Today, we heard Micah prophesy of God coming to His people. “As for you, Bethlehem of Ephrathah, although you are small among the clans of Judah, from you, one will emerge who will rule over Israel for me. His existence has been from of old, even from eternity.”
So, little Bethlehem is not so little as they thought themselves to be. For in Bethlehem, the promised One for whom all the world has been waiting will arrive. Little Bethlehem, was just one town out of many thousands, but it was where the Lord would be born.
The older name for Bethlehem was “Ephrathah,” which means fruitful. Later, it Bethlehem, which means “house of bread,” would become the town’s official name. Are those two names purely coincidental?
Or did God want us to know that Bethlehem would bear good fruit, the best fruit, for the life of the world? For that’s where He would give the Bread from Heaven for the fallen sinners of earth. In Bethlehem, the Bread of Life, the Son of God, joined with humanity in that seemingly little, one-horse town.
We can even see Bethlehem as a picture of Christ’s Church. Like Bethlehem, the Church often seems small and insignificant. Even in the Old Covenant, the true Church was small, a remnant. For God’s chosen people repeatedly went astray, choosing their ways over God’s ways. Only a small number clung to the Lord.
It’s the same today for those who cling tenaciously to the grace-filled gifts of God. And it will be that way until the end of the age. Bethlehem will always look like a little house to those who don’t recognize the Bread of Life and treasure Him.
But for those who hunger and thirst for the kingdom of righteousness, no place is of greater importance, than the tiny gathering of God’s saints. For here we receive the long-promised Messiah.
“As for you, Bethlehem of Ephrathah, although you are small among the clans of Judah, from you, one will emerge who will rule over Israel for me. His existence has been from of old, even from eternity.”
The One who is from of old, from everlasting will come. The promised Messiah walked with Adam and Eve in the garden. He closed Noah and his family into the Ark, and later visited Abraham and ate with him. He wrestled with Jacob in the wilderness and even revealed Himself to Moses in the burning bush.
Later, the One, who is from of old, even from everlasting, made Himself present to His people in the Temple. And, finally, even as He promised, He came to walk in the flesh, to offer His body and blood in sacrifice for the sin of the world.
But Bethlehem had no room for its Lord. Bethlehem was far too busy with Caesar’s census than to bother with the birth of the One promised to them. Life’s hubbub and busyness had overshadowed the greatest event ever to take place in that town.
Life hasn’t changed. The eternal ruler has promised to come to His people in His house in straightforward and simple ways. But caught up in the busyness of the world, people still have no room for Him. Even for those who claim to be Christian.
Jesus, God in the flesh, has promised to come to us in preaching, in water, and in bread and wine. And, yet those who bear His name don’t bother to come where He has promised to be. They may even want to experience Jesus in ways and places that He has not promised to be. They go somewhere else other than God’s house of bread, where the Bread of Life has promised to come to us in, you guessed it, bread.
Israel should’ve gathered to receive its King. But He came quietly, like a thief in the night. But it wasn’t because He came unannounced. God’s prophets of old foretold His coming. Daniel told the time so accurately that Israel’s chief priests and scribes were telling the people to look for the Messiah—when Jesus was already with them!
So, how is it possible that months later, or even a year or two after Jesus’ birth, that when the Magi arrived in Jerusalem, no one had heard? Did no one believe the shepherds? Luke tells us that, after the shepherds had seen Jesus, they “returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen” (Luke 2:20).
Prophets Micah and Isaiah foretold the Messiah’s coming. The angels announced it to the shepherds. The shepherds told it to Bethlehem. The star stood over Bethlehem. The promised ruler of Israel had come. So, where was Israel to greet Him?
The problem then was the same as now. We don’t want God to rule over us. When it suits us, we’ll call on Him. But when life doesn’t go our way, we’re always ready to blame Him. And when God forgets to do what we want Him to do, we remind Him. We’ll even build places of worship, but only to worship as we please.
What was the result? We heard Micah warn of this. “Therefore, he will abandon them until the time when she who is in labor gives birth.” After Israel’s exile in Babylon, it was never fully free, even when the Maccabees were a powerful force. For even when Israel restored the Temple, it was always in the throes of warding off enemies. Israel didn’t have a king from the line of David to rule over them as a free people.
God abandoned them until the day that young Mary went into labor and delivered the promised King. Until that day, other nations were always threatening and ruling over Israel. Even when other powers of the world allowed Israel to have its rulers, they served as puppets to their overlords.
Micah then foretold:
Then the rest of his countrymen will return to the people of Israel. 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.
Jesus, the Messiah, the One in whom lives all the fullness of God, this Jesus stands and shepherds His flock in the strength of the Lord. If only we will humble ourselves to come to Bethlehem, to the house of bread, for the Lord to shepherd and feed us.
So, how can we make this happen in our lives? We can come to Church, for that’s where Jesus comes to us. But we can’t make ourselves part of the Lord’s flock, any more than the people of Israel could make Jesus the Messiah. Jesus was the Messiah, born that way among them, whether they recognized that or not.
To have the Lord as your shepherd demands the gift of faith. Joseph and Mary knew and believed what the angels had told them. The shepherds heard and trusted what the angels had told them. Here’s where it gets interesting, for the word “angel” in both the biblical languages of Hebrew and Greek means “messenger.”
And so, today, we, too, believe what we are told by angels, God’s messengers. For not every messenger sent by God is a heavenly being. And, so we learn the purpose of Christ’s Church, God’s house of bread. Angels, God’s messengers of the Gospel, continue to speak in the name of the Lord, even today.
Through them, the One born in Bethlehem continues to feed us in the strength of the Lord. The Lord continues to rule in majesty, and we continue to live in Him. What Micah prophesied came true: “his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth.” That’s true because, in the New Covenant, Gentiles are even part of this Church.
Jesus’ name has gone forth, and His kingdom has spread. It continues to spread wherever His Gospel Word enters the ears of others. It’s where the Holy Spirit joins someone to Jesus in baptism, and where hungry saints feast on His body and blood for their forgiveness. Christ continues to stand and shepherd His flock in the strength of the Lord, even now as we gather in His house of bread this day.
The miracle of faith is at work among us, and in us, even now. Christ is ruling over Israel, His Church. And so, God is fulfilling His promises, in us and for us. And so, even on this anticlimactic Sunday, which seems lost in the coming of Christmas, this is a blessed day. For we hear our Lord’s voice and receive His gifts of salvation.
Now, it’s true that sickness, turmoil, and trouble still enter our lives. It’s true that evil and its terrors threaten to crush us. It’s even true that our frailties and insecurities press against the peace that Christ gives us in our hearts and souls. But we have only to turn to Bethlehem and see the faithfulness of the Lord our God.
God has kept His promises and fulfilled them in the Baby born to carry the weight of the world on His shoulders. God has come to us in Jesus to rule over us and keep us secure. He lived the life that we could not live and paid the price that we could not pay. He defeated the enemy we could not defeat. Sin, death, and the power of the devil no longer have any power over us to rule our lives.
Jesus went to the cross. That’s why He was born. He defeated death, returned to heaven, and reclaimed His throne of glory, which was His from days of old, even eternity. Jesus has, indeed, shown Himself to be great to the ends of the earth. He is our God, who still saves us and keeps us safe into eternity. That is why we worship Him in true faith, trusting in His mercy and grace, and basking in His peace. Amen.
