You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those in whom his favour rests. When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened which the Lord has told us about.

(0:25 – 1:43)

So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph and the baby who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child. And all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them.

But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told. Did any of you watch the FIFA World Cup draw a couple of weeks ago? Even if you don’t follow football, you probably caught wind of it.

One, because Scotland was in it for the first time in 28 years. And two, because in many people’s eyes, it was a rather bizarre spectacle. So if you never saw it before the draw was made, they not only spoke for an hour and a half about the glories of football, but they actually spent most of the time speaking of FIFA’s greater agenda, which apparently isn’t putting on football matches and it isn’t making lots of money.

(1:44 – 4:07)

But no, their greatest agenda is peace in the world. So committed are they to this that they even gave out the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize to a certain individual who they said was an exemplary peacemaker. Well, whatever you made of that, it shows that in 2026, peace is still a popular ideal.

Even if you thought the draw was daft, you probably agree with FIFA that world peace would be a great idea. Whether peace between nations or peace within communities or peace within our personal relationship circles, all sane people at least want peace in this world. And it’s into that longing that the Bible speaks this morning.

To a world dreaming of peace, the angels’ words ring out, glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth, peace to those on whom his favour rests. Words first spoken in the aftermath of the birth of Jesus, the son of God, the king to forever reign. He has just been born in humble surroundings in David’s royal town.

And as this unrecognised king spends his first night on planet earth, we are then whisked away by Luke, the author, to a nearby hillside. In a tale we know so well, shepherds were watching their flocks by night. When an angel of the Lord appeared to them in glory and announced to these trembling men the most fear-calming news imaginable.

Today in the town of David, a saviour has been born. To you, he is the Messiah, the Lord. You should go and have a look for yourselves.

(4:07 – 4:55)

There will be a sign that will mark him out. You will find a baby laid there in cloths in a manger bed. But even as the shepherds try to process this, just before they even have a chance to depart for Bethlehem, they are immediately interrupted in verse 13.

With great suddenness, a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel. An army of angels turns up, but it’s not to declare war, it’s to declare peace. And the song they sang is recorded for us in those beautiful words of verse 14.

(4:55 – 5:32)

As the Bible describes it, it’s a very short song. We do not know whether this is a summary of a longer song. And if it was a one-line chorus, you do wonder a number of things.

Did they sing it one time, or did they repeat it over and over? And you do wonder whether angels are good singers, and what tune they sang it to. And did they sing it as a four-part harmony? At least these are the thoughts that come into my brain. And yet the Bible tells us none of these things.

(5:33 – 6:28)

None of these things seem to be important for us to know, because evidently what is important here is the words and the content of the chorus. Words which were on the one hand, the angels’ authentic praise to God. This is not some kind of staged thing.

But on the other hand, words which presumably were sung in public for the hearing and the blessing of the shepherds. After all, this angel chorus could have been hidden from human sight and could have been kept from human hearing. But God makes the chorus public so that people on earth, the recipients of this great blessing, might better understand the impact of the birth of this child.

(6:30 – 12:37)

And here is the impact, that there is now a marvellous opportunity, an unprecedented opportunity for peace. And I just find this so striking, really, just as I’ve reflected on this text again. You know, the angels had only one line to sum up Christmas.

They only had one line to summarise the difference that Christmas makes. And they chose as their central theme, the theme of peace. The difference that Christmas makes is peace.

But what did they say about it? And what does it mean for us, whether we are people outside of the Christian faith or whether we would consider ourselves to be part of it? Well, in the rest of my time, I want to look at peace from three angles, these kind of overlap together. The first one, though, is maybe slightly off-piste. The first one is this.

First, before we get to peace, first, glory to God. First, glory to God. It’s all too tempting when we read this angel chorus to gravitate to the second line more than the first.

I mean, we quote the first line, we certainly include it on the Christmas cards. It’s a rather nice line. Glory to God in the highest heaven.

We like this, don’t we? And yet the part of the chorus that really sings to us, I think, is the second part of the chorus, peace on earth. That second part seems relevant. That second part sounds world-changing.

That’s the part that FIFA would like to speak about rather than the first part. And yet it is a simple observation, but an important one, that the angels don’t start their chorus with peace. They start their chorus with praise.

They don’t begin with something happening on earth, but with something being offered to heaven. Glory to God in the highest heaven. That is, praise God, worship God.

That’s what it means to give glory to God in the place where God alone dwells, in the highest heaven. I assume here that the angels are using language that the shepherds and we can understand. It’s been said that heaven is a place that isn’t really a place, at least not a place in the physical observable universe.

You cannot get into a spaceship and fly, you know, if you just flew far enough, you might eventually find heaven. No, this is the spiritual realm. This is the domain beyond physical created reality.

It’s the domain of God. And again, using language that makes sense to us, the angels glorify God in the highest heaven, because in the domain where God dwells, He is exalted above all. He’s in the highest place.

He’s on the highest throne. This is what it means to be God. And what gets me here is the great disparity of these two things, such a remarkable gap of difference.

Here the angels are, they’ve descended to this ordinary little hillside with sheep baaing in the background and shepherds cowering in the dirt, and yet their praise is soaring up to the highest point in existence. And this reminds us that Christmas, this story of God coming in human form, it is not just for human good, but it is for God’s glory. And it’s not that God’s praise and our peace are two things that are at odds.

No, as God sends His Prince of Peace to the world, He is rightly offered in return the worship that is due for this great act of grace. And actually, if you go back in the Bible, if you go to any place where God does an amazing and marvellous thing, whether it’s at creation or whether it’s at acts of salvation, there’s always a song that follows it. There’s always a chorus of some kind.

It’s impossible for God to do something of this magnitude and yet not recognise it in the praise that He’s due. And so as God unfolds His ultimate peace plan, as He does His supreme act in all of history of salvation, it is inevitable that the very first thing that happens on earth is a song of praise. And the carols, I mean, it’s not explicit in the passages, but the carols that we sing are surely right to encourage us.

I think the instinct’s right that we should join in with the angel chorus. We should see their song as an invitation for us to sing. This is part of the dynamic.

I mean, we’ve sung it probably hundreds of times, but have you ever noticed that dynamic in Hark! The Herald Angels Sing? There’s a whole verse about joining in with the angels. Joyful, all you nations rise. Join the triumph of the skies.

(12:38 – 16:09)

With the angelic host proclaim, Christ is born in Bethlehem. And as Christmas rushes upon us, this certainly has caused me to pause and ask myself as to whether in my heart I am joining in with the chorus of the angels. And do I have the posture of worship as I consider what Christmas is about? Or am I taken up with lesser things and smaller glories? It would be a sad thing, wouldn’t it, if something that is lovely about this time of year our generosity to other people was somehow contradicted by our stinginess towards God, wouldn’t it? We’re so generous to our families, our friends, even our work colleagues at this time of year, but oh, if that were contradicted by a stinginess in our worship.

And so as we carve the Christmas turkey and spend a little time by ourselves over the holidays, where we really have no excuse to not have the space and the time and the thought to offer our worship, I wonder if we’ll take the opportunity in the quietness of our hearts, in times of prayer, in our words, in our songs, turning on music in the carols and just singing along from our hearts. And if we need a theme to help us do that, then it’s given to us here. Second point is the peace on earth, peace on earth.

Now, I think it is important, particularly when you just have a phrase or a single verse, to remember when we read our Bible that Bible words always have a Bible history. Bible words always have a Bible history. And so as we think back throughout the Bible, as we think of this theme of peace, we realise that the whole of the Old Testament has this theme of peace. And you discover when you do that, you discover when you look at that, that peace is not just the absence of war.

It is a positive concept, not just the absence of a negative concept. Peace in the Bible is the presence of God’s blessing and harmony and joy. It is the world as it should be in relationship with its Creator.

It’s basically Genesis chapters 1 and 2 before all of the mess. That’s peace. And therefore, peace in Scripture is something which always flows out of a harmonious relationship between us and God, the Creator.

If you’re new to the Christian faith, you need to understand this is the basic diagnosis the Bible gives of the human problem. It’s that bit of Genesis 3 when we come to it, isn’t it, that humans chose to rebel against their Maker, and we’ve chosen to turn our back on our Creator. This is the cause of the lack of peace.

(16:10 – 17:10)

This is the reason for alienation, because we think that independence from God and giving glory to ourselves rather than Him is the way to go in life. And this is why in Romans 5 when Paul is summarising the gospel, the good news of the faith, he says, we have been justified through faith, and we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul’s summarising the whole of the problem we faced and the solution.

The whole problem we faced is that we are not at peace with God. We’re not justified before Him, but through Jesus Christ, we have come to a place of righteousness and peace. And the way that the Bible sees it is that this restoration of peace with God becomes then like a spring that flows downstream into our human relationships with other people.

(17:11 – 17:40)

And this is really the point of the promise of Isaiah 9, that great Christmas text, as Isaiah promises that one day a prince of peace will come into the world. It’s to produce this peace with God, this peace then between one another. But you might say, well, we don’t really see this peace as we look around the world.

(17:41 – 19:09)

If Jesus has brought peace, then why don’t we see it? And I think that’s a very legitimate question. I think the answer is that you need to look in the right place. You need to know where to start looking.

And I think the Bible would say that the place to start looking is in the lives of God’s people, the people of faith, those who have already begun to have that personal peace with God, that relationship restored, and therefore that calm assurance that they have in life, even as they go through chaotic circumstances, that it is well with my soul. And so we start by looking there, and then we see hopefully something of that peace in the community of the church. Not perfectly, not even close, but really.

Paul speaks of this in Ephesians 4 verse 3. He speaks of the church maintaining the unity of peace in the bond of the Spirit. What does this look like? It looks like people who would never normally get along in human terms, and yet they get along. We can start to see peace if we look to these places.

(19:11 – 20:21)

And yet it is true, we know it’s true, that the fullness of peace hasn’t come. Peace between God and man, seen visibly. Peace between man and man, perfectly.

Peace between nation and nation, consistently. Peace between humans and the rest of creation. The fullness of peace awaits a future day.

And we pray for, as we did this morning, the cessation of wars. We strive for harmony below, but we know that these conflicts are just a symptom of a deeper problem, and that they will only be finally resolved when the Prince of Peace returns. But the question we need to ask ourselves right now, in light of that big picture, is, do we have peace with God now? Do we know this? Do we have this? Are we at peace with God this morning? There is no more important thing for you to be.

(20:25 – 20:51)

And at what can be sometimes an emotional and, let’s face it, fractious time of year, will we work hard at the downstream element of that? Working out that peace, and it’s hard at times, in our relationships with other people. First, glory to God. Second, peace on earth.

(20:53 – 21:24)

But the third thing is really the context in which this happens. Thirdly, we’re going to think about how peace is resting on the undeserving. Resting on the undeserving.

Look at verse 14 again. And on earth, peace to those on whom his favour rests. What’s clear from the wording here, in the context, is that these are words of grace, mercy, and undeserved favour.

(21:26 – 21:45)

Because there is nothing special about these shepherds. The commentators on Luke go in different directions sometimes on this. Some of them claim that the shepherds were particularly pious people, and that’s why the angels were sent to them, because they were super godly.

(21:45 – 24:17)

Other people, you read them, they go the opposite direction. They say shepherds were particularly rotten people, you know, and you hear all this stuff about God sending the angels to the worst of the worst. But as far as what the text itself says, we’re only told of their profession, and we’re told nothing of their character.

I think it’s better to see this as the shepherds being the everyman and everywoman. The point is not that they are particularly distinctive in their character, but rather they are representative of common humanity who are equally undeserving of God’s favour. The Lord appeared to these common men, and he spoke to them of a peace given to them through a favour that now rests on them.

They haven’t earned this. This is not a lifetime shepherding achievement award, but a very pointed statement that the grace of God rests on people who can’t possibly have any claim on God at all. See, that’s the beauty of grace, but it’s also the battle of grace for many people, because what grace means is that you and I can have no claim on God.

We can have no argument with God to say that I am worthy and deserving of the blessings that you are giving, whether it’s the life you give, or the salvation, or the peace, or the new identity, or the family, all the great blessings of knowing God as His children. There is no claim I can put on God and say, I am worthy of all these things. This made me think of Jesus telling the parable, you might remember, of two men who went up to a temple to pray.

And one of the men was a very religious chap, and when he got there to the church that day, the Bible says he prayed about himself. Now, that’s quite a summary of someone’s prayer life, isn’t it? He prayed about himself. He had no sense of the greatness of God, only a sense of the greatness of himself.

(24:18 – 25:42)

And so he never grasped what that rogue of a man at the back corner of the temple who was cowering and hiding, and he had his face to the floor, and he was beating his chest. He never noticed that man who grasped that the only way he could receive favour was by mercy, not by merit. This is a baffling thing for many.

It’s a trip hazard that stops many people coming to genuine faith. And I wonder if the shepherds that day were listening to this announcement to them, looking over their shoulder and thinking, is this really for us or is it for someone else? Could we really be the people on whom God’s favour rests? Maybe we could be. Maybe God could be that gracious.

Maybe salvation is a gift from God. Maybe the infinitely most important present this Christmas is not one you will buy or receive from another person, but the gracious gift of a Saviour. But notice this is not an automatic thing.

(25:44 – 26:04)

You might think that from the way it’s stated, that this piece then just sort of automatically comes to everyone everywhere in the world. But evidently, that’s not so when you read the rest of Luke. You come to chapter 10 and Jesus sends out his disciples on a little mission trip, and they go into these different villages where obviously they’re going to need somewhere to stay.

(26:05 – 26:29)

And Jesus says, now go to a house and when you enter the house, say to the house, peace be upon you. And Jesus says, if someone is there who promotes peace, your peace will rest on them. And if not, if they kick you out, your peace will return to you.

(26:30 – 29:13)

It’s the very same principle here in Luke 2. These particular shepherds heard the announcement. They showed themselves to be people of peace because they responded in faith and thankfulness, and they hurried their way to Bethlehem. You see, they responded.

That’s the key point. There is a peace that is offered, but it only rests on the believing. If it is rejected, it returns to the sender.

And so again, in this series on Christmas nostalgia, as we think back to maybe what might seem more peaceful times in the past and we long for peace in the world, the greatest question this morning is whether the peace of God is resting on our lives or whether that peace that has been offered has been sent back and returned to sender. Like an unwanted Christmas card or an unwanted gift. Because we’ve said, not here, not now, not me.

But if we have said, yes here, yes now, yes me, then like the shepherds, we become the people of peace who promote peace and proclaim it to those around us. And we seek to live as the people of peace in an expression of that to each other. FIFA, but let’s not just bang on FIFA’s door with this, and all of the greatest leaders in the world do not have the answers to how peace comes in this world.

They don’t have the answers. But the most ordinary person who listens to the chorus of the angels can know the answer and say, glory to God in the highest. Let’s pray.

Father, thank you that we, not by our smarts and merits, we can know today how peace comes to this world. We pray that we would be the people of peace, the people on whom that peace rests by amazing grace. Help us to respond to that.

Help us to rejoice in that. Help us, Lord, to praise you for that. And we ask this in Jesus’ name.

Amen.

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