Micah 5:1-5 | "God's Gift of Peace: God's Promise of a Shepherd Peace"

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Would you take your Bibles with me this morning to the book of Micah?

Micah chapter 5 as we continue investigating God's promise of peace.

Micah 5 · chapter mention

And I know most of us want to forget the snow, but I'm going to remind you of it one more time.

Tuesday night, I was leaving the Hulst's home and driving home after our elder meeting.

And it was quiet.

It was about six inches of snow on the ground already.

As I drove down Belmont, it was just silent.

It was so peaceful and so quiet.

As the snow fell, there was very little wind.

And it created a blanket against all of the sound.

It was mesmerizing in its stillness.

Until the snowblower started up and the wind began blowing on Thursday.

But that kind of stillness and that kind of quietness is how we often imagine the little village of Bethlehem.

The little town of Bethlehem.

How still we see thee lie.

But the sounds of war and death cries were tied to the promise of Christmas long before God's people began to sing about Bethlehem being still in the night.

We sing a newer song sometimes that instills the same image.

On a starlit hillside, shepherds watched their sheep.

Slowly David's city drifted off to sleep.

But to this little town of no great renown, the Lord had a promise to keep.

Those last two lines are taken from our text for this morning in Micah chapter five.

Bethlehem was a town of no great renown.

But the Lord had a promise to keep.

We can imagine the darkness of the night when the shepherds were on the hillsides keeping their sheep.

But those images only take their full shape when accompanied by the noises of war, by the clashes of armies, and the wails of pain and death echoing in our ears.

Anyone can understand, can comprehend God's promise of peace, but it is only fully appreciated by those who have experienced a lack of peace.

That can be you.

Maybe you have experienced the horrors of war.

But even if you haven't, you might still know that feeling of no peace.

Maybe your home lacked peace and stability.

Maybe your childhood was full of abuse.

Maybe your marriage is not peaceful.

Maybe you've endured the anger of an employer or the unsettled feeling of not knowing where your next meal will come from or how you will pay the bills.

There are a multitude of ways to grasp the lack of peace.

Did you know, though, that Bethlehem, that little town so peaceful in the night, has a not so peaceful history?

In fact, it's full of grief and pain from death and sorrow and described and surrounded by images and sounds of war.

I'd like you to go on a memory walk with me.

We'll eventually get back to Micah 5.

But I want you to go on a walk with me first.

It will be helpful as we look at Micah 5 if we review some biblical history first.

Now you might remember, you might remember the beginnings of the Jewish people, how God called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees, and he told him, Go.

I want you to leave your family and all of your belongings behind.

I want you to go to a land that I'm going to show you.

I'm not going to show it to you yet.

I just want you to start walking.

I'll get you there.

Don't worry.

And Abraham left and he went and he followed God.

And God called Abraham, God called Isaac, and God called Jacob.

You remember how Jacob followed his mom's direction and tricking his brother and tricking his father and then having to run away because Esau wanted to murder him.

Jacob ran away to his family's history.

For decades, he went there.

He married sisters, Leah and Rachel.

Leah had children.

Rachel did not.

But Rachel was the favorite.

Rachel was the loved wife.

God blessed Jacob and changed his name to Israel.

And eventually God brought Jacob, Israel, and his family back to the land of promise.

You with me so far?

So we're following Jacob down from the northern areas of Iran, down south into Palestine.

Jacob travels to Bethel, the house of God, where God had spoken to him before he left on his way out, running from his brother.

And God told him, I'm continuing my promise to you.

I'm giving you all of this land wherever you go.

And as they left Bethel, Rachel went into labor as they moved the family.

She gave birth to a son whom Jacob named Benyamin.

Benjamin, son of my right hand.

But Rachel died while giving birth to Benyamin.

You remember that?

But do you remember what comes next?

Because this is where it starts to get really good and really important for us.

In Genesis 35, verse 19, it says, Whoa, how did that happen?

Genesis 35:19

I don't know what happened up there, guys.

Can you take me back to Genesis 35, 19?

Says, Rachel died.

And she was buried.

Where?

On the way to Ephrath.

That is Bethlehem.

The very first reference in Scripture that we have to this little town of Bethlehem is a reference about death.

Dying.

Sorrow.

Burial.

Now we don't know exactly where Rachel was buried, but Genesis records that they were not too far from Bethlehem.

And the biblical record of this region now begins with death and mourning and sorrow, but also because of Benjamin's birth with a measure of hope.

Here is Jacob's second son from Rachel.

The first was Joseph, the second is Benjamin.

Later in Israel's history, we encounter another part of Bethlehem's history.

Consecutive stories at the end of the book of Judges paint a very dark and painful picture of the sinful condition of the region that became known as the region of Benjamin.

It was the land of the Benjaminites, and it was so riddled with sin that the rest of Israel came along to attack Benjamin and they almost destroyed them.

The Benjaminites were so sinful that the rest of Israel said, get rid of them.

And they almost wiped them out so much to the point that they had to make special allowances just for the tribe to keep on surviving.

And then our Bibles record an account of a terrible famine.

It's an account that's filled with irony.

It's in a little book of about four chapters called the Book of Ruth.

Bethlehem is at the center of the book of Ruth.

And as you might know, Bethlehem means house of bread.

Bait, house, Lechem, bread, house of bread.

But the story of Ruth begins by saying, in the days when the judges judged, there was a famine in the land.

So Judges ends with this terrible account of the Benjaminites almost being wiped out, destroyed, and the people that are left in Bethlehem after all of this destruction are now struggling to find food to eat.

In the house of bread, there is no bread.

And so there's a man by the name of my God as King.

That's his name, Elimelech.

A guy who represents God is the king of all.

Who's living in the house of bread, has to take his family and now go to the place where God is not king to find bread.

Because there's no bread in Bethlehem.

He dies.

And the sorrowful, bitter woman then returns home because she hears that there's no bread.

And Beth Lion.

She goes home with one person.

You know the story, don't you?

You're following along with me?

There was hope in that disaster because that man's wife returned home with a young woman who became the great-grandmother of a little boy named David.

Now we need to pause in our memory walk here to bring in a side story.

So keep Bethlehem in your mind.

But we need to pause for a moment and bring in another little town called Ramah.

Bethlehem is about five miles to the south of Jerusalem.

Ramah is about the same distance to the north of Jerusalem.

But they're connected in the biblical story, kind of like sister cities.

They're sister communities.

You will find following the book of Ruth is the book of 1 Samuel.

And 1 Samuel continues this concept, this idea, this theme of Bethlehem.

But now it's connected to Ramah in the north.

It's connected because you'll find the story of a man named El Kanah and his wives, Hannah and Penanah, as you turn the pages in your Bible from Ruth to 1 Samuel.

It's an account that parallels Jacob with Leah and Rachel.

Penanah had children with El Canah, but Hannah did not.

But El Canah loved Hannah.

And 1 Samuel chapter 1, verse 1, tells us that El Cana was a descendant of a man named Zeoph.

1 Samuel 1:1

Guess where Zeop was from?

Says he was an Aphrodite.

Interesting.

Now generally that would mean that El Canah would live in Bethlehem.

But that's not the case because in 1 Samuel chapter 1, verse 19, it tells us that El Kanah and Hannah lived in Ramah.

1 Samuel 1:19

Now Ramah was still in the territory of Benjamin, just as Bethlehem was.

Maybe we could say they're in the same county.

Perhaps both towns were considered part of Ephrata, but we don't know.

So Hannah, living in Ramah, gives birth to Samuel, the prophet.

Still with me?

Several decades later, near the end of his life, God said to Samuel the prophet, in 1 Samuel chapter 16, he said, Fill your horn with oil and go.

1 Samuel 16 · chapter mention

I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite.

For I have provided for myself a king from among his sons.

So Samuel obeys.

Samuel in the north in Ramah travels most likely to Jebus, Jerusalem, and then from Jerusalem south to Bethlehem to meet with Jesse and his sons.

After Samuel died, and Saul, the first king of Israel, died, the people of Israel came to David in 2 Samuel chapter 5, verse 2, saying, In times past, David, when Saul was king over us, it was you who led out Israel and brought Israel in.

2 Samuel 5:2

And Yahweh said to you, You will be the shepherd of my people, Israel, and you shall be prince over Israel.

Do you remember where David was when Samuel went to anoint him king?

Jesse paraded all of his sons, proud sons, the firstborn son, all one after another, right through Samuel.

And God said to Samuel, nope, not that one.

Nope, not that one.

Oh, that one looks handsome.

Nope, not that one.

God said, Sam, I look at the inside.

After all the sons go by, Samuel says, Is this all?

Jesse says, Oh, yeah, there's that squirt David out in the field with the sheep.

You can't be looking for him, right?

David's the shepherd.

And here's the shepherd who is now going to become a shepherd king from Bethlehem.

God says, David is going to be the shepherd king from Bethlehem who will rule over God's people.

There was no other king like him, not even his son Solomon.

None of David's descendants followed the Lord as he did.

It was all downhill from there.

And so it's understandable then that Israel declined spiritually and nationally.

And shortly after Solomon died, the nation split into Israel in the north and Judah in the south.

And the division of territory was just north of Ramah.

So the Jewish people existed as one people in two nations for a few hundred years until God simply had enough.

He raised up the Assyrians from Nineveh to come and destroy Israel in the north, carrying off the people into captivity.

Judah in the south, however, including the Benjaminites, the Aries of Bethlehem and Ramah, they were spared a while longer because of a handful of righteous leaders.

But as the prophet Jeremiah reports, Judah's time came to.

Because the Babylonians conquered the Assyrians.

And the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar came after Judah.

Eventually Jerusalem fell.

The city was destroyed.

The walls were torn down, and the temple was looted.

God said that Judah's sins were flagrant.

He said their guilt is great.

And so this besieged people were suffering and grieving with the sounds of war ringing in their ears.

Look at how Jeremiah paints that particular picture.

It's found in Jeremiah 31, verse 15.

Jeremiah 31:15

Thus says Yahweh, a voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping.

Rachel is weeping for her children.

She refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.

Do you feel that?

Rachel's voice from the grave is heard.

But the sound that is heard is weeping, and not just any weeping, but bitter weeping.

Why?

Because her children are no more.

That's in Jeremiah.

And you see, here's a situation.

When Nebuchadnezzar carried all of Judah captive to Babylon, the staging point for that long trip to Babylon in ropes and in chains began at the town of Ramah, north of Bethlehem.

Over time, Ramah and Bethlehem became like sister towns.

Probably because Rachel died and was buried somewhere between them, and they both claimed Rachel.

So the grief and the sadness of war and the results of war and death and captivity are pictured in the territory of Benjamin as Rachel, their mother, wails about the loss of her children being carried off into captivity.

It was like in the days when the judges judged, when Benjamin was decimated, only there was no Ruth.

There was no David, the shepherd king from Bethlehem to shepherds God's people.

Rachel's children are no more.

The house of bread has no shepherd.

The city of peace knows only war.

And from Ramah, Rachel's children face the consequences of their sin.

There's no comfort for Rachel, because her children are no more.

This is where it's essential to remember that our Bibles are not in chronological order.

Jeremiah wrote those words after the destruction of Jerusalem.

It's already done.

Israel is no more, Judah is no more.

The captives are carried off.

Rachel has already heard weeping.

It's all done and over with.

Samaria in the north and Jerusalem in the south.

And God told Micah about the terrible judgment that he was about to unleash on his disobedient people.

It's hideous if you read the whole prophecy.

It leaves you thinking, Israel came to this?

Listen to Micah.

Micah 4:11

Chapter 4, verse 11.

How many nations are assembled against you, saying, Let her be defiled, let our eyes gaze upon Zion.

Or chapter 5, verse 1.

Now muster your troops, O daughter of troops.

Siege is laid against us.

With a rod they strike the judge of Israel on the cheek.

There is no peace.

There is no peace.

There's war on every side.

They are experiencing the lack of peace that comes to the wicked, for there is no peace, says God, for the wicked.

And this is God's people.

We must never assume that just because we have a place in the church means that we are beyond going where Israel went.

What God showed Micah came to pass in the days of Jeremiah.

Yes, a sound was heard in Ramah.

But Samuel was not in Ramah any longer to go to Ephrata.

No shepherd kings were coming out of Bethlehem.

There was only weeping for Rachel's children.

The territory of Benjamin of Rachel's children was besieged, and there was no shepherd king to rescue them.

But now, now listen to God's promise of peace.

I'll begin reading in Micah chapter 4 and verse 6.

Micah 4 · chapter mention

In that day, declares Yahweh, 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 are cast off a strong nation, and Yahweh 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 it shall come, the former dominion shall come, kingship for the daughter of Jerusalem.

Now 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?

Writhe and groan, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in labor, for now you shall go out from the city, you shall 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.

Now many nations are assembled against you, saying, Let her be defiled, let us gaze upon Zion, but they do not know the thoughts of Yahweh.

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 hooves bronze, and you shall trample in pieces many peoples, and shall devote to their gain to Yahweh and their wealth to the Lord of the whole earth.

Now muster your troops, O daughter of troops.

Siege is laid against us.

With a rod they strike the judge of Israel on the cheek.

But you, O Bethlehem, Ephrata, who are too little to be named 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 Yahweh, in the majesty of the name of Yahweh 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.

We've spent a good deal of our time building the siege works around Bethlehem this morning.

Maybe you somehow feel that in your own life.

But Micah shows us that even when God's people are hemmed in or besieged, they can still have hope in God's promise.

That's the prophetic hope of Christmas.

There is hope for the besieged.

Now, before we notice some of the details of God's promise in chapter 5, let's complete the setting for God's promise.

That setting really is defined by this concept of prophetic grace.

You see, throughout the book of Micah, we see the reason why we get to chapter 5.

And the reason we get to chapter 5 is the pain of Israel's sin.

If you look back at chapter 1, verse 8, Micah laments.

He says, I will lament and wail.

I will go stripped and naked.

I will make lamentation like the jackals and mourning like the ostriches.

Why?

For her wound is incurable.

And it's come to Judah.

It's reached even to the gates of my people to Jerusalem.

Micah says it's like a disease that's working its way and it's finally gotten here, and we have no escape.

That's the sin.

It's the pain of her sin.

And if you go down just a couple of more verses in chapter 1, verse 12, in the last part of it, it says, Disaster has come down from Yahweh even to the gate of Jerusalem.

We have to understand that you don't have Christmas without the pain of sin.

You don't have Micah 5, either without the promise of God's future grace.

Back to chapter 4.

We began in verse 6.

In that day, declares Yahweh, I will assemble the lame.

I will 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, I will make a strong nation, and Yahweh will reign over them in the Mount Zion from this time forth and forevermore.

Notice, in that day, not today, not in Micah's day, not in Jeremiah's day.

In that day, God says, In that day I will assemble them, I will gather them, I will make them strong, and I will reign over them.

He says, I will reign over them.

Yahweh will reign over them.

So you have this pain of sin that leads directly to this promise of a future grace given to them.

Not because of anything that they did or they deserved.

God just says, I'm going to do this.

How?

That's where we see in chapter 4, verse 8, this strange statement.

And you.

Notice how that parallels chapter 5, verse 2.

But you, and you, but you.

And you and you, O Migdal Eder, you tower of the flocks.

You hill of the daughter of Zion, to you, to you it will come.

What will come?

The former dominion.

That is kingship for the daughter of Jerusalem.

Later Jewish rabbis tell us that Migdal Eder, that tower of the flock, is the place where shepherds raised lambs for the day of Passover.

It was the place of shepherds, it was a place of raising lambs who would become sacrifices.

And from there, from Migdal Eder, dominion will come, kingship will come.

But in the meantime, verse 10, writhe and groan, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in labor, for now you shall go out.

You shall go to Babylon.

God says, Here's how I'm going to do this.

I'm going to take the pain of sin and my promise of future grace, and I'm going to bring them together at the tower of the flock.

And out of the tower of the flock, I'm going to bring a king.

Now look with me at God's promise of provision for the besieged.

But you, O Bethlehem Ephratha, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah.

From you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler.

God delights to use the insignificant.

We see that even in the New Testament.

God chooses the weak, not the strong.

God chooses that trickster Jacob instead of his brother Esau.

What's up with that?

God delights to use the insignificant.

And here is Bethlehem, who has known nothing but death and sorrow and weeping from the beginning.

And God says, But from you, from you I'm going to bring out for myself a ruler.

And God delights to take on the plight of his people.

He says, Out of you shall come forth for me.

God is there in the midst of Bethlehem's sorrow, in the midst of her pain, in the midst of her agony.

He's experienced it with her because he's with his people.

And he says, From out of you will come forth for me.

God says, This is my plight.

I am taking your sinful plight on myself, and I'm taking it on myself to fix it.

And so from that tower of the flock, I'm going to bring out for myself a ruler.

And not just any ruler.

This is going to be an eternal ruler.

One whose coming forth is from of old, from of ancient days.

This is the eternal one.

So God's promise for the besieged is that he's going to come into this insignificant place and he's going to rescue his people by using this insignificant place for his own purposes, which is going to fix the problem of the pain of sin.

And ultimately that leads to the promise of peace for the besieged.

Verse 4, he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of Yahweh, in the majesty of the name of Yahweh is God, and they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth.

And he shall be their peace.

God's promise of peace for the besieged begins with God's ruler standing firm when all others run.

Like the first shepherd king, David, who stood firm when the lions and the bears came for his sheep, when he stood before Goliath, that blasphemer of God.

This promised one will stand in the strength of Yahweh, and God's ruler will shepherd his people like the shepherd king in his greatness.

God himself will bring a new shepherd king out of Bethlehem in Samuel's absence.

There's no prophet to do this, so God will do it.

And like David, he will shepherd God's people, and God's ruler will bring peace to his people, because he is his people's peace.

A righteous shepherd brings security out of greatness, and peace will reign because he stands firm for his sheep.

Now, can you feel the hope that promise would bring to the residence of Bethlehem, even as far away as Ramah?

Where Rachel was heard weeping?

After so much grief and weeping and pain from the loss of her children, God would one day bring a new shepherd and a new peace for Rachel's children.

Now that's not the end of the story.

What's the rest of the story?

You know it.

Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the magi, became furious.

And he sent and he killed all of the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region, who were two years old and under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men.

Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah.

Voice was heard in Ramah.

Weeping and lamentation.

Rachel weeping for her children.

She refused to be comforted because they are no more.

Matthew uses a slightly different way to identify fulfillment here.

It probably means something like filled up or filled completely.

The little boys murdered by Herod were not a direct fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecy, that Jeremiah's statement was about the exiles being carried off into captivity.

Here instead it speaks of filling up of Rachel's pain.

If the people being marched off into exile caused Rachel to weep, how much more this senseless murdering of her sons?

The murder of those little boys filled up Rachel's sorrow.

It topped off her pain and mourning.

Nothing could bring more incredible pain to the little village of Bethlehem.

That little village had endured so much, has now experienced the fullness of its grief.

But even that is not the end of the story.

We're not surprised now at Bethlehem's history of pain, grief, and loss.

But we should also not be surprised when God fulfills his promises.

Luke chapter 2.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

In the same region, there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear.

And the angel said to them, Don't be afraid.

For behold, I bring you good news.

Good news of great joy.

It's not just for you shepherds, but for all people.

For unto you is born this day in David's city.

And what is David's city?

Bethlehem.

The house of bread.

Who is Messiah?

Yahweh.

We know that Jesus Messiah was born in Bethlehem because that is what God said would happen.

But have you ever wondered why the announcement first came to shepherds in the hills outside of Bethlehem?

Why were they the first ones?

It's because of Micah chapter 4.

Micah 4 · chapter mention

It's because God's promise of a shepherd king said that he would come first to the shepherds of the tower of the flock.

God said, To you will come the king who is the shepherd king.

What does it say in Micah chapter 4, verse 8?

Micah 4:8

And you, Omygdalader, Helov, the daughter of Zion, to you it shall come.

To you, the shepherds caring for the sheep.

The dominion shall come, kingship for the daughter of Jerusalem.

Maybe the Jewish scholars, the later Jewish scholars were right.

Maybe they were right, and those shepherds were raising little lambs for the Passover sacrifice.

How ironic, and yet how so like God is it to say to them, here he is.

Here is my promised shepherd king, like David, coming to you out of Bethlehem.

But this shepherd king will also be my Passover lamb slain for you.

God's promised shepherd brings peace not merely through government and destruction of dangerous enemies, but by being our peace.

He brings God's people back into a right relationship with him by releasing us from sin, our greatest enemy.

No more let sin and sorrow reign.

For your shepherd and your Passover lamb has come.

I like the way Kenneth Barker says it to those who feel shut in on every side.

Like the besieged citizens who first heard these words, Jesus brings the prospect of deliverance and security.

And that is the essence of the Christmas message.

God makes a gift to a besieged world through whom deliverance may come.

And he told us exactly how it would come.

A shepherd king would bring peace to the shepherds by being a lamb who would die.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

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