Does God Care about Nobodies?

The PursueGOD Truth Podcast

The angels declared the birth of the Savior, and they came first to shepherds – showing that God’s good news is for everyone, especially for nobodies.

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Today we’re answering this question: Q. Does God Care about Nobodies?

• But I want to start with a different question…
• When you’ve got great news, who’s the first person you tell?
• Our parents
• Our siblings
• Our closest friends
• Back then it was pretty simple, low-key
• Today it’s a whole thing…
• Make fun of gender reveal
• Today we’re going to see how God answered that question
• Who was the first person he told about the birth of Jesus?
• You’d expect priests or prophets or kings
• But that’s not at all who he shared with first
• He went to a bunch of nobodies!?

1 Corinthians 1:26-29 (NLT) 26 Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called you. 27 Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. 28 God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important. 29 As a result, no one can ever boast in the presence of God.

• This is a shocking theme throughout scripture.
• Abraham - a childless, a nomadic herdsman from a pagan family
• Moses - a fugitive, living as a shepherd in the wilderness after killing an Egyptian
• David - the youngest of eight brothers and a shepherd boy, overlooked even by his father
• And now we’ll see the theme again in the Christmas story…

Luke 2:8 (NLT) 8 That night there were shepherds staying in the fields nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep.

• You know, shepherds are all over the place in the Bible. And so I think we maybe, when we read this, I think we might get the wrong idea about this. Because after all, Abraham was a shepherd. Psalm 23, the most famous Psalm in the Bible says, the Lord is my shepherd. Jesus is called the great shepherd. Pastors are called shepherds. And so I think when we think of the word shepherd, we think of a good thing, right? We think of a positive thing, but the reality is that shepherds were the lowliest people in society.
• In fact, even in Genesis chapter 46, this is Abraham saying, every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians.
• Here’s the truth about shepherds 2000 years ago:

Shepherds:

• Responsibilities:
• Tended sheep, guided them to food and water, and protected them from predators.
• Dealt with the grime, smells, and dangers of working with livestock.
• Worked tirelessly in mundane and often thankless tasks.
• Social Status:
• Considered lowly and marginalized in society, often distrusted due to their nomadic lifestyle.
• Worked in isolation, on the fringes of towns and villages.
• Held one of the humblest and least glamorous jobs in ancient society.
• Shepherds couldn't even testify in court 2,000 years ago. They weren't even considered worthy to testify in court. That's how lowly they were.
• Put it this way: if a shepherd came to your door to take your daughter out on a date, you’d slam the door in his face!

Keep this in mind when we read the next verse:

Luke 2:9 (NLT) 9 Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord’s glory surrounded them. They were terrified…

Angels (vs Shepherds):

• Responsibilities:
• Worshiped God continually, proclaiming His holiness (e.g., Isaiah 6:3).
• Served as divine messengers to humanity, entered human spaces briefly, delivering life-changing and history-shaping messages.
• Operated in a realm of perfection and worship.
• Social Status:
• Heavenly beings of the highest rank, dwelling in the presence of God.
• Messengers of divine glory, entrusted with God’s most important announcements.
• Respected as powerful and pure, inspiring awe and reverence.

This is why the shepherds were terrified. There couldn’t be a greater contrast between heavenly angels and lowly shepherds. Read on…

Luke 2:10-11 (NLT) 10 but the angel reassured them. “Don’t be afraid!” he said. “I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. 11 The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David!”

• I want you to know that this was one of the first times that God had spoken to his people in 400 years. Scholars understand this, that God spoke to the prophets in Abraham's time, in Moses' time, in David's time. God spoke to them. He spoke to the prophets, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, Isaiah. He spoke to Malachi and Hosea and Joel. God spoke to the prophets, and then he didn't anymore.
• At the close of the Old Testament, God stopped speaking to the prophets. 400 years. And could you imagine that the only revelation of God that you had as a Jewish person is what you read in the Torah, what you read in the Old Testament? You heard the stories, you read about it, but you'd never, no one in your time, no one in your generation, by this time in the opening of the New Testament, like God had gone silent for 400 years.
• Some of you in your marriage, you get in a fight. I've read about these things, I've heard about these things, but I hear some marriages have fights. And you know what it's like when your wife is mad at you and she doesn't talk to you, right? And you know what it feels like when it's like, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, and a couple of hours. And at first, it's kind of nice. But then you're like, well wait, this might be serious here.
• Could you imagine 400 years of silence? Could you imagine being a Jew and saying like, what is wrong, is God mad with me? Is he mad? What did we do wrong? 400 years!
• And when he breaks the silence, he comes to… shepherds?! Could you just let that sink in for a minute? When God breaks 400 years of silence, he doesn't come to Moses, he doesn't come to David. He doesn't come to a professional prophet like Jeremiah or Isaiah. He comes to a lowly shepherd.
• Here’s the point: The Good News of God is a message for ordinary people. Let’s break it down:
• Don’t be afraid
• God is for you, not against you
• The message of Jesus dissolves fear
• I bring good news
• Nobody ever brought shepherds good news, nobody.
• But to God they are as important as a king or a president.
• …for all people, not just somebodies
• Answer: God does care about nobodies.
• Again, to come back to the passage I opened with in First Corinthians, he says this, not many of you were mighty, not many of you were noble, but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and he's chosen the weak things of the world to shame the strong.
• And that's why he came to the shepherds. He didn't come to the Pharisees, he didn't come to the kings. He came to the lowliest. God lovingly decides to share the good news with the nobodies of this world. You should be happy for that.
• And here’s the news: the Savior is here!

Luke 2:13-14 (NLT) 13 Suddenly, the angel was joined by a vast host of others—the armies of heaven—praising God and saying, 14 “Glory to God in highest heaven, and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased.”

• What a picture! The armies of heaven!? What are they doing? Singing!?
• The first Christmas carol: sung to the shepherd boys by the biggest choir the world had ever heard
• Here are the loners and the losers
• being treated to a personal concert led by God’s angels.
• The theme: Not shock and awe, blood and destruction…
• Glory to God
• peace on earth
• The message of Christmas really can be summed up in this: that Jesus dumpster dives to give us peace. Emmanuel means God with us. A bunch of nobodies.
• Jesus entered into the brokenness of humanity, and the reason he did it is to bring us peace. The reason he did it is because he wanted us to be reconciled to him.

How the story ends:

Luke 2:15-17 (NLT) 15 When the angels had returned to heaven, the shepherds said to each other, “Let’s go to Bethlehem! Let’s see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.” 16 They hurried to the village and found Mary and Joseph. And there was the baby, lying in the manger.

• I don't think we can properly understand the humor of this moment. Can we just zoom out for a second and understand? God is breaking into the world. He's breaking a 400 year silence. And this expectation, the messianic expectation is that this grand, strong leader is gonna storm onto the scene with swords blazing, and he's gonna take back the nation of Israel. And he is gonna exert his power and his strength in the world. I mean, this is what they expected. This is what they were looking for. This is what they thought the Old Testament was pointing to. And here, God breaks the silence and he breaks into the world and he speaks first to a bunch of shepherds who couldn't even testify in court.

Luke 2:17 After seeing him, the shepherds told everyone what had happened and what the angel had said to them about this child.

• Became the first evangelists, spreading the news of Jesus’ birth to others (Luke 2:17–20).
• Even before the fishermen, shepherds were the first people in history to tell people about Jesus. And so the people who couldn't even testify in court, God employed them to testify to the world that the Savior was born in the world.

Close:

Maybe you're here today and you would say, I can't even imagine that God would want to bring me peace. I can't even imagine that God would want a relationship with me. Because somehow you have in your mind that you're like a shepherd. Somehow you have in your mind that, well, no, God relates to these kinds of people over here. I know these people, they're church people. They're all throughout my neighborhood. This is who God is interested in. This is who he goes for.

I want you to see it differently today through this story. Every time you hear about shepherds this Christmas, I want you to think about losers. I want you to think about broken people. I want you to think about despised people. I want you to think about weak and foolish people. I want you to think about the down and outers. Nobodies.

• And I want you to think about you, if that's how you feel. If you feel like, no, there's something, maybe nobody else even knows it about me, but there's something in my past. There's something in my story that I know disqualifies me from God. I want you to know that's exactly how the shepherds felt. Something in my story. I'm just a lowly shepherd. There's no way God would come to me, yet God came to them first.

Jesus has come for you. Jesus has been looking for you.

• He has come to love you, forgive you, and heal you, restore.
• Jesus has come to rescue you and bring you peace.

Run to Him, bow down to Him, receive Him. I bring you good news, Jesus has come for you!