Luke 2:8-14
And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): The meanest circumstances of Christ’s humiliation were all along attended with some discoveries of His glory, to balance them, and take off the offence of them; for even when He humbled Himself, God did in some measure exalt Him and give Him earnests of His future exaltation.
CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): Thus, in the incarnation of our Lord, there was a meanness, which seemed unsuitable to such an occasion; and at the same time a majesty, that was worthy the person and character of the new-born infant: He was born, not in a palace, but a stable, and had only a manger for his reception: yet did an angel come from heaven to announce His birth; and a multitude of the heavenly host attended to proclaim His praise.
MATTHEW HENRY: When we saw Him wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger, we were tempted to say, “Surely this cannot be the Son of God?” But see His birth attended, as it is here, with a choir of angels, and we shall say, “Surely it can be no other than the Son of God, concerning Whom it was said, when He was “brought into the world, Let all the angels of God worship him,” Hebrews 1:6.
CHARLES SIMEON: The angels had doubtless seen much of the Divine glory before: they had seen God’s wisdom, power, and goodness in the creation and government of the world. But they never before had such a view of His condescension and grace as when they beheld Him lying in the manger, a helpless babe. Now also the design of God to glorify all His perfections in the work of redemption was more clearly unfolded. Hence the whole multitude of the heavenly choir began to sing, “Glory to God in the highest.”
ALEXANDER MacLAREN (1826-1910): This strange blending of opposites—the glory in the lowliness, and the abasement in the glory—is the keynote of this singular event. He lies in a manger, but a star hangs trembling above it, and leads sages from afar with their myrrh, and incense, and gold.
THOMAS COKE (1747-1814): Amid the deeper humiliation of Jesus, some bright displays of His uncreated glory still broke forth.
ALEXANDER MacLAREN: The blending of these two is one of the remarkable features in the New Testament portraiture of Jesus Christ. Wherever in our Lord’s life any incident indicates more emphatically than usual the lowliness of His humiliation, there, by the side of it, you get something that indicates the majesty of His glory—He submits Himself to the baptism of repentance, but the heavens open and a voice proclaims, “This is My beloved Son!” He sits wearied, on the stone coping of the well, and craves for water from a peasant woman; but He gives her the Water of Life. He lies down and sleeps, from pure exhaustion, in the stern of the little fishing-boat, but He wakes to command the storm, and it is still. He weeps beside the grave, but He flings His voice into its inmost recesses, and dead Lazarus comes forth. He well-nigh faints under the agony in the garden of Gethsemane, but an angel from Heaven strengthens Him. He stands a prisoner at a human bar, but He judges and condemns His judges. He dies, and that hour of defeat is His hour of triumph, and the union of shame and glory is most conspicuous in that hour when on the Cross the “Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him.”
CHARLES SIMEON: The circumstances of our Saviour’s birth characterize in a measure, the dispensation which he came to introduce. The Gospel exhibits a plain, yet profound, scheme of salvation: while its great outlines are intelligible to the meanest capacity, it abounds with the most sublime, and inscrutable mysteries.
ALEXANDER MacLAREN: If you want to understand Bethlehem, you must go back to a time before Bethlehem. The meaning of Christ’s birth is only understood when we turn to John, that Evangelist who does not narrate it. For the meaning of it is here: “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten Son of the Father,” John 1:14. The surface of the fact is the smallest part of the fact. They say that there is seven times as much of an iceberg under water as there is above the surface. And the deepest and most important fact about the nativity of our Lord is that it was not only the birth of an Infant, but the Incarnation of the Word…We have to travel back and recognise that that life did not begin in the manger. We have to travel back and recognize the mystery of godliness—“God manifest in the flesh.”
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): He that was born in Bethlehem’s manger was the Infinite, as well as the Infant.
EDWARD PAYSON (1783-1827): No wonder that angels should desire to look into these things. No wonder that they left heaven in multitudes to visit our world when their Creator and their Lord lay an infant in a manger. No wonder that raptures and ecstasies unfelt before swelled their bosoms, and called for new songs to express them.
CHARLES SIMEON: And if their hosannas increased with their discoveries of the Divine glory, should not ours also? Have not we also abundant reason to magnify our incarnate God; and to exalt our thoughts of Him in proportion as He has debased Himself for our sakes?
ALEXANDER MacLAREN: When we look far beyond the manger of Bethlehem into the depths of Eternity and see God so loving the world as to give His Son, we cannot but recognize that He has intervened in the course of human history and that the mightiest force in the development of man, is the eternal Son Whom He sent to save the world.
EDWARD PAYSON: The wonder is, that man—stupid, insensible man, should be no more affected by this event; that he should regard it without interest, and almost fall asleep while he hears it described. It is not thus, when events comparatively trifling solicit his attention. Let the President of the United States come among us, and every house pours out its inmates to gaze. Let a comet blaze athwart the sky, and thousands of sleepless eyes are open to watch. But let the Creator, the Eternal Sovereign of the universe—by whom and for whom all things were made, come in the most interesting form, how few are found who even trouble themselves to ask whence He comes, or what is His object; how much fewer to give Him the welcome which He had a right to expect! My hearers, how strange is this: and how strange it is, that we cannot see and blush at our own stupidity. Why is this event, which will cause the name of our world to resound through the whole created universe of God, and to be had in everlasting remembrance, regarded with such indifference?
THOMAS COKE: Such is man’s fallen nature…They who are offended at the meanness of Jesus in the manger, will tremble before Him when He shall come again at the head of His angelic hosts.
