In the first century world, the shepherd was an important job, but because of his duties caring for the sheep, it was also a dirty job. In fact, it was those very dirty duties that made the shepherd ceremonially unclean. He couldn’t even enter the temple without going through a purification process. That’s what’s so exciting about our passage today. God’s own Son had come into the world, and He would someday die on the cross to redeem you and me from our sins, and the first people to hear that he had been born were lowly, dirty shepherds. In their societal hierarchy, the shepherds would have been the lowest of the low, but God tells them the good news first. God wants them then and us today to know that this gift that was His Son Jesus, is for EVERYONE! No one is too unclean for Jesus.