This year, sandwiched between Black Friday and Cyber Monday is a much older (and arguably more important) date on the calendar of our faith: Hope Sunday. This Sunday marks the beginning of Advent, the season in which we prepare to celebrate the “arrival,” or “advent,” of Jesus in Bethlehem.
Our text will be Micah 5, which is one of the most beautiful, hopeful, and “Christmasy” prophesies in the entire Old Testament. All week, Micah’s words–written to a people besieged in hopelessness 700 years before the birth of Jesus–have been inspiring fresh conviction in me to continue putting my faith in the hope Jesus brought and continues to bring.
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Grace Fellowship Church
Jon Stallsmith
Series: True
November 30, 2014
True Hope: Nows and Later
Micah 4:6-5:5
Good morning. Good to see you guys. I love the Lantern Project. That is a good beacon of hope in the community. I hope you had a good Thanksgiving, and now this is the first Sunday of Advent. The word advent simply means arrival, and for many, many hundreds of years, the church has prepared for the celebration of Christ’s birth at Christmas by taking the month before Christmas to make space and to contemplate some of the things God gives us in Christ…hope, peace, love, and joy.
So we’ve got our first Advent candle, which is actually a super cool 2×4 Christmas tree with a light on top of it, for hope. We’re going to be reading from Micah, but before we do that, let’s just have a word of prayer together.
Lord, as we open your Scripture and we enter into this season of Advent, we pray you would let hope arise in our hearts and in our souls. Lord, some of the areas that maybe have lost a bit of hope, would you come and revive that, refresh it, renew it? Lord, as we turn into your Word, may the life of your Scripture and the life of your Spirit direct us toward Jesus. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Amen. All right, if you need a Bible, slip up your hand, and go ahead and open to Micah, chapter 4, and we’ll be reading there. Also, if you need a sheet for notes, your hand in the air will get you a sheet for notes.
This week’s sheet has a little bit of extra stuff on it. In addition to the place where you can jot down some things about the sermon, there’s also a devotional on here about hope, and we’d encourage you to take maybe a meal or a little bit of time with your family or with some friends this week. Just read through and process that a little bit as you continue to think about the Advent season.
Another couple of ways to enter into Advent are down at the bottom. Helpful resources. Our very own Erin Burchik just wrote and published a beautiful children’s book called Animals of the Nativity, and it follows that Christmas story, and there’s an animal associated with each of the Advent characteristics. It was illustrated by Amber Guinn, who’s also a part of Grace here. You can find that on Amazon or you can email Erin.
Also, there’s a book there called Jotham’s Journey, and that’s a really helpful storybook. You can read a chapter of it every night with your family. They’re short, little chapters. Michael Johnston said he and his family do it every year, and it’s just a sweet way to enter into the season. So we have some resources there for you.
We’re going to be reading in the Scripture, and we’re talking about hope. Micah and his prophecies are such a great section of the Scripture to be digging into as we contemplate hope in Jesus. Because, remember, Micah is prophesying at a really rough situation. It’s a tough time. God’s own people in that southern kingdom of Judah have forsaken the love of God and they have forsaken the love of their neighbors. They’re violent. They’re coveting. They’re taking over land.
You can imagine if you were not one of the powerful people in Judah, let’s say you were one of the poor and powerless people in Judah, you’d really be wondering, “Where is the hope? Because they’re taking our land. They’re treating us terribly. They’re taxing us brutally. Where’s the hope?”
Into this situation, Micah brings both words of judgment about where the people have gone astray but also words of hope about what God is going to do. You might remember last week we talked about how Micah is balancing this lament of how things are going wrong, bemoaning, saying, “Hey, this is really off the track,” with hope of what God will do in the future. So we read that passage in Micah 4, and we’re going to begin with it again this morning.
Starting at verse 1, we’ll go through verse 8. Micah says, “It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and it shall be lifted up above the hills; and peoples shall flow to it, and many nations shall come, and say: ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’ For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” (Micah 4:1-2)
This beautiful promise that God will elevate his holy hill. This invitation to his people to come up the mountain to just see clearly what God wants to do. Verse 3: “He shall judge between many peoples, and shall decide for strong nations far away; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks…” The prophecy that the weapons will be transformed into implements of farming.
“…nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore; but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid…” The promise of security at home, just being able to sit and live under your vine and your fig tree. “…for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken. For all the peoples walk each in the name of its god, but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever.
In that day, declares the Lord, I will assemble the lame and gather those who have been driven away and those whom I have afflicted; and the lame I will make the remnant, and those who were cast off, a strong nation; and the Lord will reign over them in Mount Zion from this time forth and forevermore. And you, O tower of the flock, hill of the daughter of Zion, to you shall it come, the former dominion shall come, kingship for the daughter of Jerusalem.” (Micah 4:3-8)
I love that last line there in verse 8, this promised kingship shall come, the kingdom of God. All of these things, these promises of hope, of security, of peace, of godliness, these promises that the lame shall be gathered back, and those who were weak and limping will be made a strong nation, all of these promises are under the banner of the kingdom of God. Kingship for the daughter of Jerusalem.
Here’s Micah announcing this mountaintop vision. This is God’s big heart, what he wants to do with his people. These are Micah’s words of hope. The question comes up…What is hope? What does it mean to hope or to put our hopes in something? In the Bible, hope is born from the marriage of God’s promises and our faith.
How does hope come into our lives? Well, God says, “I’m going to do this. This is my promise,” and when we trust him according to those promises, the offspring, the fruit is hope in our lives. Remember Hebrews 11:1. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) This connection between God’s promises and our faith producing hope in us.
Now how do we do that? How do we lay claim to God’s promises in such a way that they become hopeful, that we actually live as hopeful people? How does that happen? Micah, in verses 9 all the way down to chapter 5:5, is going to begin unpacking what that looks like. How do we lay claim to those promises so that they become real hope that sustains us in our lives now?
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we all hope. It’s kind of a constant thing we do. The basic English definition of the word hope (this is not like a biblical definition, just the basic definition of hope) is to have a feeling or desire for a certain thing to happen. We have that all the time. Yesterday was my birthday. I turned 33. Yeah, 33 is a good time. It’s a good age.
It’s a little intimidating, all of these early 30s birthdays for me, because the Bible talks about Jesus started his public ministry at age 30. So I turned 30, and I was like, “Ah, pressure!” Then 31, 32, I’m like, “I should probably get some disciples.” Then the Scripture says about three years after his public ministry began, Jesus was crucified. So I just turned 33. I don’t know what’s coming this year. It’s a little intimidating.
After the first gathering, one of the men from the church came up, and he said, “Yeah, I was thinking about it. When I turned 33, I was thinking about how much Jesus accomplished by the time I was 33.” I said, “Yeah, but he was Jesus. I mean, he accomplished a lot more than any of us can.” But still, I’m meditating on this. I’m ready to get out of my early 30s, but I’ve got one year left at this stage at 33.
I was thinking about my hopes for the coming year. What are the feelings or desires I have for certain things to happen this year? So I was thinking about it. I was hoping, or I am hoping this year that we will finish renovating our house, although from what it looks like, people may never finish those projects. Is that true? You start working on your house and you think, “Okay, we’ll just get to there,” and then your get there and you realize, “Nope, there’s more to do.” So that might be an ongoing hope.
This year, one of my big hopes is that the Packers will win the Super Bowl. That’d be a good one. No boos in the front row. Sorry if you’re a Bears fan, all right? You made a bad choice. So that’s a big hope. A couple of other hopes. I’m hoping, I’m desiring and feeling strongly that my wife will finish nursing school. Amy graduates here in just a few weeks, and so that’s a big hope we’ve both been looking forward to.
Maybe at a deeper level, one of my hopes for this coming year (you guys know this is true of me and of us as a church) is to see Muslims come to know Jesus in all of his splendor. I mean, that’s a deep feeling or desire for something to happen. I was thinking about this year, and Scott mentioned it, with the red envelopes. I have a strong feeling or desire for our budget to finish in the black. That would be great this first year of me leading here. I have a strong feeling for that.
Sometimes, and maybe you have this too, I have hopes or a strong feeling or a desire for certain things to happen that are not so healthy. Sometimes when there’s a lot of pressure or just life feels overwhelming, I have a strong feeling or desire to move to a coast somewhere and just set up a surf shop and live. Do you ever have that feeling? Do you want to go with me? That’d be kind of fun, wouldn’t it? I don’t know that’s the healthiest hope, but it’s certainly something that runs through my mind from time to time.
When we think about our hopes, some are stronger than others. Some are pretty compelling. Others are just sort of lightweight hopes. Some of them are more likely to happen than others. Like the Packers thing. I’m pretty sure that’s going to happen. Some hopes are healthy; some hopes are not so healthy. But the truth is we all hope all the time. We constantly feel these strong desires to see things happen in the future.
Many of us probably experienced this watching football yesterday. Some of us felt the delight of hopes satisfied while others felt the bitterness of hopes disappointed. From my point of view, as I grew up in Wisconsin and sort of am a detached observer from the whole Georgia/Georgia Tech thing, it was just a great game, but I know you feel your hopes go up and down. This is part of why we love sports actually, because of how they interweave with our hopes. It kind of gives us a hope outlet in many ways.
Thanksgiving, the holidays, is another time where we feel and are motivated by hopes. We went with Amy’s family out to Missouri where her family is, and we went because we hoped strongly to have a great time together with the family and to be able to eat the greatest homemade ice cream sandwiches that have ever been made. They make these homemade cookies and ice cream, freeze them together. It is amazing. Hope is a strong motivator. I mean, we’ll drive 12 hours to get family time but also some ice cream sandwiches. So we have this thing.
Even growing up, hope. Hope growing up is a huge, huge part of life. I can remember you hope for your birthday to come. You have a strong desire for Christmas to come. You get into school, you’re hoping for summer vacation. You get from elementary school, you start hoping middle school will be awesome. In middle school, you’re hoping high school will be awesome. High school, you’re hoping college will be awesome. Looking forward, desiring certain things to happen.
You get out. You get your first job. You’re hoping it will be a satisfying job. You meet someone. Maybe you get married. You’re hoping this will produce a wonderful life. We are people who are just constantly hoping. In fact, humans are hopers. From the very beginning, remember, God created mankind, and the first words he spoke to the man and the woman were, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth. Subdue it.” Then he says, “Every seed is for you, and you can eat from all the different plants.”
Now if you think about that, there is a deep hopefulness embedded in those words. God could’ve made the man and the woman and said, “Hey, here you are in Eden. Enjoy today and live it up.” But he didn’t quite. I mean, yes, he wanted them to enjoy the garden, but he also gave them a yearning to fill the earth. To have this desire to see all of the surface of the planet become beautiful like Eden and to be filled with people who are reflecting the image of God. There’s just this embedded hardwiring for hope that is in all of us.
When we lose that hope, we really lose the desire to live. I was looking up, there’s a well-known quote that’s floating around, and I was trying to find its origin, but I couldn’t figure out who said it first. I mean, I could’ve given you a bunch of different references, but I don’t know who said it first. But it goes like this, “A man can live three weeks without food, three days without water, three minutes without air, but he cannot live three seconds without hope.”
It’s true. You think about your life, whether there are healthy hopes, unhealthy hopes, we’re constantly thinking forward, “What’s out there? What’s our desire? What do we want to see happen?” When we lose hope, we often move. We lose our desire to live.
I was doing some research about suicide in relation to this, and 90 percent of the people who commit suicide have a clinically diagnosable psychological disorder. Three-quarters of those people have depression. The vast majority of people who commit suicide are people who are clinically depressed. Why? Because they’ve lost hope. That’s part of what depression is. You can’t see hope anymore, and without hope, suddenly life may not seem like it’s worth living.
Of course, that’s a lie, and this season especially can be a time when depression is made worse. You see lots of people having fun. You think about your own life. At any given point in a year, between 5 and 8 percent of Americans are dealing with the effects of depression. So even it’s likely some of us in this room today are wrestling with depression, going up and down, wondering, “What’s worth hoping in? Is there even reason to hope?”
Just as an aside, if you’re in that place and you feel like you can’t see any hope at all, as a community, we want to help. We want to be with you and walk with you toward hope, and we have people here who can pray with you. We have recommendations if you need counseling. Sometimes you may need even medication to get the chemicals reset in your brain. Depression is a brutal thing because when we lose hope, we lose that desire to live.
So we are the people who are going to be hoping. Let’s just say that. Sometimes it’s a mistake to say, “At Christmas, Jesus brought hope.” No, people have been hoping for a really long time. It’s better to say that Jesus brought hope worth hoping in and hope that does not disappoint, as Paul says in Romans 5. Alexander Pope, the great poet, says hope springs eternal from the human breast.
So our question this morning as we read Micah is not so much, “Will we hope?” as it is, “Who or what is worthy of our hope?” What’s worth hoping in? Who is worth hoping in? In Micah, as he’s prophesying here in Micah 4, he’s going to help the people think through that question. When Micah begins prophesying here, they’re in a situation that is especially hopeless. It’s incredibly dire.
Now the scholars on this little section disagree. There’s not total unanimity among the scholars about exactly the situation into which Micah is giving these words, but it seems to me that we can trace the time period back to the days of King Hezekiah. Remember the beginning of the book of Micah? He’s prophesying during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah.
During the time of Hezekiah, there was a great crisis in the land of Judah. Micah references this over in chapter 5, verse 1. He talks about the siege. Then over in verse 5, he talks about the Assyrian coming into the land. For a number of reasons, it seems good to understand these prophecies here at the end of Micah 4 and beginning of Micah 5 as his prophecies to the people when they’re in the midst of this huge Assyrian crisis.
Now just to get a little context before we start reading these passages from Micah, the Assyrians were a massive empire of really powerful and cruel people. I’ve got a map to show you. They started off kind of in Mesopotamia or modern-day Iraq. The city of Nineveh was their capital. This is kind of a 200-year sweep of what they did.
So they started off there near Nineveh. You can see that, and then the arrow is coming west to the Mediterranean Sea and then down through the land of Israel, Tyre, which is modern-day Lebanon, Samaria, Ashdod, and modern-day Israel, even all the way down to Egypt by the 600s BC. So these Assyrians just went forward like a steamroller of conquest. At their peak, they basically had an empire that spanned the entire ancient world of significance there in the Middle East.
Now during the time of King Hezekiah, there was a particular king of Assyria, a ruler of Assyria, named Sennacherib. During Sennacherib’s reign, his empire stretched all the way across but not quite into the area where there was Jerusalem. So you can see where that big red arrow is on the map. That’s the empire at the time of Sennacherib. There’s Jerusalem. You can see it’s just barely resisting against the Assyrian advance. Basically almost hemmed in on every side.
During the reign of King Sennacherib, he decided, “I’m going to take the rest of Judah,” that southern area of this land that would include Jerusalem. So he started a huge campaign and started taking over all the cities of Judah and conquering them. So you can see the next picture. This purple line traces the advance of Sennacherib’s army.
They started off in Joppa up there, coming from the north of that big red arrow, worked his way all the way down to the bottom arrow there where Lachish is, one of the big cities that was conquered, and then they moved inward from Lachish toward Jerusalem.
These are not nice people. They were some of the most violent and brutal conquers known to history. They would record their conquests in massive reliefs. They would carve into stone the stories of their conquests. They didn’t have like blogs or newspapers, so they would just carve it in stone. You can go to the British Museum today in London and still see these huge reliefs and these stories of the conquests. I’ll show you a couple of them that came from the story of the conquest of Lachish, which is that city just outside of Jerusalem right before.
So this is one picture. Here you have the Assyrian soldiers on the bottom actually impaling the people they conquered. Not a pleasant sight. Then the next picture is the Assyrian soldiers there collecting and counting the heads of the people who they have conquered. They cut off heads and collected them. So these are really violent, really wicked, scary people.
We read the story in 2 Kings 18, and just imagine if you’re living in Jerusalem or the suburbs of Jerusalem when this happened. Check this out. You can keep your Bibles open to Micah and we can just use the slides to work through the story as we set the context for these prophecies we’re about to read.
In 2 Kings 18:13, it says, “In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them. And Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria at Lachish, saying, ‘I have done wrong; withdraw from me. Whatever you impose on me I will bear.’ And the king of Assyria required of Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold.” (2 Kings 18:13-14)
This is basically Hezekiah paying off Sennacherib so Sennacherib will not come and destroy Jerusalem. He says, “What’s it going to cost?” He names a price of just almost unthinkable value. Keeping going with the story, “And Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the Lord and in the treasuries of the king’s house.
At that time Hezekiah stripped the gold from the doors of the temple of the Lord and from the doorposts that Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid and gave it to the king of Assyria. And the king of Assyria sent the Tartan, the Rab-saris, and the Rabshakeh with a great army from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem.” (2 Kings 18:15-17)
So just take a minute to pause. Where is Hezekiah putting his hope at this moment? It’s in money, isn’t it? He’s just taking all the gold, all the silver he can muster. He doesn’t have enough to be able to pay what Sennacherib has demanded, but he takes the gold off the temple, everything he has, and sends it up.
Is it enough? Is it a valid hope? No! Because Sennacherib sends all these nations, the leaders of his army, the Tartan, the Rab-saris, and the Rabshakeh. Rabshakeh is an Assyrian word that means basically the first in command or mouthpiece, speaker. They come anyway with a great army from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem.
“And they went up and came to Jerusalem. When they arrived, they came and stood by the conduit of the upper pool, which is on the highway to the Washer’s Field.” (2 Kings 18:17) Now just get this picture for a moment. You’re a resident of Jerusalem, or you live nearby Jerusalem, and you’ve come to seek refuge inside the walls.
You’ve heard the stories of the violence of the Assyrians, and they’re just crushing city after city after city after city, and now they’re at your city. These representatives come up and they begin having a shouted conversation back and forth with Hezekiah’s representatives inside the city and the Rabshakeh and Sennacherib’s representatives outside the city. You’re a person in the city just listening.
Listen to what Rabshakeh says. It says, “Then the Rabshakeh stood and called out in a loud voice in the language of Judah…” Because Hezekiah’s people said, “Hey, don’t say this in a language the people can understand,” and Rabshakeh is like, “Yeah, I’m definitely going to say it in a language they can understand,” because he’s a bad guy.
“‘Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria! Thus says the king: “Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you out of my hand. Do not let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord by saying, The Lord will surely deliver us, and this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.”
Do not listen to Hezekiah, for thus says the king of Assyria: “Make your peace with me and come out to me. Then each one of you will eat of his own vine, and each one of his own fig tree, and each one of you will drink the water of his own cistern, until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive trees and honey, that you may live, and not die.
And do not listen to Hezekiah when he misleads you by saying, ‘The Lord will deliver us.’ Has any of the gods of the nations ever delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?”‘” (2 Kings 18:28-33) You see there’s a competition for the hopes of the people here. They’re in Jerusalem, they’re surrounded, and they have their whole faith tradition in God. That’s one option for their hope.
But here’s this Rabshakeh and this whole big army out in front of the city saying, “Don’t hope in God. You can’t even see God. Don’t hope in God. All these other cities had their gods, and we ran those over and destroyed them too. Why do you think your God is going to save you now? Trust us. Hope in us. We’ll let you sit under your vine and your fig tree. We’ll give you a great place to live.”
Do you see what’s happening here? There’s a competition for the hopes of the people. What they can see, what’s right in front of them, actually what’s pretty scary, versus the promises of God. This happens to us all the time. We run into crisis situations. We feel surrounded or besieged by problems.
We feel like our lives are under attack, and we look, and we go, “Well, who is worthy of our trust? Is it God who we can’t see right now or do we need to make a deal with the Enemy?” because the Enemy is constantly trying to come and say, “Hey, put your hopes in me. You know, if you just give me enough money, oh wait, no actually I’m still going to come. Well, if you just surrender, oh wait, actually I’m still going to destroy you.” See, the Enemy is constantly trying to get us to put our hopes in him, and his way always disappoints.
Here’s Micah, and he begins prophesying into this situation. These are the words Micah speaks to the people as they’re in this crisis. He has three little sections of prophecy. Each one of them starts with the word now, which I think is so helpful as we’re discussing hope, because hope is not just something way down there. Hope is when God’s promises way down there come and give us strength for living now. So how do we lay claim to those promises through faith that it gives birth to hope now? Here’s what Micah is talking about.
Micah 4:9 says, “Now why do you cry aloud? Is there no king in you? Has your counselor perished, that pain seized you like a woman in labor? Writhe and groan, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in labor, for now you shall go out from the city and dwell in the open country; you shall go to Babylon.” That’s interesting. “There you shall be rescued; there the Lord will redeem you from the hand of your enemies.” (Micah 4:9-10)
Sometimes it’s challenging when we read these prophecies because we don’t see their tone of voice when they deliver them. In verse 9, it’s actually sarcasm, and the prophets used sarcasm fairly regularly, where they take what the people are saying or they take what the people are feeling and present it in a sarcastic way.
Here, Micah is sarcastically saying, “Why do you cry aloud? Is there no king in you? Has your counselor perished?” What’s he doing in this first now prophecy? He is calling the people to hope in God. So the people are surrounded. They’re overwhelmed. They feel like they’re going to be destroyed. They’re trying to figure out in what or in whom should they hope. Micah says, “What? Why are you crying out? Is there not a king among you? Is there not a counselor?” He’s referring to God. He’s saying, “Hey, turn your hope to God.”
Now it’s interesting because he’s not just giving the people a little pat on the head and saying, “There, there, now. Everything’s going to be fine.” He says actually, “No, there’s judgment coming, and you will in fact be exiled. You’ll go out from the city, dwell in the open country, go to Babylon.” This is not great news. “Oh really? We’re going to Babylon?”
It’s an interesting thing because at this period of time during the life of Micah Babylon wasn’t even really an empire on the map at all. Assyria was the big thing. It wasn’t until another 60-70 years later that Babylon would rise up and take over the Assyrian-conquered lands. So Micah is prophesying something toward the future.
But then he says about even this exile to Babylon, “There you shall be rescued. There the Lord will redeem you.” If you pay close attention, what Micah is telling the people is, “Now hope in God.” Not, “Now hope in what you want God to do for you.” Do you see the difference there? A lot of times we get all out of whack with God because we don’t really hope in God. Rather we hope God will do something for us. Then if he doesn’t do exactly what we want him to do, we say, “Well, come on. Hey, last time I’m hoping in you. I get disappointed.”
Here Micah is saying, “No, no, no. Hope in God. There the Lord will rescue you. See, God has a plan. He’s working it out among these people, and it’s going to involve exile to Babylon, but there the Lord will deliver you.” He’s saying, “Put your hope in God because God is a deliverer.” It may not look exactly like you want it to, it may even involve some frustration and pain along the way, but put your hope in God.
The second now is another important piece. The first one, Micah says, “Now hope in God.” The second one, verse 11: “Now many nations are assembled against you, saying, ‘Let her be defiled, and let our eyes gaze upon Zion.'” This is the words of the attackers. “But they do not know the thoughts of the Lord; they do not understand his plan, that he has gathered them as sheaves to the threshing floor.
Arise and thresh, O daughter of Zion, for I will make your horn iron, and I will make your hoofs bronze; you shall beat in pieces many peoples; and shall devote their gain to the Lord, their wealth to the Lord of the whole earth.” (Micah 4:11-13) It’s not just that Micah is saying, “Now hope in God,” he’s also saying that God has a bigger plan.
It’s hard to recognize that when you’re living in Jerusalem and you feel like you’re God’s people and your whole city is surrounded. It’s pretty easy to think, “God, we need you to help us right now.” Micah is saying, “Actually, God is doing more than you can see at this very moment.” Look at verse 12. “But they do not know the thoughts of the Lord; they do not understand his plan, that he has gathered them as sheaves to the threshing floor.” God has brought them here.
You feel like this siege is horrible and outside of God’s control, but the truth is God brought them here because he is doing something in the Assyrians as well. Going back to our story, when King Hezekiah hears the threats of the people and they’re surrounded and everything else, he takes the threats and he spreads them out before the Lord, and the Lord brings Isaiah, another prophet of the time.
Isaiah comes and he delivers a message to the king. This is 2 Kings 19:6. “Isaiah said to them, ‘Say to your master, “Thus says the Lord: Do not be afraid because of the words that you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have reviled me. Behold, I will put a spirit in him, so that he shall hear a rumor and return to his own land, and I will make him fall by the sword in his own land.”‘” (2 Kings 19:6-7)
Isaiah comes and delivers a prophecy of hope to the King Hezekiah and to the people. This prophecy is that God is doing something among the Assyrians at the same time that he’s doing stuff among the people of Judah and Jerusalem. What we see is that some time after that when the city is besieged and it’s surrounded by troops, in the night God comes and actually destroys 185,000 of Sennacherib’s troops.
The next morning, Sennacherib wakes up to find his army decimated, and he goes home. He goes home, and never again in his lifetime did he ever raid that part of the world. He never came back that direction because… Well, you can imagine. You wake up one day and all your army is dead. You’re like, “I don’t want to go to war there anymore.”
He returned home in such disgrace. There are other archeological artifacts, Sennacherib’s Prism, that just talks about all of the different attacks of Sennacherib and all the rest. It’s in the British Museum also. He went home in such disgrace, and he ended up being murdered by his own sons.
Here’s what Micah is saying. “Don’t just hope in God. Also, see the bigger plan. See the bigger picture. You feel like God has forgotten you because you’re under siege, but in fact, God is doing work out there among the Assyrians that the Assyrians don’t even understand. He has gathered them to be threshed here because God is bringing judgment. He is not just sovereign over his people; he’s sovereign over the whole earth.”
Sometimes we’re not comfortable with that. Sometimes we’re frustrated because it seems like God will allow us to suffer or allow us to feel like we’re under siege for the sake of others and the work he’s doing out there. I mean, he let Jerusalem be totally surrounded and despair of life itself because he was doing something amongst the Assyrians that the Assyrians did not understand.
We don’t always like that, but we have to remember that in that story of Jesus God allows Jesus to suffer extremely for the sake of what he’s doing out there. This is a common pattern, and God often moves his own people into places of challenge and suffering because we’re the ones who can hold onto hope while he’s working outside on the people who surround us.
So Micah says, “Now hope in God. Now see the bigger plan.” Then the third piece he picks up here in Micah 5:1. It says, “Now muster your troops, O daughter of troops; siege is laid against us…” Again, in the context of the passage here, it’s a sarcastic remark. Micah is saying, “Jerusalem, do you really think you’re going to put together enough soldiers to be able to overcome this? No, you have to hope in God alone.”
“…with a rod they strike the judge of Israel on the cheek.” (Micah 5:1) This is most likely referring to the shame that Hezekiah underwent trying to pay them off, and they came anyway, and he was humiliated. A strike on the cheek is a humiliating blow. Into this, Micah begins this beautiful prophecy that is so perfect for Advent. It’s almost like we planned to be here at this time.
Micah 5:2: “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days. Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labor has given birth; then the rest of his brothers shall return to the people of Israel.
And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth. And he shall be their peace.” (Micah 5:2-5) Ah, what a great passage. Remember, this is 700 years before the birth of Christ.
Micah says, “The ruler, the deliverance, the concrete hope, the promise will be born in Bethlehem.” Why is that important? Why is this third now so significant to how we live with hope? At a very surface, initial level, we look at that, and we cannot help but be amazed at the sovereignty of God, knowing 700 years in advance that there would be this couple, Mary and Joseph, and Joseph would be from the town of Bethlehem, and that it’d be ruled by the Roman Empire, and that there would be a calling, a census that everybody return to their home town.
Mary would be pregnant and have to return to Bethlehem with Joseph, and she gave birth to the Anointed One. She gave birth to Jesus, who was supernaturally conceived. You just think about that…700 years in advance. What does that say about God and what God knows and his trustworthiness? Can we put our hope in God?
Well, he comes through. He makes a promise, and he fulfills that promise. The ruler came forth from Bethlehem. Some people say, “Well, maybe Micah was writing at a different time,” but there’s really no way around this. This is accurate prophecy. It was fulfilled hundreds of years later. Of course, God is worth our hope when he comes through like this again and again and again, and he’s sovereign.
But maybe at another level, at a deeper level, why is Bethlehem significant? In the way it’s described, “You, O Bethlehem, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah.” The thing that sets Bethlehem apart in this prophecy is its smallness. That word clans is literally thousands, or it means a battalion. What it’s referring to is during times of war or during times of crisis, the nation would call or raise an army. It was kind of like a draft.
So every town was responsible for sending at least a thousand people, a clan, into the army. Bethlehem is so small, it can barely muster enough troops to participate in the army. This is a way of saying, “Bethlehem, even though it has a glorious past, and yes, it was the city of David where he grew up as a shepherd, it is still a little town. I mean, a really little town.”
This was before there were any songs written about Bethlehem. This was before Bethlehem became, “Oh, Bethlehem! Christmas,” and everything else. This is way back when it was just a little, tiny armpit outside of Jerusalem. The fact that God chooses to bring his deliverance, that God chooses to be born in Bethlehem says something amazing about God, and it teaches us something crucial about the way we hope.
See, because in the great competition for our hope, “What are we going to trust in?” we have a tendency to hope in the glamorous, the stuff we can see in front of us that’s big and flashy. “Oh, that’s going to be it.” Here’s God saying, “No, actually hope is going to be born right in the little, tiny, armpit town of Bethlehem.” It’s not the huge thing in which we hope; it’s the humble place. It’s not this extraordinary event. Micah is saying, “No, no, no. It’s going to be this everyday little town.”
This is how God works. He brings hope into the smallest places and into the humble places. I mean, Bethlehem. That’s not even worthy of this kind of hope, and yet here’s God 700 years in advance saying, “This is precisely why I come, because the humble is huge. The everyday is extraordinary. The little stuff matters to me.”
So every one of us who goes through life wrestling with hope and what we should hope for and sometimes even feeling somewhat insignificant… I admit, I’ve felt… You think about all of history and all of the world and all of time and all the great things God is doing, I have this thought sometimes like, “Does God really have hopes and plans for me? I mean, I’m just a 33-year-old kid.”
What we see in this prophecy about Bethlehem is that the answer is yes. Yes. God chose Bethlehem, this little, tiny town. He says, “This is where hope is going to be born.” It’s a reminder for all of us who deep in our hearts wonder, “Can hope be born here in this place, in this mess?”
Remember the story of Bethlehem at that first Christmas. It was crowded. There was no room for Jesus. It felt like it was too full. Sometimes our hearts feel that way too, just crowded and busy and so much activity going on. Even there, God says, “Yeah, if you have a manger, I’ll start there. It doesn’t have to be in the central building of town or anything like that. Just open up a little space for hope to be born right there.”
Is God worthy of our hope? Is Jesus worthy of our hope? Absolutely. But on the flip side, what’s absolutely staggering to me is that we in all of our brokenness and our busyness, our doubts and all the rest, that we are worthy of his hope. That God has put his hope into a little town like Bethlehem. He said, “This is the place where hope is going to be born. It’s going to grow up and bear fruit. This ruler is going to come forth from Bethlehem.”
A reminder that now we’re not just to hope in God and now not just to see the bigger plan, but like Micah says, now we’re to remember that God brings hope even to the tiniest, most humble places like Bethlehem. That’s good news. It’s really good news for us. Jesus says, “You’re worth these promises. I’m coming for you. You can have hope in me.”
Many of you know the last couple of weeks we were in Israel. We went back and forth. We were in the West Bank a little bit on the other side. I’m sure you’ve seen the news. It’s a big mess over there between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and they’re fighting wars, and there are suicide attacks. Palestinians coming across.
One of the ways that the Israelis have tried to deal with that situation is by building a security wall around the West Bank. They say it’s to prevent Palestinian radicals from coming in and performing these suicide attacks, although whether or not it has been effective doing that is questionable.
One of the challenging side effects of this reality of the security wall is that if you live on the Palestinian side, on the West Bank side, and you’re trying to work in the mainland of Israel, you have to go through a big process. Oftentimes it takes three or four hours. Sometimes it can be quite unpleasant, so all the Palestinians who are coming into Israel each day to work or do their jobs or whatever else get up really early, go through, and it could be a difficult experience.
In talking to some of the Palestinians, they’ve suffered quite a bit. They literally feel surrounded. They feel hemmed in. It’s interesting too, because we met with a number of Palestinian evangelicals, and they say, “A lot of times, people think of Palestinians, they only think Muslims, but actually we’re here too. We’re evangelicals and we feel pretty hemmed in by the situation.” Again, this is not a big, political commentary. This is just to describe the current situation, which is a mess.
But I was meeting with a couple of guys over there, and one of them is a Muslim Palestinian who has started to trust Jesus as his Savior, which is very cool. This is how he came to understand and know Jesus and embrace him as his Savior. This is really how he came to have hope in a hopeless, besieged, surrounded situation.
He was talking about how when he would be waiting in line or when he would be getting questioned or even he had been beaten several times, he had this thought that whenever he was experiencing this real hardship, he said, “But you know, Jesus experienced worse,” which is really kind of an uncommon thought, particularly for Muslims, because most Muslims believe Jesus did not suffer. The Qur’an actually does say Jesus died. You can make the point very strongly.
But this guy had come to this understanding or knowledge that Jesus had suffered and died. He was explaining it me, and he said, “Whenever I was in that spot, whenever I was experiencing something really hard, injustice or pain or getting arrested or whatever else, I just felt like Jesus was in me and Jesus had suffered worse, and because Jesus had survived it and been resurrected, I could survive it too.” Great!
In the book of Colossians, Paul says God has revealed the mystery of God’s glory, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. I’ve always read that, and I was like, “Okay, cool. What does that mean? We sing it, but what does it really mean?” In talking to this guy, it felt like for the very first time that’s what it means. Here’s Jesus, the humble one, born in Bethlehem, who lived and suffered, died, and rose again. Here’s Jesus, who experienced all of that, and he comes to dwell in us and with us during our times of struggle and hardship and suffering.
There is a living hope, as Peter calls it in 1 Peter, that sustains us even in those times when it doesn’t feel like God is doing exactly what we want him to do. If Jesus survived it, he can sustain me. This Palestinian Muslim man had come to understand a deep mystery about hope that many of us struggle with sometimes. He learned to hope in God. He learned to hope in Jesus in a very deep way. Tap into that Christ in us, the hope of glory.
Jesus, the one who comes to Bethlehem…he comes to busy lives, he comes to messed-up people, he comes to depressed people…the one who says, “I would like to come and give hope, the hope of glory in you.” Not just for this life. As Paul says in Corinthians, if we are only hoping in this life, we are of all most to be pitied, but hope even beyond this life, hope of what God will do down the road.
Micah 5, at the end of the prophecy, God has fulfilled the part of bringing forth a ruler from Bethlehem, but then it says, “And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth.” (Micah 5:4)
Here’s a phrase, here’s a now of hope that has not yet fully been fulfilled. Jesus is not yet known and great to the full ends of the earth. That’s something that will happen when he returns and he brings the new heaven and the new earth and we live with him forever in glory. So this morning, we have the opportunity or the challenge to hope in Jesus because of what God has done, fulfilling his Word in the past but also because of these promises that one day he will return and he will set things right.
In the meantime as we sometimes struggle and sometimes suffer, he’s living in us, reminding us that there’s a bigger plan going on, and that we can hope in him. We can trust in him because he’s been there and he’s been through that unto the other side of resurrection, and he’s waiting and inviting us to live with hope of eternity in our hearts.