We Have Good News - Tell It!

We have Good News! Our weary world still has the same thrill of hope in Jesus.

We love hearing good news, especially when you’re first to know. The ability to share exciting news with others is quick and easy. With one tweet, post, hashtag, or group text, we can communicate with the masses. But things were obviously very different in the time Jesus was born.

When something important happened, such as the birth of a child, heralds often spread the news. Families welcoming new babies, if they had the means to do so, would hire someone to go throughout the community and announce their happy news. Mary and Joseph, of humble means, did not have the ability to do this. But God Himself provided a company of heavenly heralds to proclaim the birth of His one and only Son.

Shepherds were on the midnight watch and out of nowhere an angel of the Lord bursts onto the scene with the news of the Savior’s birth. It is amazing that God chose this group of men as the first to hear to good news.

In the times of Jesus’ birth, people regarded shepherds as liars and thieves because they were nomadic, moving from place to place to graze their flocks, people didn’t readily trust them. Yet it was to men such as this that God announced the Messiah’s coming. He told them first. Not royalty, not the religious leaders of the day, but shepherds - lowly and insignificant. They were ordinary men. He invited them into His story and then mobilized them as the very first evangelists.

As soon as they heard the news of Jesus’ birth, the shepherds felt compelled to act. They went with haste, leaving their flocks behind, to find Mary, Joseph and the Savior Child lying in a manger. And once they beheld the One through whom salvation would come, they spread the word of all that had taken place.

We are like these men - unlikely recipients of an unbelievable reality. Just as God called the shepherds to witness and testify to Christ’s birth, so we are called to herald the saving work of His death and resurrection. As believers, we have been invited into His story, sent out as heralds of both Jesus’ first coming and His second. As we consider the shepherds, let us respond as they did to this good news of great joy - with amazement, belief and action. Tell of His coming.