Micah - Prophecy with a promise
Last year, shortly after I came to Japan, I had a birthday. I was very excited about my birthday. I had only just arrived, and I wanted to get to know people, so invited a few people from church around to my house for a birthday party. I didn't realise that adults don't really have birthday parties in Japan. But anyway, I was really looking forward to that day.
Last year I was 29. This year I'm not looking forward to my birthday quite so much. But I'm still looking forward to it. There are some days we look forward to.
As we've been looking at the prophets, there have been a lot of times where God talks about some of the bad things that Israel has done. But in most of the prophets he also talks about a day to look forward to. This week we're going to read Micah, 4:1-7.
When we read the Old Testament, the first half of the Bible, we are reading about God's relationship with Israel. And from reading about how God relates to Israel, we learn a lot about who God is. We learn about his character, what he is like. We learn what things He likes and dislikes. In another prophet, Isaiah, God says ``I love justice. I hate robbery and iniquity.''
Through reading about God and Israel, we learn how God deals with people. We learn that He wants to have a relationship with people. We learn that the God who made everything wants to bind himself to His people and make a promise to stick with them for all time.
So the Old Testament, the story of God and Israel, tells us a lot about God. But at the same time, we aren't Israel. So what has all of this got to do with us?
Well, here in Micah, we find out the answer. God says that there is going to be a day when people from every country come to Him. It was never God's intention just to be the God of one little country. Just before this passage, Micah talks about the priests of Israel. And their attitude was completely wrong. They thought ``We have our god, and the other nations have their gods, but our God is bigger and better, so we will be OK.'' It's like they're saying ``My god can beat up your god!'' And how often do we hear religious people talking like this?
If we think like this, then when we are threatened, we will become defensive. Like a turtle, we will retreat into a hard shell. Our image of the world will get smaller. And our image of God will get smaller. We will think that our God is just interested in taking care of us, and we will forget that he is the God of the whole earth.
And this is what had happened to Israel. So God reminds them that they have something to look forward to. He talks about a day when people from all nations will come to learn from Israel and learn from their God about how to live. He talks about a day when people will come to God to seek peace between countries. And He talks about a day when God will gather up all of those who have been hurt and wounded and rule over them.
That's definitely a day for people to look forward to. When is this day going to come? Well, it already has. Micah was writing around about 740-720 BC. And in chapter 5, verse 1, he writes this:
But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans
of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over
Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.
There are some times when God gives a message to a prophet about the future, and it is very difficult to understand. It is in symbolic, picture-language. This is not one of those times. This is pretty clear.
God has just been saying that He himself will rule over Israel and all the people who come to Him. Now he says that from a small town called Bethlehem, someone will come and become this ruler for them. And it will not be a normal person; literally it says he will ``be coming out from the old days of eternity.'' In other words, someone as old as the Universe. In other words, God. God is going to come out of Bethlehem and become a leader of a new people.
This happened, about two thousand years ago. That leader was called Jesus. And that new people - that's us.
Now maybe Micah got lucky about the place name. Seven hundred years before Jesus was born, Micah said a saviour would come from Bethlehem, and Jesus came from Bethlehem. Maybe that was a lucky guess. Another prophecy said that the saviour would be called a Gallilean, and Jesus grew up in Gallilee. Asaph gave a prophecy, about a thousand years before Jesus was born, that the savior would teach in parables, and Jesus taught in parables.
About five hundred years before Jesus was born, the prophet Zechariah said that the savior would ride into Jerusalem on a donkey, and Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. Zechariah also said that God himself would be valued at thirty pieces of silver and the money would be thrown at the potter; Jesus was betrayed for thirty pieces of silver and the money was used to buy a field from a potter. About a thousand years before Jesus was born, David wrote a song about a man whose enemies divided up his clothes by rolling dice; when Jesus was killed, Roman soldiers rolled dice for his clothes.
Maybe they all got really lucky. Or maybe not. Maybe they were onto something. Maybe this person called Jesus who came from Bethlehem to be the leader of a new people really was God himself, just like Micah said.
So let's look again at those three things Micah promised: A day when people would come to Israel's God to learn how to live; a day when nations would come before God to find peace; and a day when God would rule over the hurt and the wounded who come to Him.
Jesus spent a lot of time teaching about how to live, and people from all countries have been learning from him. Actually, we're all still learning. Because he showed a way of living that is so radical we're still trying to get our heads around it. And everything he taught, he did. He taught people to love God and love their neighbours. He taught people to love their enemies. He taught that being angry with people is as bad as murdering them. Because it's what you do in your heart that matters.
And he taught people how to find peace. He taught that if someone hurts you or injures you, not to take revenge. I was reading recently about a Christian teacher who was in Indonesia. His name is David Shenk. He had been invited to Indonesia in February last year by a group called Hizbullah. They are an Islamic terrorist group. There about 10,000 Hizbullah members in Indonesia, and they would often burn churches and attack Christians. And they had invited this Christian teacher to talk to them. So he went. And the commander of Hizbullah said to him, ``We are Hizbullah, and our mission is to kill our enemies and fight to defend Islam!''
And David Shenk said something very interesting. He said
When you kill your enemies, you create more enemies. Jesus the
Messiah commands us to love our enemies and forgive them. In that
case, you do not have an enemy!
And the commander completely changed. Now he is working with the church for peace. When the church wanted to build a new building, they asked the commander of this Islamic terrorist group to help them get a permit. And he did.
David Shenk tells many other stories, of people in Algeria, in Israel, Kosovo, Iran, Sudan, and east Africa. They found peace because they could forgive, and because they did not take revenge. And the reason they could forgive and they did not take revenge is because Jesus had told them about God who forgave them and did not take revenge on them.
And Micah finally talks about God ruling over a new people. A people that he brings together from the lame, and the exiles and those who are suffering, and he will make them into a new nation. To be a Christian is to realise that you are living under a new ruler, a new leader. It is to be part of a new kingdom. A kingdom where the weak and the suffering are made strong. A kingdom where people love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them. A kingdom where people do not seek revenge but seek forgiveness. And a kingdom where above all, God himself is king.
This is radical stuff. The earliest Christians were persecuted and killed for saying this. When Caesar was the king, they were talking about being a new kingdom with a new king. This was treason! But they were excited because that day had come for them. That day that they had been waiting for for seven hundred years. A kingdom of love and peace and forgiveness, ruled over by this man from Bethlehem, Jesus Christ. Just like the prophet Micah said all those years before. A kingdom that wasn't just for Israel but for a new people, a new people gathered from the whole world. We are that people, and that promise is for us. That's what it means to be a Christian.