Why It Had To Be Shepherds.

William Branham.

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Why It Had To Be Shepherds.

Luke 2:8-16,
And there was in the same country shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone around about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring... 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; You shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, laying in a manger. And suddenly there was the... And suddenly there... with the angel a multitude of... heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will towards men. And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us go now even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord has made known unto us. And they came in haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in the manger.

Now, it's a... Why this great event was revealed to shepherds, that would be kind of an astounding thing for us. I have some Scriptures written here, and a few notes that I will try to run over, to explain to you why to the best of my knowledge. And maybe then after this, that the Lord with His grace tonight will take the why's away from us. But did... Most all of us, I suppose, at one time or other has wondered why that this greatest event of all times was revealed to shepherds. Why was it revealed to shepherds and not to the theologians of that day? They were the one were trained to hear it? And why did It come and bypass the rich and come to the poor? Also, why did It bypass the learned and wise and come to the humble and unlearned? There is a few questions of why in this.

And another reason I might say, notice, the babe was born in Bethlehem. Which "Bethlehem" in the Hebrew interpretation, as we had a couple years ago here, "Bethlehem" means the "house of God's bread." And we proved in the Scriptures, He could not come any other place. Bethlehem was founded by Rahab and her--her husband. Rahab was a harlot that a general courted, from the--the Israelite army, after they had taken Jericho... And by faith she believed the message of God in her condition, and she was saved. And from there, when Joshua divided up the lands of where each one would be...

And there's a great lesson that sometime I hope to be able to bring at Tucson, of those Hebrew mothers giving birth to those babies. When she groaned at the birth pain of the baby, she called the name of the baby and that positionally placed it in the promised land, its tribe. The great thing, all the Word of God fits right together. If it doesn't fit together, it's not God's Word that's misfit; it's your thought is misfitting to the Word. It all fits together.

So then He was the Bread of Life, as we taught last week in Phoenix, or week before last. And being the Bread of Life, He could come no place else but the "house of God's bread." And that was the why. Now, here Jesus is borned in Bethlehem, and in Bethlehem there was synagogues; great religious leaders lived in Bethlehem. David the great king-shepherd was born in Bethlehem; his father Jesse was born in Bethlehem; his grandfather Obed was born in Bethlehem. Also, all the way back, he came from Bethlehem. And here, Jesus the Son of David is born in Bethlehem, right under the shadows of the great cathedrals. Then if those people are trained, and had been looking for the Messiah for all these years: four thousand years the Messiah had been prophesied to come. And then if the Messiah be born in the shadow of the cathedral, why did they have to go plumb back up into the mountains to a bunch of unlearned, untrained shepherds to bring the great message, the first message? And commissioned shepherds, not the wise and trained, but shepherds. It's a strange thing, isn't it? Well, there's got to be a why somewhere. There is a why; now there's got to be an answer why. And no man knows the answer save God. He's the One that knows the answer.

Now, remember, the Messiah was already in the city, born in the city, in a stable; right by the great cathedrals where the high priest... and the great priests, and the theologians, and the wise, and the trained, all was there waiting for the Messiah. And there He was right in their midst. But why then did they go to the--out on the hills of Judaea to unlearned, untrained, uncultured, poorest of all? Looked like the most unfit person for such a task to reveal the message and send them out to bring the message. You know my opinion? It might not amount to very much, but I want to pass my opinion: I believe it's because of the wisdom of God, that He knew they wouldn't receive such a message the way It come. It wasn't in the taste of their learning. It was different. It wasn't what they had been trained to believe He would be like. It was contrary to their theological understanding. All their training, all their learning was bypassed, become naught. I believe it was the wisdom of God that knew that they wouldn't receive such a message.

So the Messiah was here, and there must be somebody recognize It. And He knew those who hadn't been mixed up in such stuff as that. He would be more able to get His message to a unlearned group, than He would be to a mixed-up group that was so set in their ways that nothing could turn them, not even the Word of God. And now, Christian friends, let me ask this question, with all sincerity and love. I just wonder if He would make the same act tonight, and send to us in this generation the promised Word that's promised for this generation, I wonder if our theologians, and educators, and wise, wouldn't turn the message down just the same as they did then? Man doesn't change, neither does God's Word change. He's the unchanging God, He doesn't change.

Notice, Angels coming and... Angels coming and giving their message to men of such low estate, when there were men there much more (earthly thought of) qualified than these poor, illiterate shepherds. The shepherd was the most illiterate of anybody; he didn't need to know nothing but just about his sheep. He didn't need to know mathematics. He didn't need to know how to--to split an atom. He didn't need no scholarship. He just had to know his sheep; that's all that he needed to know. And God, the great Wisdom, and the Fountain and resource of all wisdom, would choose such a person as that (persons, rather, as that), and bypass all the well-trained scholars that's trained to know that. It speaks one thing, that they were trained in the wrong field. Passing up all the important of the land, there were important people, great teachers, Caiaphas the high priest, many other great men, all Israel's mighty learned, all the denominations, and all the boasting theologians, God bypassed everyone of them. Now, that's God's wisdom.

Notice, the highest heavens hastening to honor earth's most humble and unlearned. The highest of heaven came down to make Hisself known to the lowest of the earth, bypassing all between to make Hisself known to common herdsmen; coming to give these common herdsmen the greatest message of all times. There had been many great messengers. We'd think of in Noah's day, and the prophets, and--and the great priests, and so forth, had been in the days gone by, the great learned men, kings, potentates, monarchs, but here He comes with the greatest of all the messages. What was the message? "Messiah is here now." See? And to make that known, He bypassed all the trained to make it known to humble shepherds. Think of this: all of the clergymen, all of the churchmen, all of the teachers, all of the--the theological training, all the money had been spent, all the churches, and the doctrines, and the denominations was all bypassed. All the learning that they had spent on all the--all the missionaries, and all the proselyting, all the membership, and everything that they had thought they'd done honor to God, yet the key message of all of it was bypassed from them. Strange, why? See?

And notice, not only that, but the most unlikely place for such an event. The shepherds now, was the one who received the message. And now, notice where the message was: in the most unlikely place that anyone would expect it to come. And I wonder, tonight, if we were looking for the true Message of the Lord Jesus, I wonder if it would be in a unlikely group, a place that was, that the great, high cultured world and the church today would think was a bunch of--of, oh, heretics? I wonder if that wouldn't be where we'd find Him? The most unlikely place, and to the most unqualified speakers. Shepherds knowed nothing about speaking, only calling sheep; well, maybe that's why it come.

But there was a promised Word. Notice, it could do that again. It bypassed all the nobles of the land. It bypassed all the nobles, and was revealed to the nobody's. All the nobles that were decorated with--with great doctor's divinity, and--and psychology, and--and highly educations, and great cathedrals and things, it was all bypassed and revealed to nobodies. The wisdom, the infinite wisdom of Almighty God did it to make known to them the greatest message ever was, "The Messiah is now on earth." What a wisdom, could only come from God Who knows wisdom. All the wisdom and all of the schooling, and everything was now laid to waste and bypassed by the great wisdom of God. I keep repeating that because I want it to go down deep. All laid to waste, it was of no good. Bypassed it all to let God's wisdom have the right of way, that God takes the nothings to make the somethings.

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Why It Had To Be Shepherds.

And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.

Luke 2:20