In 1858, Scottish missionary, John G. Paton went to the New Hebrides (now called Vanuatu) islands in the South Pacific, to bring the gospel to—to evangelize—the natives there who were steeped in idol worship, witchcraft, and cannibalism. One night the warriors from one of the local tribes surrounded the mission headquarters. Their plan was to smoke the Patons out, kill them, and who knows, probably even eat them. As you can imagine, Paton and his wife were terrified, and in their terror, they turned to God in prayer and prayed all through the night that God would save them. When daylight came, they were astonished to see the warriors left without attacking them. Amazingly, a year later, the chief of the tribe became a Christian.
During the course of one of their early conversations, Paton asked the chief about that fateful night and what stopped the warriors from burning down the house and killing them? The chief says, “Well, who were all of those men there with you?” Paton, confused, knowing there were no men with him replies: “What do you mean, there was no one there other than my wife and I?!” The chief tells Paton that he and his warriors had seen hundreds of massive men standing guard surrounding the mission headquarters, with dazzlingly bright clothing and holding drawn swords, and so they turned away.
If you’re a Christian, the question for you is not whether or not angels exist—good or bad—you know they do, because the Bible tells you so. The question is, what is their purpose? Is it for random manifestations simply for the purpose of startling and terrifying human beings, as you hear in the fanciful stories floating around among some Christians—where they appear for a second, and gone the next, aimlessly, seemingly without purpose?! No, that can’t be true—their purpose can’t be purposelessness.
God created angels with a precise purpose in mind, just as he did all created beings, and that purpose is to glorify and worship Him, as well as to do his bidding, including to minister to us human beings, his saints in particular, according to Hebrews 1:14. Their purpose is to praise, worship, and to glorify God and to do the bidding of God—including at times in salvation-history––to bring special revelation from God to the people of God.
And that is precisely what we find them doing here in our text this morning as Luke continues telling his version of the Christmas story. The angels are glorifying God by doing the bidding of God through bringing a message from God to some shepherds who are tending their flock in the middle of the night, and their magnification of God is made manifest in and through their exclamations of praise. And not just them, but the Shepherds too! A humble, meek, and insignificant class of people in that society—who move from initial fear to faith—end up moving and proclaiming the goods news forward that the angels delivered to them, as they themselves begin glorifying and praising God.
And the reason the angels and shepherds praise and glorify God is because of what God is about to do in time and history: fulfill his plan from eternity by unfolding it in real time and in full motion—his plan to rescue sinners from their sin through the birth of His Son and Savior, Jesus, Christ the Lord. That reality alone, what God has done for sinners like us, is more than enough reason to praise and glorify him.
No matter what your circumstances—high born, low born, rich or poor, healthy or sick, happy, or sorrowful, king or shepherd—we’re to do like the shepherds, whom God graciously chose to reveal this news too first among people, and who upon hearing this announcement, are compelled to glorify God through praise and by continuing to proclaim this good news of great joy to everyone who’ll listen.
That is the proper response to hearing the glorious, gracious, hope-producing, life-giving, heaven-securing, sin-forgiving, and soul-saving gospel message, encapsulated in the Christmas story. It’s, “thank you God for forgiving and saving a wretch like me, and now let me tell the world this good news, so that they too might believe it, be saved through it, rejoice in it, and glorify God, for it!”