Our modern culture often becomes a barrier to what God is trying to tell us. We view stories in the Bible through our 20th century eyes and not through the eyes of the people who were writing the biblical accounts. We focus on things that may be minor parts of a story because they touch a modern feeling or desire and miss the bigger more important message.
When we read the story of Jesus birth, we focus on Jesus lying in the manger and him starting out in "low estate" but miss the larger message God is communicating to us.
The shepherds, the manger and the swaddling cloth are not 3 separate parts of the story. Instead, these pieces work together to communicate a much more meaningful message.
Shepherding in Jesus' day was not considered to be a high calling career. Their form of employment would be closely associated with garbage collecting of today. But even though it was not a highly respected job, it was a very important job for the Jewish religion. This was because their job was to provide the temple with sacrificial lambs needed for daily sacrifices. God's law given to Moses required them to set aside the first-born male of every ewe. The law however didn't just accept any first-born male lamb either. The lamb needed to be without defect. It couldn't have a deformed limb, or be blind or have a hunched back. To ensure the lamb was without these defects they had to be inspected by the priests. This created a problem though because handling a newborn lamb would make the priest ceremonially unclean. To work around this issue the priests would supply the shepherds with cloth to wrap the lamb in so they could physically handle them. This cloth was called "swaddling cloth" and the lamb would often be wrapped in it and placed in the manger waiting for the priest to arrive and do the inspection.
So here we have Jesus, God's first-born son, lying in a manger and wrapped in swaddling cloth and visited by the shepherds. The message to the Jewish people of that time would have been unmistakable. Here is Jesus, God's sacrificial lamb without defect who takes the sin of the world away. God wastes no time making his message clear to us.
One final thought must be made here. Jesus being wrapped in cloth previous used to wrap unclean baby lambs would make Jesus "ceremonially unclean" from head to toe. God wastes no time separating his son from him having him jump into our filth. As the writer in Hebrews says, "He who knew no sin, became sin for us so that we might obtain the righteousness of God"
