Word of Salvation – Vol.43 No.47 - December 1998

 

“O Little Town of Bethlehem”

 

A Christmas Sermon by Rev J De Hoog on Micah 5:1-6

Scripture Readings: Matthew 2:1-18; Micah 5:1-6

Suggested Hymns:

Bow 247, 261; 253; 272 (before the sermon); 264

 

Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ.

"O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie!"

A poem, a Christmas carol we have sung since childhood.  And the only way most people remember Phillips Brooks, the author of this lovely hymn.  Brooks was a nineteenth century American preacher who became so well known that he was invited to preach to Queen Victoria in the Royal Chapel at Windsor.  He died just over 100 years ago, but we continue to use his poem today.

"O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see you lie!
Above your deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by:
Yet in your dark streets shining is everlasting light;
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in you tonight."

Little Bethlehem was to be the place where the Saviour would be born.  And the people of Jerusalem at the time of Jesus' birth knew it.  We have read the story from Matthew 2.  Magi came from the east.  They had seen the star announcing the birth of the king of the Jews, and they had come to worship him.  They stop off at Jerusalem, asking directions as to where to find the new-born king.  The chief priests and teachers of the law know where to send them.  The Messiah, the Christ, will be born in Bethlehem.

How do they know?  Because 800 years before, the prophet Micah had predicted it.  “But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will be a shepherd of my people Israel” (Matthew 2:6).

It's about this prophet Micah and his Christmas prediction that I want to speak today.  Let's turn again to Micah and understand what he is saying.

Micah 5:1 – “Marshall your troops, O city of troops, for a siege is laid against us.  They will strike Israel's ruler on the cheek with a rod."

Let's get a grip on the historical details.  The city that is under siege is Jerusalem, the capital of the southern kingdom of Judah.  Only twenty years before, the Assyrians had swept through the northern kingdom of Israel, levelled Samaria and taken all its people away into captivity.  Now the Assyrians are on the march again.  In fact, they have defeated several cities in Judah already and have arrived at the walls of Jerusalem.

The Assyrian general is Sennacherib, and he is boasting against Jerusalem, boasting that he is going to flatten her as he has flattened so many other cities.  The king of Judah at the time is Hezekiah, and the prophets speaking God's Word inside Jerusalem are Isaiah and Micah.

In this situation, Micah has a word of great power and triumph from the Lord.  First he outlines the seriousness of the situation, but then he speaks about how the Lord will win the victory.

The situation is very serious.  Verse 1 again: “Marshal your troops, O city of troops, for a siege is laid against us.  They will strike Israel's ruler on the cheek with a rod."  Isaiah also spoke of the Assyrian army as being a rod.  This rod is striking the king, Hezekiah, on the face.  To strike on the face meant the greatest humiliation.  The victim is so defenceless that he cannot even protect his own face!  Hezekiah's humiliation is complete – he is helplessly cooped up in his capital with half his nation already overrun.  He is supposed to be the king, but there is nothing he can do.  The Assyrian invasion is a slap in the face for him.

The Assyrian army is arrayed in all its strength outside the walls of Jerusalem, the siege has begun.  It seems only a matter of time before Sennacherib and all his army pours in and takes the city captive.

Imagine standing on the walls of Jerusalem looking out over the vast Assyrian army.  The Bible tells us there were at least 185,000 soldiers out there!  You wouldn't be too optimistic, would you!  You would be like a five year old child coming face to face with the neighbourhood bully and his gang.  There is nowhere to turn, you can't possibly fight them, and your big brother is at home and of no help.

In this situation, Micah has a powerful word from the Lord, a word of hope and victory.  Verses 5-6: “When the Assyrian invades our land and marches through our fortresses, we will raise against him seven shepherds, even eight leaders of men.  They will rule the land of Assyria with the sword, the land of Nimrod with drawn sword.  He will deliver us from the Assyrian when he invades our land and marches into our borders."

Raising up seven shepherds, even eight leaders of men to fight and rule is a Hebrew poetic way of saying that an indefinite yet adequate number of leaders will arise to fight off and overthrow the Assyrian hordes.  They will go even further, says Micah – they will rule the land of Assyria, they will turn the tables, so that instead of Assyria invading Israel it will be vice versa.

And it will all happen because a ruler, a majestic king, will come to defeat Assyria.  Micah says in verse 6, "He will deliver us from the Assyrian when he invades our land and marches into our borders."

Okay, well, it's happened, Micah!  The Assyrians are here!  What's going to happen?  The Assyrians look pretty fearsome to us!  And Hezekiah can't do anything about it.  He isn't the king who can save us.  It's like a slap in the face for him!  What's going to happen, Micah?  Is your prophecy going to come true?

Well, you can read about what happened in 2 Kings 18-19 and 2 Chronicles 32.  It's a long story, but to cut a long story short, let me read the closing verses of 2 Kings 19.

"That night an angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp.  When the people got up the next morning - there were all the dead bodies!  So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and withdrew.  He returned to Nineveh and stayed there.  One day, while he was worshipping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer cut him down with the sword, and they escaped to the land of Ararat.  And Esarhaddon his son succeeded him as king."

Imagine the impact of that event.  The people of Jerusalem get up in the morning expecting to see the armies of Assyria still waiting, ready to pounce.  Instead one hundred and eighty-five thousand men lay dead!  The Lord, the Lord has saved Jerusalem!

Micah had said, “He will deliver us from the Assyrian when he invades our land and marches into our borders."  And he has done it!  But now, who is this "he" that has saved Jerusalem from the Assyrians?  How does Micah describe that “he", the person who will save Israel from the Assyrian?

Micah describes him in verses 2-5: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.  Therefore Israel will be abandoned until the time when she who is in labour gives birth and the rest of his brothers return to join the Israelites.  He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.  And they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth.  And he will be their peace."

See the contrasts here.  The kings born in Jerusalem have failed.  They have been a parade of failures.  Hezekiah has been humiliated with a slap in the face from the Assyrian king, but Hezekiah is only the last in line of a whole history of failure.  Proud Jerusalem, the capital city, will have to give way to Bethlehem, that small insignificant town.  The word 'small' used here to describe Bethlehem refers not so much to a quantity as a quality – it means weak, despised, least, lowly.  Bethlehem was a backwater compared to Jerusalem.  Yes, great King David had been born there, but he had soon moved his capital to Jerusalem and all the subsequent kings of Judah had been born in Jerusalem.

But now, God is going to go back to Bethlehem.  Back to where the line of David began, to the home town of Jesse and David.  And God is going to begin the new age, the messianic age, in Bethlehem.

What a contrast the new king is going to be to King Hezekiah.  Verse 4: "He will stand and shepherd his flock...!" The word 'stand' here means 'endure forever’.  And he will shepherd his flock.  Just as David was taken from his sheep to become the shepherd of Israel, so the new king from Bethlehem will become the shepherd of his people.  Verse 4: "He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, and in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.  And they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth.  And he will be their peace."

[Pause]

Did it happen?  As Jerusalem stood under siege, did a cloud of dust suddenly appear on the horizon from the direction of Bethlehem?  And did a new king, one born in Bethlehem, one descended from David, ride onto the scene on his magnificent war horse, with his army behind him, and attack Sennacherib and kill his whole army?  And did that king from Bethlehem then turn the tables on the Assyrians, and go and defeat Assyria and eventually conquer the whole world so that his greatness reached the ends of the earth?  Did it happen that way?

No, it didn't, did it!  Instead the Lord sent an angel who killed one hundred and eighty-five thousand Assyrian soldiers in the night, so that the Assyrians were wiped out and were never again a serious threat to any nation.

And yet, in another sense, it did happen and is happening still.  Who was it that fought for the Israelites that night, who killed all those Assyrians and made Jerusalem safe for another hundred years?  Who was it?  The account in 2 Kings 19 says it was an angel of the Lord.  But whenever the angel of the Lord appears in the Old Testament, he represents God himself and he works the work of God himself.  Of course!  It was God who won that victory, who fought for his people.  It was God, who 800 years later would indeed be born in Bethlehem, that backwater, still small and insignificant amongst the towns of Israel, but still the place where the Messiah would be born.

Think of it.  That little baby, lying there in the manger, has been in battle in the past.  He is the one who went out and killed one hundred and eighty five thousand Assyrians on the hills outside Jerusalem that night.  He is the one who has always fought for his people.  He is the Warrior God of the Old Testament, the one who defeats his enemies without even trying.  And what has this victorious Warrior God done now?  In the person of Jesus Christ, he has become a little baby, born in Bethlehem.

Why has he done that?  Because now the time has come for the greatest battle of all.  Now has come the time to set his people free from the greatest enemy of all.  Not the Assyrians this time.  Not the Babylonians or the Greeks.  Not even the Romans.  But the most powerful and vicious enemy of all.  That enemy is sin, eternal death, Satan, the forces of evil and darkness that have always been arrayed against God's people.

Make no mistake!  The baby lying there on the straw has come to fight a battle, the greatest battle of all.  He has invaded Satan's domain, and he is going to bind Satan and plunder his kingdom, and defeat him once for all.

And Satan knows it.  He strikes the first blow in the conflict by inspiring Herod to have all the Bethlehem children killed.  But Jesus Christ escapes.  It is not yet time for him to die.  That time will come.  But when it does come, even then it will not be a victory for Satan, because Jesus Christ will die by choice.  And he will enter death only to defeat it once for all, by rising from the dead and then ruling forever.

So you see, when Matthew quotes from Micah 5 in the story of the Magi, he is doing more than just giving us a geography lesson.  There is much more to it than just an indication of where the Messiah is to be born.  Micah 5 speaks of the one who will be ruler over Israel, who will stand forever and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, whose greatness will reach to the ends of the earth.

Notice something?  Micah tells us that the new king from Bethlehem will rule Assyria and Nimrod.  In other words, he will rule the nations of the east.  The Magi in Matthew 2 came from the east.  They come to acknowledge the king of Israel, who will also one day be king of the whole earth.  They have already been captured by this Messiah, the ruler of the lands of the east.  But the wise men of Israel who know all the prophecies, who even tell the Magi where to go to find the baby, they become part of a plot to kill him!

 When you think of the baby in the manger, don't go all mushy and sentimental, and join in with the crowds who see it as a beautiful scene of gentle frailty.  No, see the baby and understand who he is.  The Warrior King of the Old Testament, who has come to bind Satan and to despoil him of his captives, those whom the Father has given him.

And then, decide your own standing with this baby in the manger.  Are you an Israelite or an Assyrian?  Are you with Herod or with the Magi?  Are you one of those ones for whom he came, or are you outside the city, lying stone dead on the hills around Jerusalem after the angel of death has melted your bones with a single glance?  In other words, have you come to Christ and pleaded for mercy from him?  Have you acknowledged that apart from him there is no hope for you?  Do it now!  Unless you do, you become part of the plot to kill this Messiah, and it is better for those to have never been born.

Today is Christmas Day.  What better time could there be to acknowledge the baby of Bethlehem, the Warrior King, as your Saviour and Lord!

Amen.