Do you remember what it was like as a child to wake up on Christmas day and go downstairs or out in the living room and see all the presents underneath and around the tree? You would open them up one by one, play with them for a while and then sometime before the day was up you’d phone your best friend and tell him everything you got. (I suppose now they just text message their friends while they are opening their presents.)
Well before we are too critical, that’s actually what the shepherds did after the very first Christmas. They didn’t text message their friends but they did return to their jobs, to their friends and even their family to tell that what they had heard and seen.
17When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them.
Could I pause here for just a moment? We have an awful lot of information floating around out there about how we should witness to others and share our faith. For many Christians I know that is one of the most terrifying things, to tell somebody else how they feel about Christ. And part of it is because we have misunderstood what it means to be a witness.
A witness doesn’t necessarily mean you have to know (1) the four spiritual laws or (2) the evangelism explosion presentation of the gospel or (3) the Romans road or (4) any of the other methods that have been created to put the gospel in some sort of format.
Witnessing merely means you tell somebody else what you has happened to you. On that night the shepherds, had heard and seen that a Savior had been born, to them, the lowliest and least likely of all people.
Next week when we return to work or even this weekend when we return to our friends or family, let’s commit to being a witness, a witness of the things that God has done for us.
20The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.
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