"Gods Shepard Will Save HIs Sheep" - Micah 5:1-6

All right, this morning, we're in Micah 5. You got a Bible, feel free to go ahead and turn there.

As you turn to Micah 5, let me just kind of give us an update,

in case you're lost on where we are.

In Micah, the first four chapters of Micah have been largely judgment.

They've been largely judgment. They've been largely God coming to his people,

namely the leaders of his people, whether that's a government leader or a prophet

or a prince or a governor, or however you want to say that, coming to these

leaders and saying, here's what you've done.

Here's the issues. Here's why I'm going to judge this nation.

And by judge this nation, he doesn't mean slap them on the hand.

He means remove them out of the land that he gave to them and take them to Babylon.

They've sinned against God. They've broken his law. They will soon find themselves

exiled again in a foreign land because of their own sins.

And that may be one of the hardest parts about this book is this isn't just

an unfortunate turn of events for the Israelites.

This isn't just, well, you know, they weren't doing anything wrong,

but the Babylonians were just mean.

Chapter five is where this hope is introduced. Last week in chapter four,

we read that the other nations don't know God's plan, that that was the hope

of last week, is that we are God's people and we do know God's plan.

We know what God plans to do. And in chapter 5, not only is he going to say,

hey, the nations don't know God's plan, he's going to lay out God's plan.

He's going to say, this is the hope that you have.

Again, as a quick reminder, this book is written about 100 years before this

exile is going to take place.

So the book is written and causes a generation of people to repent.

They turn back to the Lord.

Remember, King Hezekiah comes and he rules over the land and he tears down the

high places and tears down the false authors.

And so for about 100 years, that happens. But of course, the next generation

shows up and they go right back to where they were. And God is going to judge them for that.

So even as we begin, see this twofold meaning in Micah. Number one,

it calls people to repentance and people do repent.

And you may even be reading, Micah, if you were one of these people saying,

well, we're going to repent. And so all these prophecies that the Lord is laying

in front of us, they actually won't ever happen.

And they certainly do happen.

God does exactly what he says he's going to do.

But again, he has a plan. He has a plan.

We get started. Why don't you just pray with me one more time?

Well, we thank you for this morning. We thank you for your word.

God, when we talk about prophecy, we talk about your plan, we know that it's

easy to get into the weeds.

And certainly that's not our intention this morning.

More than anything, would you help us to see the King of kings and the Lord

of lords, your son, Jesus Christ, more clearly.

That we would hope in him, that we would live our lives in light of what he's

accomplished on our part. and live our lives with an eye onto what he is going to accomplish.

God, we thank you for that. Pray that you do what only you can do.

Open hearts and minds and eyes to your word.

So again, they might see your king. In your name I pray, amen.

So we're gonna talk about some prophecy here and I wanna get ahead of this because

I don't have three hours and this isn't a seminar.

Think of prophecy, this may be helpful for you, like mountain ranges.

But if you've studied prophecy, you've probably heard this. I wish I could remember

who came up with this illustration.

We'll just assume he stole it from somebody else. So I'm going to steal it from

him. But prophecies are like mountains.

When you read a prophecy, it's like looking at a mountain range.

You see all kinds of mountains, and some of them are closer to you than others,

and certain mountains are taller than others.

And they're all real, and they all matter, and it's all important.

And in much the same way, when you read Micah 5, he's giving prophecies and

they kind of intermingled from what's going to happen soon, what's going to

happen a little later, what's going to happen at the end. And they're kind of mixed together.

So I say that this morning to say we're going to focus on the tallest and most

important mountain this morning.

Now, one day, hopefully soon, we will have some time, some weeks that we can

study prophecy. We can go into different viewpoints. We can do all of those things.

And maybe what we need to do is just walk out a whole Sunday one time and just

have coffee and we can all come in here and give our views.

And then what we'll realize at the end of that is that none of that It changes

our lives necessarily, but I do love a good prophetic discussion.

But again, for our purposes this morning, just because of where we are,

there is a mountain in every prophecy that is the most important.

It's the tallest mountain. It's the one that should draw our most attention.

And that mountain is Jesus. And that's what we're going to focus on this morning.

So again, I just wanted to get ahead of that.

If you're hoping that I'm going to give you all of my eschatological views this

morning, I'm not. I would be glad to, just not today.

And if you want to give me yours, maybe later, maybe later.

So verse one, let's jump right into this.

Micah 5.1, he says, 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.

So he begins, again, this may not be the greatest chapter break,

but he begins kind of finishing off where he started in chapter four by telling

them, this is what's going to happen.

There's two word plays here that Micah uses.

Number one, he says, you trust in your troops, you're going to be judged by your troops.

So he says to Israel, muster your troops.

In other words, if that's what you want to trust in, if you want to trust in

your army, if you want to trust in chariots and spears and bow and arrows,

if you want to trust in those things,

then muster all you can, because I am going to send some troops against to you

in the form of the Assyrians and the Babylonians and your troops,

no matter how many you can muster, no matter how much firepower you can get, it will not matter.

You've been dependent upon your troops and you will be judged by troops.

Number two, he's going to punish a corrupt ruler with another ruler.

So he says with a rod, they strike the judge of Israel on the cheek.

This literally becomes fulfilled years later during King Zedekiah's reign.

He's the last king of Judah.

If you've read about King Zedekiah, you know how his reign ends.

They capture him and his sons. They bring them in. They have Zedekiah watch

as they murder his sons in front of him, and then they gouge out his eyes so

that his last visual memory he has is that.

So what Micah is doing here is saying, you've placed your hope in troops and

they will be of no use to you.

You've placed your hope in kings and that king will end up being stripped of

his lineage and stripped of his sight, taken away as a prisoner into Babylon.

Jeremiah, who's the prophet during the time of the exile, when they get exiled,

right before Jeremiah 17, five, he says, thus says the Lord,

cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength whose heart

turns away from the Lord.

Really, Jeremiah 17, 5 is my sermon this morning.

Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength,

whose heart turns away from the Lord.

You can't trust in man or anything that offers you in trust in the Lord. It doesn't work.

Even if the man or woman is yourself,

the Bible uses incredibly strong language passage when we do that.

Cursed is the man who trusts in man. Not in trouble.

Not it's going to be hard for you. Not you're going to be sad sometimes.

Jeremiah says that you're cursed. The Bible says that you're dead.

The Bible says that you're lost.

I think it's important to understand the gravity of these situations.

And one of the reasons I told you about the story of,

Hadekiah getting his eyes gouged out and his son's murder before him is because

I think there's it's hard to understand the gravity of what's going on when

you don't tell the story the way it's told.

And it's hard to understand what sin does to us when we treat it like it's.

Like it's a cat and not a lion. We treat sin like a house cat, not a lion.

What I mean by that is a house cat that hasn't been declawed can cause you some pain.

I remember when my grandma died, our family thought that we were going to be

really kind to my grandpa. We got him a new cat to keep him company.

Now you may ask, did grandpa ask for a cat? Of course not.

Of course not. But we all just knew that we knew better and grandpa needed a friend.

So we buy this cat and we name name it tiger, thinking that would be a fun joke.

And we come back a week later after dropping it off. And my grandpa's literally

sitting on the porch with a box with the cat in it with a hole put in it.

And he's like, you got to take this thing back.

And his arms are all scratched up. And he's just been literally tortured for a week by this cat.

And it's like, well, we love you, grandpa. You're welcome for the pest that

we put in your house for a week.

My point is this. Yeah, that cat caused him a lot of grease and a lot of scratches

and probably sold CVS out of Neosporin that week. It was a tough week for grandpa.

However, if we would have literally dropped off a lion or a tiger in his house,

the consequences would have been far more dire.

What we would have found when we got to grandpa's house is that grandpa would no longer be alive.

That a tiger unleashed in his house would have killed him and possibly gotten

out and killed plenty of other people.

And again, we tend to treat sin like the house cat that scratches our arms,

that hurts us, that we can put some neosporin on, but ultimately we can heal ourselves.

We can fix that. It's just uncomfortable.

And the Bible does not describe sin that way. Remember what God says at the

very beginning of Genesis to Cain, Cain, sin is crouching at the door,

hoping to devour you, hoping to kill you, hoping to murder you.

And that's where we find ourselves in Micah is that the sins of the people sit

at their door waiting to devour them.

Sin breeds things like hopelessness. Part of this sermon came to me.

I met with a young guy this week who got married a little bit ago and had his

whole life in front of him, thought everything was lined up.

He had a job lined up, this beautiful bride, all of the things in front of him, and he made a mistake.

He did something he shouldn't have done, and it literally cost him everything.

I hadn't talked to this guy in probably five or six years. He was in our youth

group and just, you know, I didn't know where he went.

And he called me out of the blue to chat with me about it. And it was interesting

sitting with him after I was reading this all week and thinking,

yeah, this is what sin does. This is what it looks like.

Obviously, when he's committing the sin that he was committing against his wife

and against his family, he's not thinking of that.

He's thinking, man, I just need this. Like my life is crazy.

I'm not happy. Everything's not going my way.

So I'm going to go take it into my own hands and I'm going to let this,

what he thought was a house cat into my life.

And sure, it may hurt me a little bit. It may prick me. But what it ended up

costing him was literally everything that he had built his life on.

And the warning is simply this, as we get started, I know this is quite the intro.

If you treat sin like that, one day you will wake up and it will kill you.

It will kill you. It will ruin your life. and that's if God's gracious to you

and shows you the folly of your sin before you die.

Because if you don't see the folly of your sin before you die,

then sin will not cost you pain and hopelessness in this life.

It'll cost you separation from God forever.

That's what sin does.

So I wanted to set that tone this morning, as negative as that sounds,

because when we look at the hope of what is shared in Micah 5,

you need to understand what the hope is delivering you from.

And it's not a pithy statement. It's not just, man, you weren't doing good.

It's not just, well, you know, my life was in shambles and Jesus showed up and

he fixed it. And now I'm feeling better.

It's that you were dead, that you had a tiger in your life who was going to kill you.

And this king shows up. So again.

Micah starts by saying, listen, you've trusted in your troops I'm going to send

troops that show you that that was a terrible place to put your trust You've

trusted in your king I'm going to show you that your king can't even protect

his own lineage Much less you And now he can't even see as he's led away into

exile So what is he going to do?

Well, he's going to present this contrasting king With his contrasting troops

You trusted in this king you trusted in this power.

Let me show you who you should trust in, the king you should trust in.

Micah 5.2, but you, O Bethlehem, Ephratheth, 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,

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

Your translation may say from everlasting.

Verse 3, therefore, he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labor has given birth.

And the rest of his brothers shall return to the people of Israel and he shall

stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord and the majesty of

the name of the Lord his God.

And they, his flock, his sheep shall dwell secure for now he shall be great

to the ends of the earth. Don't miss that. Don't miss that.

You dwell secure, not because you're great, but because he is great to the ends

of the earth and he shall be their peace.

Micah presents this king that they should be trusting. And now again,

this idea would not have been foreign to them at this point.

They're not dumb people. They know their Old Testament to this point really well.

The things that they could read, they did read. The things that they could know,

they did know. They trained their kids in them. They're looking for this king.

They thought it was David and it wasn't. And every king that comes to the throne,

they're looking at going, I wonder if this is the one.

You got to think that when Hezekiah comes to the throne right after this is

written, and he begins to put reforms in, and he begins to turn the people back

to God, they may be thinking, maybe Hezekiah is the king that's going to deliver us. Maybe he's the one.

Remember, they're reading Micah 5 as Hezekiah is coming into his own,

and they're probably reading Micah 5 going, oh, this is Hezekiah.

This is who he is. He's going to do this for us. He's going to deliver us.

Unless we give them a hard time, all of us have fallen into a place where we

think that someone's going to come into our life and fix everything.

Every teenager I've ever talked to that thinks they're going to get married

and that the person that they marry is going to fix everything, it's going to happen.

It doesn't matter how good your marriage is, it hasn't fixed everything.

Then they get married and they realize, well, that doesn't fix anything.

So, you know what we should do? Let's just have kids. That's going to fix everything.

So people, every time marriage is a magnifying glass, everything that is wrong

with your relationship and your dating is not, it doesn't go away.

The second you say I do, it gets magnified.

And then kids are like a megaphone.

Then you have kids and then the whole world gets to know what's going on in

your marriage because the kids will tell everybody what's wrong.

I was juggling with somebody yesterday about teaching children's church.

The best part about Children's Church is prayer requests.

If I want to know anything about your life, anything that happened, prayer requests.

Timmy, do you have any prayer requests? Yeah, mom and dad were screaming at

each other on the way to church.

Never fails. I remember one time my dad got a speeding ticket.

I prayed for him for a month. I thought he was going to jail.

For sure, I thought he was going to jail. I just knew it.

Y'all pray for my dad. He's probably going to the pen. I don't know what to tell you.

But you don't tell him it's a speeding ticket. You just say,

pray for my dad. I think he's going to jail. And everyone just assumes that

he killed someone. I don't know.

Anyway, all of us have things in our life that think that'll fix it.

Maybe we get a new job. We make a little more money. we get the new house,

we get the new car, whatever it is.

And every single one of us has a person that we're hoping shows up in our life

and is going to fix everything. And that's exactly how they thought.

That's exactly how they thought. They were waiting on a king to come to the

throne to do everything that this said that he would do.

The problem is they think that the biggest issue they have is the Assyrians and the Babylonians.

They think the biggest issue that they have is corrupt kings and governors and

mayors and prophets and priests. That's what they think their biggest issue is.

In the same way that we think our biggest issues are outside of us, so it was for them.

They thought if we could just get rid of the Babylonians and the Assyrians,

if they would stop threatening to kill us, man, life would get a lot better.

But that is not their biggest issue. It's not your biggest issue.

It's not my biggest issue.

Our biggest issue is inside of us. It's within us.

No matter how awful things have happened in your life, no matter what goes on

in your life, your biggest enemy is still your own sin.

And that is not to minimize what you've gone through.

Some of the most painful things that you will hear from people,

especially if you get into any sort of ministry at all, if you just want to

disciple someone, Talk to kids whose parents have left them,

whose dad or mom has abandoned them.

They may even live in the same house as them, but they don't talk to them.

They don't respect them. They don't love them.

Talk to a spouse that's been taken advantage of.

Talk to a member of a church that's been taken advantage of.

Talk to those people. Sit.

There's nothing sadder than those things. Look around you in the world.

Look at the kind of persecution that's going on to Christians in Syria and in

China It's happening all over.

And yet, the Bible makes it clear that even if we had a government around us

that was threatening to kill us and take our families apart and do everything

they could to squash what we had,

that our biggest issue would not be that government.

It would not be guns or knives or swords. It would not be mean parents.

It would not be bad spouses. It would still be our own sin.

Our own sin is our biggest issue. And that is what this king has come to handle.

We have all sat at certain times and said, God, I don't know why you're letting this happen to me.

I don't know why you're letting this person, this ruler, this person in my life

do things to me that are unkind.

And every person in Israel, as they're reading Micah, would be going,

why are we going into exile? It's them that's the problem.

I'm not a prophet. I'm not a priest. I'm not a king.

I'm not doing any of the things. I'm simply doing what they're asking me to

do. And now you're saying, I'm going to have to get ripped out of my homeland and taken to Babylon.

It sounds like it's their fault. At the end of Micah 1, what does he say?

That even the kids are going to be taken away into exile. What do the kids do?

The truth is that that is just a byproduct of living on this side of eternity.

That there's evil in the world. We talked about this two weeks ago.

There is evil in the world.

And every single one of us will come in contact with that evil to varying degrees.

Ultimately, every single one of us will deal with death, destruction, heartache, betrayal.

Every single one of us will deal with sins that happen outside of us that we

have to experience and to us that we have to internalize.

But ultimately, the greatest sins in our lives are not those outside of us,

but those inside of us, those that will cost us our relationship with the Lord.

That's why they miss the King. That's why they miss him.

You see this in the New Testament in Matthew, Matthew 2, 3 through 6,

when Herod the king heard this, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him.

So Herod hears about the birth of Jesus. He hears that this new king of the

Jews is there and Herod's going, there can't be two kings and I'm the king.

So who's the new king? And he's troubled. And so he assembles who?

He assembles all the chief priests and scribes of the people.

And he inquires of them where the Christ, the savior was to be born,

right here it's not dumb he hears that there's a

new king that's a problem so he gathers up the people that would know

the scribes and pharisees who know the old testament he asked them

where is this guy to be born because what

he wants to do and what he will ultimately do is go try and kill this baby because

he doesn't want any rivals verse 5 they told him in bethlehem of judea for so

it is written to the prophet and then he quotes micah 5 2 and you o bethlehem

in the land of judah are by no means least among the rulers of Judah.

For from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.

Know the right answer. They know where he's supposed to come from. Why do they miss it?

Why do the Israelites miss it? Why do thousands, millions of people sit in churches

every Sunday and miss it?

Because they think the biggest issue is outside of themselves.

They love themselves. They take pride in themselves and they cannot admit that,

yeah, I need Jesus more than anyone else needs Jesus.

I need Jesus more than the abuser needs Jesus. I need Jesus at least as much

as every corrupt politician, every corrupt pastor, every corrupt person in my

life, everyone who's ever caused me pain.

Yes, I am the victim of those things, but I need Jesus just as much as they do.

And to admit that would mean I have to admit I'm the problem.

I'm the issue. And the chief scribes and Pharisees, even though they know the

right answer, will never admit that. They will never admit he's coming to save us from our own sin.

No, they're saying, yeah, this Christ is going to come to save us from you, Herod.

He's coming to save us from the Romans. He's coming to save us from oppression

and rule and authority in our life.

He wouldn't come to save us. We didn't do anything wrong.

What did we do? What sins did I commit?

Which in the irony of it, who is it that ends up worshiping Jesus?

A bunch of Gentile magi. That's who worships Jesus.

It hasn't changed. When you read your Bible,

yes, the circumstances change and the people change, but the heart,

the evil heart that is within every single person that desires wickedness and

that loves itself has never changed.

The Israelites thought that Egypt was the problem.

What does God do? He delivers them from Egypt. And what do they do? Rebel.

He brings them to Mount Zion. He gives them his perfect law.

And you think at that point, even though they make the golden calf and he forgives

them and he says, we will move forward with this relationship.

You think, OK, now they're going to get it. Now they realize what the problem

is. And they don't. They don't trust the Lord.

Fast forward. What does God do? He he's with them in the wilderness.

Yes, he kills off a generation, but he gives them manna from heaven.

He delivers them ultimately into the promised land through his servant.

And now you're thinking, OK, now they get it. Now they've got the promised land.

Now they've been delivered.

Now they're going to understand that they're in covenant with God.

If they'll just love and obey him, they'll get it. And what do they do?

Disobey him. Run from him. Worship other gods.

Fast forward to Micah. What's their problem? Now the problem is Babylon and Assyria.

If we could just get rid of Babylon and Assyria, if we could just get rid of

these evil kings and leaders, then God, then we'll figure it out.

Then we'll know for sure that you are the God and we're going to worship you.

And what do they do? They repent for 50 years and then they go right back to where they were.

And you get to the New Testament, Jesus is on the scene and what happens?

Thank God Jesus is here to get rid of these Romans.

We give them a hard time and rightfully so, but look at your own life.

What do you think today? If I were to ask, hey, what do you need more than anything

this morning? What do you need more than anything?

Maybe a better question is look at your life in the last month.

What have you lived like you needed the most?

Have you lived like you needed money the most? Have you lived like you needed

time the most? Have you lived like you needed pleasure the most?

Those are the things that the most, that's the most missing thing in my life.

If I could just get more time, more pleasure, more money, more stuff,

if I could just find someone to love me, if I could just find someone to stop

being mean, if I could just find someone to believe in me, then everything would change.

Or have you lived your life like I need Jesus more than anything else in my life.

I need Christ to forgive me every single day.

I need God's new mercies every single day. If I knew, if I could wake up,

if I could know that Jesus is Lord, that he is a king, that he rules and reigns

over my life, that's what I need more than anything else.

Or do we like the Israelites and like the first century Jews go,

Jesus, I just need you to take care of my problems.

I've got all these problems and these people that are issues.

If you could just handle that.

I think a good litmus test is just check your obedience.

We hate that. I hate that, but check your obedience. What does John say?

What does Jesus say? If you love me, what? Keep my commandments.

What commandments are you breaking habitually? Now, again, you're not going to be perfect.

I'm not telling you to go home with a microscope and write down all the sins

you committed this week.

I don't want you to be depressed all week, but I do want you to just look at

the, we'll call it the arc of your life and say, are there areas of your life

where you know you're disobedient in a very consistent manner.

And instead of dealing with that sin and coming to Christ and confessing your

sin and receiving forgiveness, you go, God, I'm just tired and I can't help it.

God, those people I work with, you don't understand. They're just so awful and

I can't help but talk to them that way. Can't help it.

God, I'm just too busy to do the things that you've called me to do.

God, you understand, you get it.

I'm just too busy to obey that right now, but I promise you,

when you give me more free time, I'll do it.

That's how people in the Bible think because they're sinners.

That's how you and me tend to think naturally because we're sinners.

And we read things like Micah 5, and we read things like Jesus is coming to the world.

He's this king. He's awesome. And we look at him, and instead of going,

thank God we have someone to pay for our sins, to rule on a throne of righteousness

and justice, we go, can you fix it? Can you fix it?

Is he will fix it one day. He will make all things right. He will remove every injustice.

Everything that's ever been wrong to you will be made right.

How he's going to do that, I don't know.

I don't know how he's going to make your absentee parents or your abusive spouse

or your abusive boss or the people that have ruined.

I don't know how he's going to make that all right, but I know he will. He says he will.

But as you sit here this morning, they're not your biggest problem.

Romans 6.23, a verse that you've all probably learned in Sunday school.

It's the first verse that we learned in Awana is after, you know what? John 3.16.

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

You can read it this way. I think it's correct. For the wages of sin is eternal

death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ, our Lord, our King.

He's the King. And unlike the kings in Israel, he is not bound by time.

If Hezekiah could have reigned for another hundred years, the people of Judah

would have been in better shape.

If the few good kings they had would have reigned for 200 or 300 years,

they would have been in better shape for longer.

The problem with every good king is they die.

The problem with every good thing in your life is it's not permanent.

Every good season, every good moment, every bonus check, everything in your life is temporary.

It says Jesus is not. He is from of old. He is eternal.

Even more so than that, everything in your life that you think is good isn't

really that good. It's all tainted.

It's all tainted, which is why every time you try and supplant Jesus in your

life with something from this world, some man-made thing, it never lasts. It never works.

So he is the king that is promised in Micah 5.

He is the eternal king. He is the perfect king.

He will rule in justice and righteousness. He is the King, but on this side of heaven.

Done what he will do, but you can trust that king second and last.

He is the shepherd. He is the king and he is the shepherd.

Verses three through six says, therefore, he shall give them up until the time

which he was in labor has given birth and the rest of his property shall return to the people of Israel.

Listen, and he shall stand and shepherd his flock and the strength of the Lord,

in the majesty of the name of the Lord, his God, and they shall dwell secure for he,

sorry, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth and he shall be their peace.

As we close, if you want to turn to John chapter 10, that's kind of where we're going to end up.

John 10 · chapter mention

Isaiah makes it clear. And remember, Isaiah is prophesying at the same time Micah is.

Famously says, all we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his one way.

This is how the Bible pictures his people. This is how the Bible pictures the

people of God before they come to know who their king is.

But the king does not just come to rule and reign. The king is a shepherd.

This is what David models.

This is why there's so many comparisons between Christ and David. He is the shepherd king.

He's not just come to sit on a throne of righteousness and justice and tell

you how righteous and justice like you should be or how righteousness and justice should work.

He comes to shepherd his people to be righteous, shepherd his people to be the

things that he's called them to be. Listen to John 10.

This is John, starting in John 10, 22. He says, at the time,

the feast of dedication took place at Jerusalem.

So all the Jews are in Jerusalem. It was winter.

Jesus was walking in the temple in the colonnade of Solomon.

The Jews gathered around him and said to him, how long will you keep us in suspense?

If you're the Christ, tell us plainly, man, if that's not us.

How many games do you play with Jesus going, Jesus, I promise just one more

thing. And I will follow you. I will believe in you. I will do whatever you ask me to do.

Just one more thing. Just give me one more thing. Just give me one more thing.

Jesus answered them, I told you, and you do not believe.

The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me, but you do not believe.

Yeah, pause, pause.

So he's done everything that he can do to show him or show these people that he is the Christ.

Now, that doesn't mean that they would believe, even if they knew he was the

Christ, that he's going to do what he says he's going to do.

That means that they are saying, Jesus, are you going to deliver us from the Romans?

Are you going to fix our oppressors? Are you going to take all this away from us?

Listen, this is Jesus speaking. It's in red. Do you believe in that kind of thing?

Verse 26, but you do not believe. Why? Because you are not among my sheep.

You are not among my sheep. Jesus doesn't say, well, you don't believe because you're just dumb.

You don't believe because you just haven't figured it out. You don't believe

because you didn't go to church when you were younger. You don't believe because X, Y, or Z.

He says, you don't believe because you are not among my sheep.

Now, why is that important? Because in Micah, he makes this case. He will be a shepherd.

He will be a shepherd.

Shepherds, listen to me, Shepherds do not go and find random sheep to be a part

of their fold Shepherds are given sheep to shepherd,

Shepherds are given sheep to shepherd And what we're saying here is Jesus is the perfect shepherd.

My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me.

I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. Why?

My father who has given them to me is greater than all. So here's the picture.

Here's the picture. Jesus is a shepherd.

God has given him his sheep and he won't lose any of his sheep that are given to him.

Jesus doesn't go walking around in the mountains looking for sheep. God gives him sheep.

And if you're reading this and you were an audience of Micah's.

The solace you take is we've had terrible kings, terrible rulers,

terrible judges, terrible prophets.

They have done nothing but cause

us harm. They have done nothing but cause us to be exiles in Babylon.

But God is going to provide for us, not only a king, but a king who is a shepherd.

Then he will give them, God will give them to this king and he will take care of us.

He'll be a good king. What he asks us to do will be because he loves us. He will never let us go.

No one, it says in John 10, will snatch us from their hands.

Again, the Romans can't, the Babylonians can't, the Assyrians can't, the Egyptians can't.

Your parents, if they're great, great. But if they're not, they can't do anything

to keep you away from God's hand.

The person who's caused you the most pain in your life, The person,

whoever that is, who has done more to harm you than anyone else that you know, the Bible says,

can do nothing to you to snatch you away from God's hand because you are in

the shepherd's care and the shepherd loses none of his sheep.

None of his sheep.

Jesus says to these rulers, the reason you don't believe is because you're not my sheep.

That's why you don't believe. because my sheep know me and they hear my voice.

More than that, I know them and they follow me.

He says, my father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is

able to snatch them out of the father's hand.

This is the picture of the Micah five king and shepherd.

This is the picture of the Psalm 97 Jesus who gathers his sheep together and

says, if a nation comes up against my people, like fire,

I will rain down upon them and their adversaries will be like dust.

A mountain that gets in the way between me and my people, then it'll become

like wax and I will melt it.

You want that kind of king. You want that kind of shepherd. You do not want the weak.

Lowly, let anyone do what they want to do shepherd. You don't want that.

And so many people have bought into the lie that Jesus just wants to be their friend. No, he does not.

He doesn't want to be just your friend. He wants to be and will be your king.

He will rule over us, his throne on a foundation of righteousness and justice,

and we will love every second of it.

And what God invites us into as Jesus' sheep is to say, even before he accomplishes

everything he says he will accomplish, will you come under that rule?

Will you come under that reign now?

Will you stop making excuses?

I'm the king of making excuses, believe me. One of the reasons I love being

busy is because I can always have an excuse not to do something.

I just don't have time. I'm just tired. I don't know. Listen,

God has called you to do something.

When God gives us these things, he doesn't give us these things so we can go

home and sleep and go, well, you know, everything's going to be okay for me,

so I don't have to worry about anything. No.

These people are going to be called in Micah to live in exile in Babylon.

And they're going to be called to live holy and blameless lives.

They're going to be called to live as exiles among the people.

We studied this morning in Peter.

We are to be the same. We're exiles on this earth, but we're called to live

a certain way because we have a king that is not of this world.

So what's the end game? Revelation 7, 17, for the lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd.

This is the end of days. This is when Christ has come back. This is the making

of the new heavens and the new earth.

The lamb will be their shepherd and he will guide them to springs of living water.

And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Listen, that's going to be an incredible day.

And there's a lot of hope that I hope you take away from reading something like

that. But that day is just not today.

And so many Christians sit around and bemoan the world we live in and everything's

so bad and everything's so sad. And if we could just get the government on our

team, we could just get the city to do something.

If the other people in my life could just figure it out. If everything would

go my way, then man, everything would be great. It's never going to.

I say that just as much for me as for you and really just to Trinity Bible Church.

Listen, it's never going to be perfect.

We're never going to get to a place where everything goes our way and everything's just hunky-dory.

There will be a day when that will happen, and we have hope for that.

But for now, we have a king. He is eternal. He is perfect.

That king is also our shepherd. He has gathered you into his fold.

And the hope that you and I have is that he has paid for our sins and that nothing

the world or Satan himself would try to do will snatch you away from his hands.

Now go and live likewise. Live like that.

Obey, preach, evangelize, disciple, make disciples.

Do what Jesus has called you to do because he is your king and your shepherd.

You can have confident hope that no matter what happens to you,

you will be with God forever, forever because of who Jesus is.

In the same way that the Israelites who are going to be taken into Babylon can

say, you may be our captors and you may have taken our king and killed his sons

and gouged out his eyes. And you may have done all those things, but guess what?

You're not our king. You're not our shepherd. God is.

No matter what has happened, God is your king and shepherd. You have hope.

Go and live likewise. Let's pray.

Father, thank you again, as always, for this morning. Thank you for Trinity Bible Church.

God, we're praying this morning that we would take seriously that you are our king and our shepherd.

When we read things like we did at the beginning in Psalm 97,

that the Lord is going to make his enemies into dust and mountains into wax,

that he's going to rule from a throne of righteousness and judgment.

God, that we would take solace in that.

That we would take seriously and think hard on the fact that, yes, Jesus was humble.

Yes, he was meek and lowly. And yes, he was of humble birth.

And yes, all of those things are true, but that's not all he was. That's not all he is.

Christ, that you would be made great in our hearts and in our minds as we live

as exiles and sojourners here, that we would live in light of what you've accomplished

for us and what you will accomplish for us.

And we would be confident Christians.

Our lives in a way that we do not care what someone might say or do about us

because they're not our king and they're not our shepherd.

That we don't take our cues from what someone may want from us,

that someone may have for us, what the world may think of us.

God, we take our cues from the one who sits on the throne and we live in light

of that. We raise kids in light of that.

We disciple in light of that. We are friends with people in light of that.

God, we pray for Trinity Bible Church You'd give us wisdom to be a church,

That is a church in light of those truths That we don't look to the men and

women around us We don't look to the world around us To define what it is we

do What it is we preach How it is we act,

God, that we have a king of this church We have a ruler over this body,

We have a high priest His name is Jesus that we would come in your name and

worship you, praise you and live for you. Never pray. Amen.