh, we can believe he has come when angels fill the sky, but when ragged nobodies are the announcers, who will believe them, especially when their message is so odd?
What’s going on? Well, it’s really pretty simple when you think about it. Jesus chose to begin as he intended to go on. It would be quite inconsistent of him to have angels showing up in the Jerusalem skies to tell the elites there of his coming when he was, in fact, going to be a very inconspicuous man speaking to the last and the least. No, it is perfectly consistent of him to choose as his heralds those very ones: the last and the least. Hark, the herald shepherds say, “Guess what….!” Praise his holy name!
Called To Be Transformed 