May God be pleased to be with
us to bless us together from his word this morning and we
will turn to the book of the prophet Micah and our reading
in chapter 5 and reading together verse number 2 of this chapter Micah chapter 5 and verse 2 But thou of Bethlehem
at Phata Though thou be little among the thousands of Judah,
yet one of these shall he come forth, yet out of these shall
he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel, whose
goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting. One most remarkable and clear
evidence is that the Bible is the Word of God is the fact of
prophecy. That we have so many recordings
of God's Word where things are so clearly predicted and spoken
of that would happen so many years to come and that we read
later that these things came to pass. And that is one evidence,
a sure, clear evidence that we read the word of God. No man would ever be able to
bring these things to pass. And that is true of this text
here in Micah 5 verse 2. Because although it was written
of course in its own context, in its own time, it is clearly
speaking of a time to come. Speaking of a ruler, a king,
who would come from Bethlehem. And Micah lived about 700 years
before Christ was born in Bethlehem. And to Micah and to the people
of his day, a ruler from Bethlehem would have meant David. He was
the great king of Israel who was born in Bethlehem. But this word teaches us that
clearly this isn't David, clearly because David has been dead for
many years, but also because this ruler has been from everlasting. Here we have clearly a word of
prophecy that God would come and be born in Bethlehem. Now, this is a mysterious way,
isn't it? A strange word, because it tells
us that Bethlehem is little among the thousands of Judah. Amongst
all of the different towns, and of course particularly Jerusalem,
Bethlehem was not and still isn't a great place. It was not a big
town. It was not of great importance
apart from its historical importance being the birthplace of David.
It was little among thousands. And yet God is going to bring
something so great and so wonderful from such a little place. Little Bethlehem, but a great
work. And actually, if you look through
the history of Bethlehem, this is a common theme. You go back
into the time of the judges, and you remember Ruth. She comes
from Moab. She marries these Israelites
who have come from Bethlehem. And then with the death of her
husband and her brother-in-law and her father-in-law, she goes
back with Naomi, her mother-in-law, back to Jerusalem. But really,
humanly speaking, Ruth shouldn't be there, should she? She's a
daughter of Moab, She was brought up in idol worship. She was brought
up in an ungodly atmosphere. She shouldn't, naturally speaking,
be coming into Bethlehem. It's Naomi's home, not Ruth's
home. She's never been there before.
And yet she comes to Bethlehem, this poor widow from Moab. And what does she find at Bethlehem?
She finds Boaz. She finds grace. She finds kindness. And Ruth, at Bethlehem, is inserted
into the line of Christ, as we know the descendants would run
through. And so, she comes to little Bethlehem. She comes as
an outcast from Moab, and she finds something wonderful in
Bethlehem. And you come forward a few generations
from Ruth, and you come to King David, and again, David shouldn't
be king. Jonathan should be king. Saul's
son, it should follow in the line of succession. God has chosen
Saul, and surely then his son should take the throne at his
death. And yet Samuel is sent by God
to little Bethlehem. to the child of Jesse who was
forgotten when the prophet came and they have to go and fetch
him from the fields to come to Samuel and there in little Bethlehem
this young child David is anointed to be king you see the smallness
but the greatness in this little town and so here Bethlehem little
among the thousands There's to be a ruler in Israel. And you come forward now, the
generations and the centuries, and you come to Mary and Joseph.
Mary and Joseph shouldn't be in Bethlehem, should they? They're
from Nazareth in the north of the country. We don't know, but
wonder if they'd ever been to Bethlehem in their life. They
were there just because of the ancestral history. They were
there just because he was of the tribe and of the family of
David. Maybe it was the first visit
to Bethlehem. And the taxing or the census
that Caesar Augustus had commanded was a nuisance. It was an inconvenience. They had to travel these many
miles in difficult terrain with Mary heavily pregnant and not
far to giving birth. But in God's plan, they enter
little Bethlehem and there is something great because there
is the birth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And you think
of all the people involved. in those scenes at the birth
of Christ. The shepherds just outside of
the town of Bethlehem in the fields looking after the flocks.
An ordinary night of work but there they come into little Bethlehem
and what do they find? In a poor stable in a poor manger,
in the most unexpected, in the most sad, naturally speaking,
circumstances, they find Christ, the Lord, the Saviour, who has
been born. And the wise men, who themselves
come looking for the King, go to the palace and don't find
him with Herod and with all the courts, they find him in a little
home, in little Bethlehem. You can see the theme that flows
through scripture, this small place and yet God's working an
amazing, glorious work in that town. And so none of these expected
to find such blessing in Bethlehem. None of them expected to find
something so special, but God had planned and God has prophesied
here these many years before through Micah that he would work
and his glory would be seen in Bethlehem. Now one thing we can draw from
this truth is that God works in unexpected ways. God works
in ways that we don't look for. In ways that often surprise us. Because through the centuries,
since the very fall of man back in the book of Genesis, God's
people have been looking for the Messiah. They've been longing
for the Saviour to come. And God has been speaking through
those years in different ways. Sometimes he's been speaking
through the prophets of one who is going to come, of one who
will be born of a virgin, of one who would come to suffer
and to die, to bear the sins of his people. And there are
these words of prophecy that God speaks from time to time
of Christ to come. And sometimes he speaks through
pictures. He speaks through The picture
of the tabernacle, the temple, the picture of the sacrifices,
the picture of the high priest, the pictures of the wanderings
of Israel, the provisions of the manor, and there are these
types which come forth. The brazen serpent in the wilderness.
Some certain individuals show different aspects of the person
of Christ. And so God is speaking little
by little through these ways. And these things were encouragements
to God's people that the Christ child was coming. We wonder how many people expected
to find him in Bethlehem. We know, of course, that the
people who the wise men speak to In Jerusalem saw this prophecy
as messianic, that it meant it was speaking of Jesus. But how
many others over the centuries had expected it to be Bethlehem?
Certainly nobody expected him to be from Nazareth. Nathanael himself said, didn't
he, can any good thing come out of Nazareth? And so God works
in these unexpected ways. And this is how God so often
works today, in the lives and experience of his people today.
He often does not work straight away. We may be praying, seeking God,
And we do not have answers as quickly as we think we will.
That doesn't mean to say that God cannot work straight away.
Sometimes God works so quickly and so suddenly we are so surprised. But often He waits. Often he delays. And of course
you think of the centuries from the fall of man until the coming
of Christ. You think of the centuries from
this word through Micah to the coming of Christ. And through
all of those years there is this waiting and waiting and waiting. Did that mean that God was not
going to fulfil his word? Did it mean that the prophecies
were wrong? Did it mean that God was unable
to fulfill his word? Of course not. It meant that
God was going to work in his time, in his way. And this is a lesson we need
to remember in our lives. The Lord does not always work
straight away, and we have need of patience, often. We find we have need of patience. And you know, often we find we
have very little of it. We are impatient. We want to
run faster than the Lord would walk. We want to get things moving. We want things in our way, in
our time frame. And how often we have to learn
that God is higher and God is wiser and God knows what he is
doing. People must have looked at this
prophecy from Micah chapter five and wondered what it meant and
wondered when it would come to France. And the generations came
and the generations passed on. But finally, in God's time, a
ruler was born in Bethlehem. And so we remember that God does
not always work straight away. We often also remember that God
often works in the small things. Again, we expect great things. We look for great things. And
if the people in the Old Testament time were told that they would
find the Messiah, oh, we wonder what they would have expected.
Probably not a child, a baby in a manger in Bethlehem. And
yet, in this small thing, naturally speaking, was a great thing. Because as the shepherds come
to see Christ in the manger, they by faith see more than just
a newborn child. They see something great, something
amazing, something worth spreading abroad and telling many people. When Simeon and Anna came into
the temple and saw Mary and Joseph and their eight-day-old son,
They saw beyond this newborn child going through the ceremony
of naming. They saw Christ. Simeon saw the
fulfillment of the promise that he would see the Lord's Christ.
Anna saw one whom she would go to all those who looked for redemption
to tell that Christ had come. You see they saw something great
in what was naturally small because they knew that God had come and
they knew that this work of redemption would come to pass. Now we may expect great things,
and you know it's right to expect great things. It's right to pray
for great things. It's right to look to God to
do great things. But we might be praying for great
things, but we might only have little things. We might only
have little answers. We might just have little encouragements. And we look and we say, but I've
been praying for great things, I've been praying for wonderful
things. Well, what are those little things
telling us? They're telling us that God is working. Those little
answers, those little encouragements, they're telling us that God is
working. not in the way we expected perhaps but God is working and
who knows what those little things might lead to who knows what
those little drip by drip blessings might lead to and so the Lord is coming to
little Bethlehem but he's coming to do a great work you think
in another context you go back into the Old Testament to the
Judge Gideon And you remember how Gideon was called of God
to deliver Israel from the Midianites? And how he had a great army to
do that. You could look on that great
army that Gideon had and say, well, here is God's provision.
Here is the great thing he needs. Here is the great things perhaps
he's been seeking and praying for. Here is the great blessing,
a great army to defeat Midian. But God looked on the great army
And he cut it down. He cut it down to 300 men with
a few torches and trumpets. Nothing that would defeat an
army of Midian. Nothing that would have a chance
against the Midianites. A foolish attempt, if you like.
But it was God's provision. And it was small, but it was
God's provision. And you know how God used those
300 men with their torches and trumpets to defeat the Midianites
without even having to raise the battle. Because the small
things in God's hand are great things. And that's what we have
here. Little Bethlehem will be a ruler in Israel. And we also note in our lives
a lesson for us that when God works, he works for his glory. He works that the praise might
go to him. You imagine, if we can, just
imagine that Christ was born in the palace at Jerusalem. And
the kings, the wise men, they come, or the shepherds, or whoever,
and all the people from Jerusalem flock into the palace, and they
look at the palace, and they admire the palace, and they look
at King Herod on his throne, and they admire him on his throne,
and they see how wonderful it is to be entering into this great
building, and how privileged they are to do so. Oh, and there's
the child as well. But you come into the stable,
the manger at Bethlehem, there's nothing. But who's at the very
centre of it? Christ. Jesus is at the very
centre of it because God works in such a way that he would have
the honour and all of the glory. And so we may find in answers
to our prayers that the first way the Lord works is to bring
us down, to humble us, to show us our impossibility of doing
what we are praying for. that we cannot put our hand to
it, that we cannot do it and God is bringing you down. You
say but that doesn't feel like an answer to my prayer, that
doesn't feel like God's responding but he's bringing you down that
when he answers he will receive the glory. And so they came to
Bethlehem to worship him And so we have some lessons here
in this little Bethlehem, in the unexpected, the small ways,
perhaps, that God may be working in our lives. But we need to
move on from Bethlehem. We don't stay at Bethlehem. Remember
that at this time of year. Don't just stay at Bethlehem.
Bethlehem is vital, it's wonderful. It's the most blessed time and
it's a wonderful thing to consider the birth of Christ, but don't
stay there. Because he was born to die. He was born to be a man
of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And so we go from Bethlehem
and we go to Calvary. And we go there to find an unexpected
place, we might say. A cross. just outside Jerusalem, a place
we do not expect to find the Christ. We do not expect to find
the Son of God hanging on the cross. And yet there, in this
unexpected place, we find the most wonderful thing, the most
amazing work taking place at the cross at Calvary. Because
there, this king, this ruler, this one who has been from everlasting,
is suffering and giving his own life for the sins of his people. And you look at the cross in
a natural way, and it looks like a failure. It looks like the
Jewish leaders, the Romans, or in a spiritual sense, the devil,
have gained the victory. That Christ has been defeated,
and then you look a little bit closer at the cross. And you
realize that that is not the case at all because he has given
himself. He could have at any moment commanded
those 12 legions of angels to deliver him in the Garden of
Gethsemane and yet he gave himself. He could have any moment stopped
the mouths of those accusers. He could have any moment delivered
himself from the hold of the governor pilot and yet he gave
himself. He could have at any moment in
answer to their taunts and their accusations have come down from
the cross and yet he gave himself, you see. It was a victory, a
glorious, spiritual, eternal victory, which is why we read
together 1 Corinthians chapter 1. Because 1 Corinthians 1 shows
to us how many people couldn't grasp, couldn't understand the
cross. To the Jews, it was a stumbling
block. their Messiah would not be found
at Calvary. That was their understanding.
The Messiah was a ruler who had come forth to Israel. The Messiah was a deliverer,
was a king, like King David. The Messiah would not be found
at Calvary. And the Greeks, they looked on
the cross and saw it as just utter foolishness. who would
follow a God who dies, who would serve a God on a cross. And so both of these groups could
not accept the preaching of the cross. And yet, as the Apostle
says to us, to us, to them which are called, both Jews and Greeks,
Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God. For those
who God has given faith to see what this really is, to see what
the preaching of the cross really is, to see what really took place
there at Calvary, we are amazed. Because there is not the weakness
of God, there is the power of God. There is not foolishness,
there is wisdom. And we marvel at God, and we
marvel at the plan of salvation when we come to the cross. We
do not turn away. In fact, sweet are the moments,
and rich is the blessing which before the cross I spend. And so, the apostle here is telling
to us that there is power in something which seems foolish.
There is power in something that seems weak. And yet in the cross,
there is glory. And the point is, as he sums
it up all at the end, and we can see it here, we can see it
in the child at Bethlehem, in the, he that glorieth, let him
glory in the Lord. All the praise and honor must
go unto him, that no flesh should glory in his presence. And so we come to that Horrible
place. Naturally that place of suffering
and death of Calvary and yet we find something sweet. Something
precious. Because there is the savior for
sinners. But then what about us more personally?
What about us more personally? Little Bethlehem. Yet out of
these shall come forth unto me, that is to be ruler in Israel. The power of God in the small
things. What about us personally this
morning? How are we to find this God? How are we to find this
savior? The shepherds, well they were
told where to go naturally, they were to go to Bethlehem and find
a child in a manger. The wise men were guided of the
star, finally, to the home in Bethlehem. How are we to find
this Saviour? We cannot go anywhere in this
world to find Him. We cannot go to any place to
find Him. Where are we to go? How are we to go? You see, the
temptation in our minds is to think how can we make ourselves
worthy to come before the Lord? How can we make ourselves acceptable?
How can we make ourselves holy? How can we take away our own
sin? Because surely in order to come
before the Lord we need to be presentable, we need to be good
in the eyes of a holy God. We need to come unto him as he
expects. And what does he expect? Well
he's told us what he's expected in the law. He's given us his
commandments of what he expects to find in us. And so we think
that we must meet that law, we must fulfill that law, we must
keep it in order to come to the Lord. That is how we would be
accepted. And yet what do we find in us
when the mirror of God's Word is held up? When you hold up
a mirror to yourself sometimes we can get a shock, can't we,
at how dirty we might be. You hold up the mirror of God's
Word and we get a shock. Because we hold up the commandments
of God and we find that we do not keep them. We find we fall
so very far short of them. We find all it does is reflect
to us the horror of what's inside. Our own hearts are fallen and
sinful. We do not love the Lord God as
we should. We do not love our neighbour
as we should. We do not honour him. We do not
love him. We do not worship God. as he
should. And so we say, well, how would
God accept sinful me? How would God accept me as I
am? And so I wonder this morning,
do any of us here who have been emptied of that self-reliance,
emptied of ourselves, of any hope that we had, and we may
have had a lot that's had to be emptied out, that we were
resting in, Resting in what we knew. Resting in who we were. Resting in what we understood.
Resting in our memory of God's word or whatever it was. Resting
in our uprightness and our so-called Christian life. And we were resting
in those things and God has gradually, one by one, taken those things
away. That doesn't meet God's standard.
That doesn't get you into heaven. That doesn't make you holy. and
be emptied of self-reliance and of self-confidence. And so what
do we have? What's left but nothing? But the truth is that God hears
the prayers of those who have nothing. The hymn puts it this
way, doesn't it? Nothing but sin I thee can give. Nothing but love shall I receive. And you can find that traced
out in the teachings of scripture. You come to that parable of the
publican and of the Pharisee that Jesus taught. What did the
publican have when he went into the temple to pray? He had nothing. All he had was a confession.
God, be merciful to me, a sinner. The Pharisee had a lot. He had
much to thank God for in his own mind. He had much to tell
God about of what he did and how good he was. He had a lot
to bring to God. But the publican had nothing
but a confession. But you know which one went home
justified, which one went home blessed, which prayer God actually
heard. And that was the prayer of the
one who had nothing, because God came to the one who was little. The one who was lost, the one
who had been emptied of himself and God blessed him. And he went
home to his house justified. Think of one other account in
the Old Testament, you remember King David. King David had everything. God had put him on the throne.
God had given him peace in the land. He was now king of Judah
and Jerusalem, of all the tribes. God had given him peace from
his enemies, from Saul. And then David falls into sin.
And David, who had everything, took even more. He took Bathsheba,
the wife of Uriah. He took the life of Uriah, her
husband. He took it all to himself because
in his own sin and in the own will he would claim it because
he wanted it. Until Nathan the prophet comes
and he says thou art the man and David who was ready to condemn
That man in the parable, the one who took the ewe lamb from
the poor man, he was ready to condemn and yet in the utter
hypocrisy of his own heart he couldn't see that he was the
man. Until Nathan made it plain and
clear. Thou art the man and then David,
he loses everything. And he has to come before the
Lord just to that simple word. I have sinned before the Lord. And you might say, well, what
a very simple, what a simple thing, an easy thing to say.
It's not an easy thing to say when you really know it. David
really knew it. He really knew conviction. He
really realized what had happened. And David had sinned against
many. He had sinned against Uriah.
Although Bathsheba doesn't seem to be an unwilling party, he
has sinned against Bathsheba. He has sinned against the people
of Israel in his witness and in his leadership. But David
realises, as much as they are all wounded parties in his sin,
that he has sinned against the Lord, and that is what grieves
him the most, because it's God whom he knows and loves, really. And God has blessed him with
so much. and showed him such kindness
and such grace. And the God who had made him
and blessed him was grieved by his sin. And so there's a depth
to that confession of sin against the Lord. And yet when David
has been emptied of himself, There is this wonderful response,
that the Lord has put away thy sin. And as we see the greatness
of his sin, we see the enormity of God's grace, that he would
put away Such sin. Now, David suffered consequences
for that sin. It doesn't mean that everything
was fine afterwards. The death of the child, the sadness
in his own family, the sins of his own sons in the years to
come, the rebellion of Absalom, it all really traces back for
that occasion of adultery and murder. But with God, he was
at peace. And that's a wonderful thing.
And that is the wonder of the gospel, of God's glorious grace. And so we say, but surely God
doesn't come to the little. God doesn't come to the unworthy. God doesn't come to me when we've
been emptied of self. God only comes to the great and
the good. But this text tells us God comes
to little Bethlehem. God comes to those who are small
in their own estimation, who are low, who are guilty, and
God blesses them. And so do not be discouraged,
but come. Do not be discouraged, but seek.
Seek this ruler. This Saviour, who has been from
of old, who has been from everlasting, come to such a King, who comes
to even a poor family in Mary and Joseph, and poor surroundings
in Bethlehem and Nazareth, and then to a cross, come to him
who went to the horror of Calvary for sinners. And we'll find,
as the Lord draws us, that we find all that we need and all
that we seek is found in the Saviour. And the wonderful thing
is this is how God delights to work. This is how God delights
to work. He does all. He does all that
all the honour and all the glory and all the praise might go unto
his name and to his name alone. But thou, Bethlehem of Rata,
though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of
thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel. whose going forth has been from
of old, from everlasting. May God bless his word to us
this morning. Amen.