1

O Little Town of Bethlehem

Micah 4:9 – 5:5

Let’s take our Bibles and turn to the book of Micah, chapter 4. If you’re
our guest this morning we’re glad you’re here and we hope you feel right
at home. At Christ Baptist we love to praise God with beautiful music,
and we love to spend time in God’s Word. Today we’ll be in the 4th
chapter of Micah, and if anybody doesn’t have a Bible you’re welcome to
use one of our pew Bibles; we’ll be in Micah, chapter 4.

Before the advent season we were in a series of sermons from the Minor
Prophets called “Lights in the Darkness.” Today we return to the Minor
Prophets, to the prophet Micah, to look at an advent prophecy. It’s one of
the best-known messianic prophecies in the Bible, because Matthew
referred to it in his gospel. The wise men went to Jerusalem looking for
Jesus. They asked Herod, “Where is he who has been born king of the
Jews?” Herod was the king of the Jews. And the wise men asked,
“Where is the new king of the Jews?” Matthew wrote that when Herod
heard them he was “troubled.” Herod was hardly a Bible scholar, so he
asked the scribes what the Bible says about the birthplace of the Messiah.
To answer Herod, they quoted the prophecy of Micah that the Messiah
would come from Bethlehem. The Messiah was born in Bethlehem.
God’s Word through the prophet Micah was fulfilled. Let’s read His
Word, beginning in Micah 4, verse 9.

Read Micah 4:6 – 5:5

Thank You for this Word, Lord, and for Jesus who is our peace. Lord, we
confess that sometimes instead of worshiping Jesus during Christmas our
time and our minds are consumed with other things – gifts we must
purchase, places we must go, and programs we must watch in our pursuit
of a merry Christmas. Forgive us, Lord, if sometimes we forget what
we’re celebrating. Forgive us for being distracted by the trappings of
Christmas, and forgive us for marking Your great sacrifice with a season
of materialism and coveting. Help us, Lord, to live the meaning of this
season – that Jesus left the glories of heaven and was born in a cow stall to
give Himself as a sin sacrifice for us. We thank You for Jesus, and we ask
that You would use Your Word in these moments to make us more like
Him. We pray in His name, Amen.
 2

Christmas two years ago, our family attended the Christmas Day opening
of the movie Les Miserables. That movie is an adaptation of Victor
Hugo’s book that has also been adapted as a Broadway play for years. We
loved the movie, but there’s an ongoing debate in our family about the
final scene. The main character, Jean Valjean, has died, and people who
died before Jean Valjean – people he loved and people with whom he
fought for freedom – gather with him after death and they all sing a song
about freedom. There is no mention of eternal life in Jesus, but these
departed souls are all are united in what seems to be sort of a freedom-
loving heaven. So, in our family debate, my contention is that the scene
works as a curtain call for a stage play, but as the ending of the movie it
implies something theological in a way that stinks to high heaven,
literally.

But if we were to extract from that context the song they sing, it’s a
beautiful song. Listen to some of the words; they prepare us to hear
Micah’s prophecy.

“Do you hear the people sing,

Lost in the valley of the night?
It is the music of a people
Who are climbing to the light.”

Then the singers paraphrase words Micah wrote.

“They will live again in freedom

In the garden of the Lord.
They will walk behind the plowshares,
They will put away the sword.
The chains will be broken
And all men will have their reward.”

The reference to plowshares replacing swords echoes Micah’s words here

in Micah 4, verse 3:

“They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into
pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither
shall they learn war anymore.”

The same words are found in Isaiah, chapter 2. It’s a prophecy about the
distant future, at the consummation of this age when Jesus reigns over all
 3

and all people in the new earth worship Him. Isaiah and Micah were
contemporaries. They both lived in the latter part of the 8th century B.C.
In Palmer Robertson’s book on the prophets, he calls Isaiah and Micah
“prophetic twins” and “the two grandest of Israel’s prophets” (The Christ
of the Prophets, Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2004, p. 210). Here
they make the same point – a day is coming when swords will be no more
and nations will have forgotten how to wage war. In that day, all people
will seek and worship the one true God.

Isaiah and Micah prophesied of that day, but they did not live in that day.
They lived in a day in which even God’s people were not faithfully
worshiping God. The people were oppressing the poor, subverting justice
by bribery, committing sexual immorality, and worshiping false gods.
They were also living under the constant threat of invasion by the
Assyrian army – the most violent, barbaric, merciless army in the world.

In that context – the context of spiritual darkness, moral degeneration, and

military danger – Micah preached that God Is Alive and with Us. Notice
that verse 9 begins with the word “now.” If you’re using the New
International Version you won’t see this, but the Hebrew word ‘atah
appears 5 times in the passage we read, and it’s translated with the word
“now.” The reason that word is important in this passage is that it serves
as a temporal marker; it signals that a shift in time is taking place. In these
verses we’re time traveling – from one era to another, from one “now” to
another. The word “now” signals that we have arrived in a different era.

The first appearance of the word “now” is in verse 9, and the time period
is the lifetime of Micah. Micah said to his contemporaries, “Why do you
cry aloud? Is there no king in you? Has your counselor perished, that
pain has seized you like a woman in labor?” Micah was writing about of
God. He was the king of His people and He was their counselor. And He
had not perished. He was alive, in touch, and in charge. So, the questions
are rhetorical. “Why do you cry aloud? Is there no king in you?” The
answer was, of course they had a king among them; God Himself was
their king. “Has your counselor perished?” No, God was their counselor,
and He was very much alive. Micah was reprimanding the people for their
forgetfulness and lack of faith. Micah knew they were in hard times, but
he reminded them that God was still alive and God was with them in those
hard times. “Why do you cry aloud?...Has your counselor perished?”
 4

I read about a pastor’s wife whose pastor-husband was feeling very

discouraged. His ministry was not going well and he was emotionally
down. Every day he was in the doldrums with no joy. One morning his
wife came to the breakfast table dressed in black – a black dress, and black
stockings and shoes. Her husband asked her, “It looks like you’re going to
a funeral. Who died?” She said, “I’ve been thinking that maybe God
died. From the way you’ve been acting it certainly doesn’t look like you
believe He’s alive.” Micah knew that even in the darkest times God is
alive and He’s with us. Our counselor has not perished.

Are you facing difficulties or feeling discouraged? If not, just look at the
news for a few minutes; you’ll see plenty of reasons to feel discouraged –
terrorist attacks, injustice and oppression, poverty, the unrelenting
progress of ungodliness. But for some of us the problems are closer to
home – the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, sickness, dissension and
hurt in a marriage. It’s all right to feel pain and grieve, but by all means
don’t forget that God is alive, He’s with us, and He can help, even by
working miracles. He performed a miracle when He incarnated Himself in
flesh as a baby in Bethlehem, and the Gospel of Matthew says the birth of
that baby fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy that a “‘virgin shall conceive and bear
a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel’ (which means, God with
us)” (Matt. 1:23). Jesus is “God with us.” “Why do you cry aloud?...Has
your counselor perished…?” No, God is alive and with us.

Micah also affirmed that God Guides History. In verse 10 Micah used a
pun to predict the future. In verse 9 he chided them for crying aloud in
pain like a woman in labor, but in verse 10 he essentially said, “Actually
you have one reason to groan like a woman in labor. You are going to
experience pain, and that pain will result in the birth of God’s
deliverance.” Look at verse 10: “Writhe and groan, O daughter of Zion,
like a woman in labor, for now (notice the word “now” again. That’s
Micah’s temporal marker. We’ve just traveled in time again. At this point
Micah shifts from referring to his present to referring to his future. Now)
you shall go out from the city and dwell in the open country; you shall go
to Babylon. There you shall be rescued; there the Lord will redeem you
from the hand of your enemies.” Micah was prophesying that Babylon
would conquer Judah. That’s exactly what happened over 100 years after
Micah prophesied, but during Micah’s lifetime it was an amazing
prophecy because the imminent threat to Judah was not Babylon but
Assyria. During Micah’s lifetime, the Babylonians were afraid of being
conquered by the Assyrians too. Who could have known that about 100
 5

years later, in 612 B.C., the capital of Assyria, Nineveh, would fall to the
Babylonians and the mighty Assyrian Empire would be crushed never to
rise again? God knew, and He revealed it to his prophets.

Look at verse 11. Verse 11 begins with the word “Now,” so Micah shifts
the time period again. In verse 11 Micah is not referring to his lifetime,
and he’s not referring to the distant future when Babylon would conquer
Judah; he’s referring to the near future when the Assyrians would besiege
Jerusalem. “Now many nations are assembled against you (the “many
nations” are the Assyrian soldiers plus all the mercenary soldiers hired
from nations all over the Near East). “Now many nations are assembled
against you, saying, ‘Let her be defiled, and let our eyes gaze upon Zion.’”
Micah said the Assyrians were going to besiege the city of Zion, or
Jerusalem, wanting to get in the city and see it when they overrun it.
That’s exactly what happened in 701 B.C. when the army of the Assyrian
king Sennacherib besieged Jerusalem.

Such prophesies and their fulfillments remind us God knows what’s going
to happen in the future, because God guides history. Micah prophesied
what was going to happen in the near future in the Assyrian invasion; he
prophesied what was going to happen in the distant future in the
Babylonian invasion; he prophesied what was going to happen in the more
distant future in the birth of the Messiah in Bethlehem; and he prophesied
the final universal reign of Jesus at the consummation of this age. How do
we know that what God says about the future yet to come will come to
pass? Numerous past events have corroborated the accuracy of God’s
prophetic word, so it’s reasonable to conclude that future events
prophesied in God’s Word will also come to pass.

God guides history. He is the sovereign Lord of time. The birth of Jesus
occurred at just the right time, the time God chose. Galatians 4:4 says,
“When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son.” At just the
right moment, precisely as God arranged it, Jesus was born. Micah said
the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, in Judea. Joseph and Mary
were from Nazareth, in Galilee – miles away, days of travel away. Mary’s
child was going to be born in Nazareth, not in Bethlehem. But then God
arranged for a pagan emperor named Augustus to require a census, and
people had to register for the census in their ancestral homes, and the
home town of Mary and Joseph was Bethlehem. Augustus thought he was
in charge of history; he was the most powerful man in the most powerful
empire in the world. But actually he was just a pawn in God’s eternal
 6

plan. Augustus’s given name was Octavian, but he took the name
Augustus, which means “venerable,” or “magnificent.” Augustus thought
he was hot stuff marching back and forth in his palace and issuing orders
to push around the little people in the little provinces of Galilee and Judea.
God was actually pushing him to fulfill the prophetic word spoken by
Micah over 7 centuries earlier. God is the One who guides history as the
sovereign Lord over all things past, present, and future.

Micah’s words also teach us that God Can Perform Miracles. The
passage of Scripture we read is replete with miracles. Verses 12 and 13 of
chapter 4 describe the miracle that occurred when the Assyrian army
besieged Jerusalem. Verse 11 says they were assembled at Jerusalem, and
verse 12 says,

“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.”

God was saying that He would make His people victorious over the
Assyrian army. But that was impossible. The Assyrian army was the
largest, mightiest army in the world. When they marched south in the
latter part of the 8th century B.C. they conquered and burned every city
they encountered. When I was thinking about this prophecy this week I
remembered when the United States invaded the island of Grenada in
1984. Almost 8,000 soldiers invaded that island with armed helicopters,
fighter jets, and battleships nearby. How could tiny Grenada stand a
chance against the United States military? The population of the entire
island was about 20% of the population of Raleigh. The odds of
Jerusalem defeating the armies of the Assyrian Empire were that
impossible.

Second Kings (18-19) tells the fascinating story of the invasion of

Jerusalem by the Assyrian army led by Sennacherib. Hezekiah was the
king of Judah at the time, and Hezekiah begged Sennacherib not to attack.
Hezekiah sent enormous quantities of gold and silver to Sennacherib to try
to convince him not to besiege Jerusalem. He even stripped all the gold
from the temple and sent it as tribute to Sennacherib. But nothing could
deter Sennacherib from attacking. Sennacherib’s own record of his siege
 7

of Jerusalem says that he shut up Hezekiah “like a bird in a cage.”

Sennacherib’s army mocked Hezekiah, and when they heard the people
were trusting in God they mocked God. They knew the odds, and they
knew help was not coming.

But God had said through Micah that the Assyrians did not know the
thoughts of the Lord, and God said He had gathered that army to Zion as
sheaves to the threshing floor, and His people would beat them in pieces.
So, as the Assyrian army surrounded the walls of Jerusalem, one night an
angel of the Lord struck down 185,000 Assyrian soldiers. When the
people of Jerusalem arose the next morning, they saw the dead bodies, and
they watched Sennacherib and the remnant of his army return to Assyria.
It took a miracle for God’s prophetic word to come to pass, and God
performed that miracle.

Chapter 5, verses 1 and 2 also describe a miracle God performed. God

Gives Salvation to His People. The first verse of chapter 5 begins with
another appearance of that word “Now.” So, the time period shifts again,
this time to the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem that ended in defeat and
exile for God’s people, which God had announced as His judgment against
the sins of His people.

Then verse 2 begins with the adversative conjunction, “But.” That

adversative conjunction is one of the most important words in the Bible.
Isaiah 40, verse 8 says, “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word
of our God will stand forever.” Luke 24 says, “On the first day of the
week…they went to the tomb…, but when they went in they did not find
the body of the Lord Jesus” (vv. 1, 3). Ephesians 2 says we “were dead in
the trespasses and sins…. But God, being rich in mercy…, made us alive
together with Christ – by grace you have been saved” (vv. 1, 5).

Here in Micah 4 and 5, God said that on a day in the future His people
would be defeated by the Babylonians, but on a day farther in the future
the Savior would come from Bethlehem. “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” (v. 2). God chose
the little town of Bethlehem to be the birthplace of the Messiah. It’s
typical of our God to choose the most unlikely, humble places and the
most unlikely, humble people to do His greatest work. So the Savior was
born not to a queen but to a poor teenager from Nazareth, not in Rome but
in the little village of Bethlehem in the backwater province of Judea.
 8

How did God describe the coming Messiah? Verse 2 tells us Jesus is the
ruler. It calls Him “one who is to be ruler in Israel.” God had promised
King David that the kingdom of David was an eternal kingdom. A king
would sit on the throne of David forever. But Israel and Judah were
conquered, so no king sat on the throne of David. How was God’s
promise going to be fulfilled? Jesus was a descendant of David, He came
as a King, and He said His kingdom is not of this world. Jesus still reigns
over the spiritual kingdom of God, and one day He’ll reign over the whole
world forever. As Philippians 2 puts it, one day every knee will bow and
every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Jesus did not come as
the King of one nation, but the King of all nations who will reign forever.

Second, Micah wrote that Jesus is eternal. Verse 2 says His “coming
forth is from of old, from ancient days.” That last phrase could be
translated “from the days of eternity,” or “from the days of forever.” In
other words, the Messiah is no ordinary human. He did not begin to exist
when He was born in Bethlehem. He existed in eternity past. The first
chapter of the Gospel of John refers to Jesus as the Word, and it says of
Him, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and
the Word was God.” Jesus is God, so He existed at the very beginning.
The church father Cyril of Jerusalem wrote, Jesus “did not begin to be
when he was born in Bethlehem but is before all ages…. Worship him as
begotten eternally of the Father” (The Twelve Prophets, in “Ancient
Christian Commentary on Scripture,” vol.14, pp. 165-166). Jesus is God
the Son, and He has always existed co-eternally with God the Father.
Worship Him. His “coming forth is from old, from ancient days.” Jesus
is eternal.

Third, Jesus is the Lord of history. Since Jesus is God, and God is the
Lord of history, Jesus is the Lord of history. Verse 3 says the One born in
Bethlehem will guide the history of His people Israel. As that verse states,
the people of Israel were given over into the hands of her enemies until the
time of their return. That time was guided by God.

Fourth, Jesus is the Shepherd of His people. That’s what verse 4 says.

“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 (there’s our word “now,” and again it shifts the time to
 9

the messianic age when) he shall be great to the ends of the earth. And
he shall be their peace.”

Micah prophesied that the Messiah would be the Shepherd of his flock.
Jesus said in John 10, “I am the good shepherd” (v. 11). First Peter 5:4
refers to Jesus as the chief Shepherd (5:4), and Hebrews 13:20 calls Jesus
“the great shepherd of the sheep.” Jesus is the shepherd of His flock, as
Micah prophesied concerning the Messiah.

As the Shepherd of His flock, Jesus guides us. Jesus said in John 10 that
He “calls his own sheep by name and leads them out…, and the sheep
follow him, for they know his voice” (vv. 3-4).

And as the Shepherd of His flock, Jesus lays down His life for us. In John
10:11, Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down
his life for the sheep.” That’s what Jesus did. He left the glories of
heaven and entered a world of woe for us. That was laying down His life
for us, but that’s not all He did. He allowed wicked people to oppose
Him, arrest Him, and beat Him. That was laying down His life for us, but
that’s not all He did. He allowed those wicked people to nail Him to a
cross and though He could have used His divine power to free Himself
and punish the murderers, He stayed on the cross and died to become the
sacrifice for our sins. That was laying down His life for us.

Why did Jesus come to earth and die on the cross? He came and died for
us! “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” Romans 5:6
and 8 says it plainly – “While we were still weak, at the right time, Christ
died for the ungodly…. God shows his love for us in that while we were
still sinners, Christ died for us.” For us. The shepherd gave His life for
the sheep.

Are you one of His sheep? When Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd,”
He was speaking to people who did not believe in Him. He said, “You do
not believe because you are not part of my flock.” Are you part of His
flock? Do you believe? If not, you can put your faith in Him today. He
died for you. Put your faith in Him and He will forgive your sins,
reconcile you to God, and give you abundant life and eternal life. The
words in that final song in Les Miserables are true about people who know
Jesus. They’ll live forever because of Him.

“They will live again in freedom

 10

In the garden of the Lord.

They will walk behind the plowshares,
They will put away the sword.
The chains will be broken
And [they] will have their reward.”