— all were fast asleep. In the little town on the hillside where the family of David the king was gathered together, everybody was fast asleep. All those of the house and family of David had come, some of them from faraway places, to be enrolled as subjects of a foreigner. Now they slept, and didn’t know that their kinsman promised from of old was born in their midst in a cave because there was no room in their homes, in their hearts.
In faraway Rome, Caesar Augustus was also fast asleep. Little did he know how much his recent law had inconvenienced a humble couple somewhere near the border of the empire. And little would he have cared, had he known. Wouldn’t he have been astonished, though, had he learned that throughout the centuries millions and millions would come and go who would never have heard of him, the great Augustus, except in connection with the birth of this humble child!
All the great ones of this world were asleep, but in heaven was such rejoicing as had never been heard since the creation of the world. All those millions of souls, perhaps headed by Adam and Eve, thanked God in a thunderous chorus that their redemption was at hand. And the Heavenly Father wanted to congratulate His children on earth — was there no one awake to receive His messengers?
“I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth,” Our Lord would pray on a later day, “because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes” (Matt. 11:25; KJV). And Paul would add one day: “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen”(1 Cor. 1:27–28; KJV). The great teachers of the day, the rabbis of Israel, had declared the shepherds as “base” and “foolish,” the very lowest of the low, on the same level as the Gentiles, unclean before the law. And these shepherds were the only ones awake in Israel. “And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night” (Luke 2:8; KJV).
This was no ordinary flock they were watching. These sheep were not to be eaten by men, but they were destined to become sacrifices for God. At this time the priests of Jahweh were not only servants of God, but also extremely successful businessmen. They had managed to become the sole proprietors of the herds from which the sacrifices were chosen. Again, it is Josephus Flavius who mentions that at one Passover around 120,000 lambs were slaughtered. That gives a little idea of the size of the flocks, parts of which were grazing on the fields outside Bethlehem. “Behold the Lamb of God,” John the Baptist would exclaim later. And there the Lamb of God was born next to the lambs of sacrifice, the fulfillment next to the symbol. But it was the shepherds, not the owners, who would find out about Him first. “And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them” (Luke 2:9; KJV).
This was not the first time that angels had been sent to men. Throughout the pages of the Old Testament we find it happening many times, but each single time when heaven and earth met, the reaction of earth was the same: “And they feared with a great fear.”
“We shall surely die, because we have seen God,” cried the father of Samson (Judg. 13:22; KJV) because an angel had appeared to him and his wife. How did he know that it was not God Himself? And each time heaven would say to earth: “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy.” Each time except once. Once the great angel of the Lord was sent on a special mission into a small village tucked away in the hills, to a young girl, and this time when the natural and supernatural world met, it was different. The girl did not fall on her face, fearing she must surely die, and the first