"Our Eternal Shepherd" Micah 5:1-6 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Micah 5, verse 1.

Micah 5:1

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.

But you, O Bethlehem of Apaphrah, you who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth from 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, 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 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.

This is the word of the Lord.

I want to begin tonight by telling you a bit of a story about Phillips Brooks.

He was a uh born in Boston in 1840, raised Anglican, graduated towards the top of his class from Harvard with a degree in Latin, and then went to teach at a very prestigious private school in Boston where he was teaching Latin to what we would call high school students today.

He was 20 years old, barely much older than they were when he graduated from Harvard, and he didn't last a full year teaching.

His students didn't listen to him.

He did not take teaching, he didn't have a teaching credential, you could put it that way.

And uh the high school students were less than impressed with his Latin degree from Harvard, and he was fired for failure to maintain control of his class.

Um what high school students uh teacher among us doesn't have sympathy for him right now?

He uh wrote, well, fell into despair then, wrote a letter to his uh family telling them, I don't know what will become of my life, I don't care what happens to me anymore.

Oh, I wish I was fifteen again.

I just laugh when I read that.

Uh oh, to be fifteen again, he writes.

He went on to say fifteen is when he had hope in front of him, fifteen is when he had a good future in front of him, and now at age twenty, it's all gone.

So Phillips Brooke is having a midlife crisis at age twenty.

Uh it was the 1850s, so I don't think he went and bought a Corvette or anything.

But instead, he moved to Virginia and uh found odd jobs in Virginia and eventually decided since nothing else was working, he would try his luck in the ministry.

And he enrolled in the Virginia Theological Seminary, which is still to this day, just up off of 395 and seminary.

Well, he was in seminary, he acquired a job filling the pulpit at a local Episcopal Church, All Saints Episcopal Church, which also is still there today.

It's on Telegraph and uh Franconia over towards Alexandria, that area over there.

Um it's a very beautiful, beautiful building, still there.

He preached his way through seminary, they funded his education uh that way.

He graduated from seminary, went back up to Philadelphia first, and then ultimately Boston, where he settled.

This is the era of the Civil War.

And the Episcopal Church was determined not to make slavery a divisive issue.

They had seen what happened to the Baptist denomination when the Baptists made slavery a moral issue, it split the denomination in half, which is why we have the Southern Baptists today and the Northern Baptists, which then fractured for a million other reasons.

The Methodists split in half over this issue.

Once they declared slavery to be a moral issue, they split in half.

And so the Episcopal Church, uh, which is generally, you know, if you know anything about the Episcopal nature of the Anglican Church, it's wide-armed, right?

It's they don't want to split over anything in the Anglican Church.

Even the name of his church was All Saints Church.

I mean, they won't even pick a saint.

That's the Episcopal Church.

And so they were determined not to make slavery a divisive issue.

Uh Phillips was not on board with that approach.

He indeed made slavery a divisive issue and brought the Episcopal Church in Boston to the point of divide.

Philadelphia first, where he started preaching in slavery and ended up, you know, losing his church in Philadelphia, where he went out to Boston, and he made it a constant theme in his preaching to be opposed to slavery.

He was also opposed to war.

He preached against slavery and he preached against war.

Uh both.

He thought both were wrong and horrible crimes against the world.

And the death of Abraham Lincoln pushed him over the edge.

Um, he preached a very long sermon at his church when Lincoln was assassinated.

He viewed Lincoln as a hero and uh esteemed him and thought he was, you know, a gift of God's common grace to hold back God's judgment that he thought our country deserved because of slavery.

Well, Lincoln's funeral, you know, they put Lincoln's body on a train and went around the United States.

I think there were 47 different funerals for Lincoln.

But when he went to Boston, the Anglican Church in Boston, which had been so angry with Phillips Brooke for so long for preaching against slavery, uh, had a change of heart once the war was over and once Lincoln was assassinated, and had him, this young man now in his late 20s, preach Lincoln's funeral message in Boston.

He preached this quote.

I mean, it was a very long message.

He preached almost a two-hour funeral message.

Try that today.

That'll be more than one funeral.

But he said, I hope you all understand there's an essential connection between Mr.

Lincoln's character and his violent and bloody death.

It is no accident, no arbitrary decree of providence.

He lived as he did, and he died as he did because he was what he was.

The more we see of the events, the less we come to believe in any fate or destiny except the destiny of character.

It is our duty then to see what there was in the character of our great president that created the history of his life and produced the catastrophe of his cruel death.

Solemnly in the sight of God, I charge, those guilty with this murder are those that were in favor of slavery.

Brooks began thundering.

I dare not stand here in his sight, speaking of God, and before him or you speak doubtful and double meaning words of vague repentance.

I will not say our country needs some kind of vague repentance against vague sins, as if we all had killed our president.

We as a country have sins enough, but we have not done this sin, save as by weak concessions and timid compromises, we have let the spirit slave of slavery grow strong and ripe for such a deed.

He made it clear that those responsible for Lincoln's death were not all Americans, just those that thought that slavery was worthy of compromise for the sake of unity.

Well, I mean, who's he talking about?

He's talking about the Anglican Church.

He's talking about Americans that said, Slavery's no big deal, and he said, You're responsible for Lincoln's murder.

Um this brought him some notoriety.

He became somewhat of a well-known pastor after this.

His denomination also gave him a year-long sabbatical.

His own congregation told him it was because he was emotionally exhausted.

Um who knows the truth behind that?

He spent his sabbatical in Israel, uh, where he again toyed with depression.

He was lifelong single, by the way.

Again, he toyed with depression in Israel.

His first Christmas in Israel, he went up in the hills that overlooked Bethlehem.

And that is where he wrote, this is why you may know his name.

That is where he wrote the hymn, O Little Town of Bethlehem.

And he wrote it because, and I didn't really, you know, I used to I used to not appreciate this hymn.

Uh you'll notice it's not in our hymnal.

Uh we don't have it in our hymnal.

I was asked about it, and I was like, uh, yeah.

Steve Hawley and I love to argue about this hymn because it's his favorite Christmas song, and I roll my eyes at it.

And then I read it more carefully and read more about the words behind it, and he's, you know, you I just picture him sitting on the hills overlooking Bethlehem, which still to this day you can do this.

Bethlehem is, I said, very isolated.

It's up there on the hills, very isolated.

You can look down onto Bethlehem, you can look backwards over, you know, you can see, you can see Jordan from up there, and then you can see the city of Jerusalem, or the only lights you can really see from up there.

And the hymn brings you through this progression of the peacefulness of Bethlehem.

You know, this is a little town of Bethlehem, how how still we see thee lie.

Um, and he begins contrasting the quietness of the world with the interaction of God in the human heart.

You know, he moves from Bethlehem up to heaven, Christ is born of Mary and gathered all above while mortals sleep, the angels keep their watch of wondering love.

And then he moves back to earth.

Only when he goes back to earth, he doesn't go back to Bethlehem, he doesn't go back to Boston, he goes right into the human heart.

How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given.

God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven.

No ear can hear his coming, but in this world of sin, meek souls will receive him still.

The dear Christ enters in.

And by the way, he came back from his sabbatical, not knowing what to preach, he decided he would preach for his first sermon back, his own hymn that he wrote.

He gave it to his organist uh at church on Saturday evening and asked him to prepare music for it for the next morning's service.

The organist wrote half of the song that evening, woke up in the middle of the night, finished it off, played it the next morning, and that's the music that remains with that song to this very day.

When we sing it at church, it's the music that the organist wrote overnight.

David Jones and I were talking, and I told him, I'm gonna do that some Sunday.

I'm gonna show up, I'm gonna show up on Saturday night, give you a song, and say, Can we do this tomorrow morning?

And he said, Challenge accepted.

David's wife said, Please not on Saturday night.

Well, Bethlehem, of course, features in that hymn because of its contrast uh to the tumultuous nature of this world.

This world is under siege, and yet Bethlehem, the land of shepherds, is quiet, it is tranquil.

We know that the night that Jesus was born, it would have been packed with people, and many there for the census.

We know there would have been noise and turmoil on the streets.

It was anything but a silent night, of course.

And yet Bethlehem is a quiet place.

If you get up above the noise, and this is a world without electricity, you get up above the noise and the hustle and bustle, you get to a place that is quiet, it is reserved, that looks over Jerusalem from there.

This sets the stage for the prophecy in Micah chapter 5, that the Savior will be born in Bethlehem.

Micah 5 · chapter mention

So I want to look at this prophecy for us tonight, and then we'll move to the Lord's table afterwards.

A couple observations about this prophecy.

It begins with this declaration that sinful kings will fall.

Sinful kings will fall.

Muster your troops, O daughter of troops.

Siege is laid against us.

This is a prophecy of destruction for Jerusalem.

Assyria had just been taken into captivity.

This uh Micah is writing before Jeremiah.

Israel has just recently gone into captivity with the Assyrians.

Judah and Benjamin are still in the land.

Jerusalem still stands.

King Hezekiah will be king in Jerusalem, still in the future.

Ahaz likely king now.

Hezekiah coming in the future.

There are golden days ahead still of Judah's future.

But before those golden days, Israel will also be put under siege.

You remember that Sennacherib, the one who led Israel into captivity, came back for Judah.

Judah broke its treaty with the Assyrians once they took Israel into captivity and decided to align with the Egyptians.

So Sennacherib came back to invade Jerusalem and take the people in Jerusalem captive.

This is where the angel of the Lord appeared and put the army to flight.

Hundred thousand plus of them were killed.

It was a staggering scene as the angel of death came upon the Assyrians.

That's in the future of Micah.

And so when Micah is prophesying this, he's telling Judah, you're going to have to muster your troops.

But you know the way the story goes.

Judah is not able to fight against Assyria.

Judah can't fight against Babylon.

Judah will ultimately go into captivity by the Babylonians who will beat the Assyrians.

Judah will be taken captive.

And so it's a little bit of an ironic command here: muster your troops, O daughter of troops, because you're going to be attacked.

Again, it's a prophecy.

A hundred years in the future, you will be attacked.

It's past tense to us, but it was future to Micah.

And what will they be able to do to defend themselves?

They can't do anything.

So who will their army be?

Who can defend themselves against captivity?

It will not be their own human forces.

It will be God who defends them.

God is their only hope and their refuge.

And he does.

When Sennacherib attacks, God does defend them and vindicate them.

Ultimately, they will still go into exile, but God is let them know that he will be the one who rescues them.

Siege is laid against us.

Remember, Sennacherib built siege works against Jerusalem, put them under siege, and yet God rescued them.

Eventually, the king of Judah would go into captivity.

That's the second part of verse 1.

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

Of course, Israel's kings were taken into captivity, all of them.

I think this here is going to be a reference to King Zedekiah, who is led off into captivity with the hook in his nose.

He's struck in his face, he's led off into Babylon.

This is how the book of 2 Kings ends.

Jeremiah references it as well.

Israel will lose their kings to the Assyrians, Judah will lose its king to the Babylonians, their king is struck in the cheek.

But this really is the pattern that all earthly kings follow.

All earthly kings will fall.

And that's because this world is filled with sin.

And that's the lesson here in the first verse.

This is a world where earthly kings cannot stand.

Earthly kings do not have the righteousness of God.

Earthly kings do fail.

Even godly King Hezekiah failed and was punished by the Lord.

Earthly kings fail.

When you put your trust in horses, the strength of horses fail, which is their lesson to Israel about trusting in the Egyptian horses.

The chariots will fail.

If you put your trust in human resources, human resources will fail.

There is no savior that comes from a human king.

The human line of kings only produces sinners.

It only produces failures and disappointments.

That's the first lesson here.

And it's interesting that the prophecy about the birth of the Savior comes, this isn't coincidental.

I mean, the Micah didn't write random verses and pull them out of a hat.

So these are structured in a specific way where Micah is letting Israel and Judah both know that your kings fail.

Your righteous king, the king who's in the line of David, that you're putting your hope in, he's going to get struck in his cheek and led off to captivity.

It doesn't matter how good the human king is, he will fail.

He will not be the savior.

And this is setting you up for the contrast with what comes in verse 2.

Verse 2 moves from the sinful kings failing or falling to the Savior King being born.

And that's what you see in verse 2.

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

Bethlehem is not even its own tribe.

You know, Bethlehem is a little subset.

It's a suburb of Jerusalem.

We talk a lot about this on Sunday mornings as we've been going through Matthew 2.

Bethlehem is a suburb of Jerusalem.

It's, you know, today it's, you know, maybe 20,000 people living there.

I don't know how many, but not more than that.

It's surrounded on three sides by a you know 25-foot concrete wall that is walled in.

It's a very clearly demarcated area.

It is isolated and so close to Jerusalem.

It is small.

Even in the life of Christ, they didn't have the concrete walls, which are there now to block rocket attacks from coming into Jerusalem.

That's why the wall is there.

There were no walls back under Jesus' lifetime.

There are no walls there under David's lifetime.

David was from Bethlehem.

There were no walls there in Ruth's lifetime.

Ruth was from Bethlehem.

Or Naomi was from Bethlehem.

Ruth immigrated when she came to Israel and immigrated to Bethlehem.

This is where their families were from.

It was a quiet place where Boaz was the wealthy landowner who had the fields that went up and down the gullies there where sheep would be, and the fields are on this very hilly area.

And Boaz owned much of it, it appears.

He had so much that he was able to feed Ruth and care for Ruth and eventually bring her into the family and become, really start the line that would come to David, and then of course ultimately come to Jesus Christ.

That's Bethlehem.

It is the land of shepherds.

It's the quiet, isolated place.

It's too little, verse 2 says, to be among the clans of Judah.

You know, the clans of Judah are basically Judah and Benjamin or the tribes there.

Bethlehem doesn't even bear mentioning except, you wouldn't know about Bethlehem except its connection to Ruth, and then its connection to David, and ultimately its connection to Christ, which comes in this very passage, the middle of verse 2.

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

This is a poetic way, in Hebrew, it's poetic, of demonstrating that the ruler of Israel, the real king, will come forth from Bethlehem.

This phrase, come forth, it's a, you know, it's an idiom for being born.

It's where you come into the world.

You might even say in a birth announcement today that on such and such a date, baby so-and-so came into the world, would be the English idiom for it.

Hebrew has the same kind of idiom, and it's used here that the king will be born into, will come forth as king into Israel.

He is the one who will be the ruler.

You know, people are not born kings, generally speaking.

I mean, there might be some random exception in the British Empire at some point, and like maybe the queen was pregnant and the king died or something, and the son is born the king.

Who knows?

England's been around for so long, I'm sure everything has happened there, but not one that I know of.

People aren't born kings.

Well, this one is dedicated by the prophet to be king nearly a thousand years before he is born.

Forget being king at birth.

He is named to be the king long before he is born.

This person will be the king.

He's described as a ruler here.

He will be the one who rules over Israel.

He will defend his people.

They in the middle of verse 4, they will dwell secure when he is the king.

He will give them security, he will bring them peace, chapter of chapter 5, verse 5 says, He shall be their peace.

This is a king who launches a peaceful reign, a reign of security among his people, and he does that because he's marked here as the Messiah.

He's sent forth.

Messiah means sent.

He's sent from God to Bethlehem.

This is why the Jews in John chapter 7 knew that the Savior would be born in Bethlehem.

John 7 · chapter mention

Remember, they said Jesus can't be the Savior because he's from Nazareth.

This is John 7, verse 42, I believe.

John 7:42

Don't we know the Savior will be born in Bethlehem?

In fact, that's exactly what the Pharisees say, and the wise, or when the wise men ask where the one is supposed to be who is born king of the Jews, the Pharisees answer, quoting this verse.

He is born in Bethlehem.

That's where you will find him.

Now God had the Savior be born in Bethlehem, because it's demonstrating his continuity with David.

This is why we read earlier the exchange in Matthew 22, where Jesus asks the Pharisees a question.

They had questions for him, and Jesus says, Riddle me this, Pharisees.

How can the Savior be David's son if he's also David's Lord?

The Pharisees did not have a grid for the deity of the Savior.

They definitely understood that the Savior would be David's descendant, but they did not have an understanding of how he could come before David.

They were thwarted by this question.

But this prophecy lays the groundwork for it.

The Savior will come from God, and he will come into Bethlehem.

He will be in the line of David.

So that when he is reigning over Israel, he is fulfilling all of the promises to Israel.

Do you understand?

God has promised Israel that they would dwell in their land in security.

He gave them that promise.

He tells them in Ezekiel that the mountains of Israel will no longer harbor their enemies.

The grapes in Israel will no longer feed their enemies.

That parents will be able to raise their children in Israel in peace.

That is a promise, and that that promise is yet to be fulfilled.

There are those that claim that it was fulfilled when Joshua led the Israelites into the promised land because they got a hold of their land and they vanquished their enemies, but that's not entirely true, is it?

It's because the book of Ezekiel was written long after Joshua.

Micah was written long after Joshua.

These promises are still future.

They're still looking for a day when Israel will dwell securely in peace.

And by the way, I've mentioned this many times, I'm a big proponent of political alliances with Israel because Israel stands for democracy and freedom in so many ways.

I think it's in our country's best interest to have political alliances with Israel and to advocate freedom and stability in the Middle East.

However, that is very different than saying that our alliances and treaties with Israel are ushering in God's program or God's plan in the Middle East.

God's program for peace in the Middle East will come when this king who is born in Bethlehem appears in Israel for his second coming and overthrows the nations and rules the world from Israel.

That is not going to be something that's subject to a political alliance or a vote by our Congress anyway.

I mean, this is Jesus' second coming.

He'll put his foot on the Mount of Olives, he'll split it in two, and he will reign over the nations from Israel.

He is a real person.

He was really born to Mary, who had the virgin birth.

He really grew up in Nazareth.

He really made his dwelling among us.

He walked in the streets of Jerusalem.

He taught in the temple in Jerusalem.

He was betrayed.

By the Jews and executed.

That all happened in Jerusalem in Bethlehem.

That's where this went down.

And nevertheless, he will come back to the earth again.

It says in verse 3, He shall give them up until the time when she who is in labor has given birth.

It's a kind of a confusing way of saying it, but it's a prophecy here of really the church age.

It's a prophecy that the Savior will be cut off from Israel and He will give them up.

He will give them over to their own devices until the time when it is given birth, the birth pangs.

Jesus picks up in this image in the describing the tribulation as birth pangs that will increase and increase and increase until finally the second coming happens.

In many ways, Israel, to borrow Paul's language in the book of Romans, has been broken off because they rejected the Savior.

They have been broken off from God's covenant plans and promises for the time being.

That doesn't mean they are permanently broken off, because when God returns, he will re-establish his kingdom in Israel.

He will reign over the world from Israel, and it will be a real fulfillment of all of the promises given to Israel because Jesus is from the line of David.

The Davidic covenant will be fulfilled when he establishes his kingdom in Israel.

But as Micah looks forward to this, there's even little shades here of two comings of, you know, when you look at the Old Testament, it's very hard to see what prophecies are about the first coming and what are about the second coming.

It's almost like you have to get to Christ and see Christ differentiate between the two of them to get a full picture of it.

But here, even in Micah, you get a little image of the two comings, don't you?

That he's going to be born in Bethlehem.

And then in verse 3, he's going to give them up until a different time, when there's a different birth.

Until there's a second coming, a second birth, you could say it that way.

Not that Jesus will be born again to another woman.

He'll descend from the clouds as we saw him leave before, but he will arrive again at a second time.

And at that point, verse 3 says, the rest of his brothers will return to the people of Israel.

The Israelites will have rest then.

They don't have it now, and they will not have it until that happens.

This is a powerful evidence that Jesus is the Savior, that he was born in Bethlehem, just as the prophecy said.

So first, sinful kings will fall, sinful kings will be struck on the cheek, they will be led away, they will fail their people.

Secondly, the Savior King will be born.

This is future for Micah, past for us.

He will be born, and he will be cut off from his people, and he will come to earth again.

That's only part of this, though, a second or third component of this prophecy.

The shepherd king is also eternal.

You see this in the second part of verse 2.

Although his coming forth is in Bethlehem, the second part of verse 2 says his coming forth is from of old, from ancient days.

That phrase ancient days, it's another idiom for eternity past.

We often, well, in English, we use the idiom heaven for eternity future, like what happens when you go to heaven?

And we just mean like after your body dies, your soul is with the Lord, and then there's no end of time.

It just goes on and on and on forever.

The Jews had that same kind of idiom, but pointing backwards in eternity past, the ancient of days, going all the way back from before there was time.

From before there was time.

Our culture has been so warped by kind of a big bang theory and evolution that it's difficult for us to even have a conception of what the Hebrews understood.

There is an eternity that goes backwards.

There's not a starting point of everything.

There's a starting point of everything in creation, but that's not everything.

God exists before creation.

And this is the language that speaks of that, the ancient of days, that Jesus existed.

The Savior King, the shepherd king existed before creation.

Forget before Bethlehem, go way before Bethlehem.

He existed before Adam existed.

He existed before Bethlehem was a place.

He predates all of this.

He predates all of this.

This is a very clear indication of what theologians often describe as the doctrine of eternal generation.

Eternal generation.

That is just a fancy way of saying that Jesus has always been the Son of God.

He has always come from the Father.

And even this language of this birth language, as you see in verse 2, that you're coming forth, he will be born in Bethlehem, it says.

This is language that obviously speaks of a human birth.

You will be born in Bethlehem.

There will be parents, there will be a mother, it's a virgin birth, of course, but Joseph will be there.

There will be an actual childbirth with actual labor.

The baby will come into this world in Bethlehem.

That same language speaks of Jesus, but in eternity past.

Not that he was ever a born son in eternity past, because remember, if the father, if there was ever a time where the father didn't have a son, then the father wouldn't be the father.

And so the father is our eternal father, and so he's always had his son, and he has always given his son life.

As the father has life in and of himself, he has given the son to have life in and of himself as well.

The son's life comes from the father.

This is the doctrine of eternal generation.

The language of the Bible is the doctrine of the word we use is begotten.

You know, it's in the most famous Bible verse ever.

John 3 16.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.

That's what the word begotten means, that the Father has given him life.

The Gospel of John begins this way.

John 1, verse 14.

John 1:14

The word became flesh and dwelt among us.

We have seen his glory, glory of the only begotten Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John 1, verse 18.

John 1:18

No one has seen God at any time.

The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, he has explains him.

The only begotten God is this, of course, a reference to Jesus Christ, who is in the bosom of the Father.

Bosom is the, you know, the chest.

It's the image of a meal where you might relax or recline at a meal, especially in the Jewish world, and you would recline on the person's chest that you were sitting next to.

This makes seating arrangements so important in the Israelite worlds.

Because when you're done eating, you're just going to lean back on the chest of the person you're next to.

You lean back on the chest of your friend.

Some of these meals were husbands and wife, of course, but many of these meals described in ancient literature were men.

It were men that were eating, and after the meal, they would lean back on the chest of their friends.

This is what John does with Jesus at the Last Supper.

He leans back on Jesus' chest.

And this is the language that John uses in John 1.18 that Jesus in eternity past is leaned on the Father's chest.

He's the only begotten Son.

He is in the bosom of the Father.

1 John 4, verse 9.

1 John 4:9

This is the love of God was manifested to us, that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, so we might live through him.

This is a common teaching of the New Testament.

And it's one that I think often we overlook because it just can sound weird to us because we're very good at stressing the deity of Jesus to the point where we almost make Jesus the Son of God and God the Father the same.

And they are the same in every way, except the Father has given himself to the Son, and the Son has life because he's from the Father.

But it's that part we often skip, and we just make them kind of two gods.

But we don't have two gods, and you have the Holy Spirit, three gods.

We don't have three gods.

We have one God, one God.

This is the Shema, Hero Israel, the Lord your God, Yahweh your God, is one.

Ichad, he is one.

There's only one God.

But in this one God, there is the Father who has given himself all that God is, he has given to the Son.

This is why the Scripture speaks of the Father as the source and the Son as the image, or the Father as the speaker, and the Son as the Word, or the Father as the fountain, and the Son as the water, the Father as the giver, and the Son as the gift.

I mean, the Scripture is filled with this kind of language that speaks of the eternally begotten nature of the Son.

And here it is again, right in Micah 5.

His coming forth is from old.

This means that the Son has some kind of generation, generative dynamic to him.

He is given life from the Father, his coming forth, but it never has a beginning.

You have to have that last part, or you go into heresy so fast.

The Son never had a beginning.

He has always been the exact image and exact representation of the Father.

All of the Father's attributes are in the Son.

There's no part of the Father that's not in the Son.

They're identical except the Father has given himself in every way to the Son.

You want to know the difference between the Father and the Son?

The Father is the source, the Son is the image.

The Father is the Father, the Son's the Son.

It sounds circular, doesn't it?

What's the difference between the Father and the Son?

One's the Father, the other is the Son.

But that's your answer right there.

And it would make sense then that the Son would come to earth.

He is the image.

He is the Son, He's the eternal Son.

And so it's fitting if one of the three persons of the Trinity is going to be born as a human son, it's fitting that it would be the eternal son without beginning.

And Micah, I don't think Micah understood all the dynamics of the Trinity here, but Micah certainly understood that there is a person in the Godhead that is eternal and yet will be born in earth.

Micah's pointing you right to that.

He'll be born in Bethlehem, but that's not his real birth.

You look at the birth certificate of Jesus, it might say Bethlehem 3 BC.

And then you look a little bit closer, and that was typed over a different date.

I hold it up to the light, and you're like, oh, eternity past.

Father, God our father.

Mother, not listed.

That's what his real birth certificate looks like, which makes sense because his human birth certificate just has a mother listed and no father, so it all evens out.

Well, this is the promise.

And of course, he will be, I call him a shepherd king.

He will be a shepherd king because God is the shepherd.

You understand this from Ezekiel.

God shepherds his people, God cares for his people.

He cares for them.

Yahweh says in the book of Ezekiel that he will be the shepherd of the sheep, that he is sick of the abusive shepherds the Israelites had.

He's going to be done with those shepherds, and God himself will be the shepherd.

And you find this language here in Micah 5, verse 4, don't you?

Micah 5:4

He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of Yahweh.

You're seeing the two natures of God played out here.

Yahweh is the shepherd, he declares.

And here, this person who's born in Bethlehem, but really born in eternity past, he will be the shepherd.

They're both true.

Again, I'm not saying Micah understands all this, but I'm saying Micah has no problem laying it out to you as if they're both true.

Yahweh is the shepherd, and this guy born in Bethlehem is also going to be the shepherd, even though he's born in eternity past.

And he will shepherd with the power of Yahweh or the spirit of Yahweh or the strength of Yahweh in him.

The majesty of the name of Yahweh is his God.

Even that kind of language is so grand.

The majesty of the name of Yahweh, that is his God.

And this is going to go global.

It will spread around the world.

You see this in verse 4.

His name will be made great.

The end of verse 4.

What a powerful verse.

They shall dwell secure.

Israel will one day dwell secure.

For now he shall be great to the ends of the earth.

This was the plan that the news about Yahweh would reach the ends of the earth through how Israel lived their life.

Described in Deuteronomy 4.

Israel lived in sin, they were broken off.

The Savior came.

Israel rejected the Savior.

The church grows up in that gap there.

Between the first coming and the second coming, the church grows up, and the church has a great commission mandate, or we send missionaries around the world taking the gospel to the ends of the earth.

So that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ will be made great at the ends of the earth.

It will not be made great through a majority of people believing in him.

That's not what will make his name great.

But his name will be great in the hearts of those all around the earth.

And why will his name be great in our hearts?

It says in verse 5, because he is our peace.

We have peace with God because of what this shepherd king did for us.

This is a powerful passage because it brings together the two natures of Christ: fully God, fully man, truly God, truly the eternally begotten from the Father, truly with his head on the Father's breast, truly all the way in eternity past the eternal Son of God.

He is the strength of Yahweh Himself.

And yet he's truly man.

Born in Bethlehem to Mary, dependent on his mother for care and for food.

The language in the song that we sang earlier that he is he needs breath and he made breath.

He is God and He is man.

They're both together.

To say it in the language of Matthew 22 that we began our service with, he is David's son and he is David's Lord.

The Pharisees' heads explode at that.

But Jesus brings both of those two together.

He is born in Bethlehem and he is born in eternity.

Psalm 2 says it this way: I will surely tell of the decree of Yahweh.

He said to me, This is a Messianic Psalm, it's the Messiah speaking.

He said to me, You are my son.

Today I have begotten you.

There is that begotten language used in the Old Testament about the Savior.

Today you are my son, today I have begotten you, the Father says.

Ask of me, this is the key part, Psalm 2, verse 8, ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance.

Psalms 2:8

I will make your name great to the ends of the earth.

Micah chapter 4, verses 4 and 5 is practically quoting that.

Micah 4:4

He's practically saying that because of the eternally begotten nature of the Son, because his coming forth is of old, that his name will be great to the ends of the earth, and he will take possession of the earth.

Notice how Micah expands the Jewish thinking.

He's not going to come and take possession only of Israel.

He will come and take possession to the very ends of the earth, of all the nations.

He will be the king of all nations.

And he deserves to be made great.

He deserves to be made great because you can go through these five verses again.

He was struck for us.

Human kings fail and fall, and they will have their cheeks struck, it says in verse 1.

And yet this is Jesus' fate.

Jesus had his face struck.

He was beaten, not for his own sins, but he was beaten for ours.

He was born in Bethlehem.

Jesus fulfills this prophecy.

He was from heaven.

He says, I came to do the will of my Father who is in heaven.

He is our shepherd.

He declared that he is a shepherd of the sheep.

He is our king.

He declared that he is the rightful Lord of David and the rightful heir of David's throne.

And of course, he is our peace.

This is what the angels declared in Luke 2 at his birth: peace on earth and good will to man.

When you look at all three of these together, you get a pretty, I think, comprehensive gospel picture, don't you?

That we are sinful, and our sin mandates judgment from God.

And yet God has sent a Savior to be born on earth and live his life among us, and his perfect life makes him a suitable substitute for our sin.

His life is perfect because he is God in human flesh.

He kept all of God's commands, and he died on the cross in our place, bearing our punishment from God, so that those who believe in the Shepherd King, those who believe in his death and resurrection, will have their sins removed from them, and they will then find themselves at peace, verse 5 says, with God.

This is the promise to us and to all those who put their faith in the shepherd king.

Let me close by just reading the last part of a little town of Bethlehem one more time.

It says, How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given.

So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven.

That God gives our hearts the ability to have faith in Jesus Christ, which is the blessing that comes from heaven before it comes to earth.

But in this world of sin, meek souls can receive him still, and the dear Christ will enter.

Lord, I'm thankful that you have made a way for us to be reconciled to you.

You've made a way for us to have peace.

We're grateful that you are the shepherd king, that you will rule the nations and you rule our hearts.

We're thankful that you're coming forth as of old.

Before there was time, there was you.

And you entered the time taking on a new nature, the nature of Adam, the nature of human.

Our perfect substitute for sin.

Lord, we confess that we are sinful and we place our faith in you.

Thank you for being our Savior King.

Thank you for being our shepherd king.

Thank you for not being sinful.

Thank you for dying on the cross so that we might have life, that we might have a righteous king who reigns, that we might have hope in the future, because we have peace with you.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now, for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to meet you personally at Emmanuel Bible Church.

Our service times and other church information is on our website at ibc.church.

If you want information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been an encouragement to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.