Our Great Expectation

Intro

If you have your Bible’s or apps I want to invite you to open to Micah chapter 5.

This morning I want to talk to you about expectation. More specifically, I want our hearts to be encouraged by our great expectation we can have knowing that God is and will be faithful to his promises.

We ought to find great encouragement in God’s faithfulness in every season, but especially so in seasons of great trial, suffering, and darkness.

And this has been a dark season for each of us, in different times and in different ways. It is here in our shared darkness as God’s people that I trust God is pursuing us, getting our attention, and drawing us to himself. It is often in our darkest days where faith is strengthened and renewed.

I’ve been reading Ron Chernow’s wonderful biography on Alexander Hamilton. Both my wife Neva and I have had a great interest in Hamilton after falling in love with the musical this year. Now that I have all the real details of his life from the biography, you better believe I’m going to be really annoying to watch Hamilton with in the future.

One of the questions we ask about most of our founding fathers is to what extent, if any, did they have saving faith in Christ. That question is no more of an enigma than in the life of Alexander Hamilton. While he had great Christian fervor in his youth, most of his adult years are characterized by a real apathy for Christianity and religion. Occupied by the successes of his political and legal careers, and the sin of his affair with Maria Reynolds, Hamilton shows no evidence of any thoughts of God.

But it was in his last years prior to his death where that all changed. Beaten down by the fallout of his affair gone public, the decline of his political career and influence, and the death of his son Phillip, Hamilton returned to the religious zeal of his youth. He gave himself to the study of the Bible, leading family devotions daily in his home, and even began attending services with his devout wife Eliza. In fact, it was his Christian convictions, he said, which set him against the practice of dueling, and motivated his decision to famously “throw away his shot” against Aaron Burr.

I wonder if 2020 hasn’t been a similar experience for many of us. This season has stripped many of us of the pursuits and interests which we had been so preoccupied with. And it is here, together, where our zeal for the Lord can be strengthened.

As we look at this familiar text of Micah , I’m trusting God to remind us of his promises, and fill us with great expectation in light of those promises.

Micah 5:1–5 ESV

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 Ephrathah, 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. 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 the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord 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. When the Assyrian comes into our land and treads in our palaces, then we will raise against him seven shepherds and eight princes of men;

We’re going to make sense of this text together under three headings: The Present Darkness, An Unbreakable Promise, and Our Great Expectation.

The Present Darkness

If you have your Bible’s open, and I hope you do, I want you to back up and take a look at the end of Chapter 4. This short book of Micah follows a pattern that is repeated three times: the prophet first issues proclamations of judgement, followed by a future promise of salvation.

We find ourselves right in the middle of these future promises of salvation Chapters 4 and 5. Chapter 4 is an escalation of these promises of future salvation and restoration of Israel. These promises culminate in verse 13, which reads:

Micah 4:13 ESV

Arise and thresh, O daughter of Zion, for I will make your horn iron, and I will make your hoofs bronze; you shall beat in pieces many peoples; and shall devote their gain to the Lord, their wealth to the Lord of the whole earth.

This is an image of utter destruction of the enemies of God and his peoples. Though they gather against Israel, the nations rage and plot in vain. God will give them over to destruction in a final act of justice, ensuring the victory and protection of his people.

What we have here at the end of Micah 4 is a picture of the final judgement of God’s enemies, This is what we would call and “end times” prophecy. It is a promise that, like the rock skipping across the water, has implications for the present but ultimately lands at some point in the future. These promises of protection and victory for God’s people give us hope that one day God will be true to rid this world of violence, oppression, and injustice. One day there will be true, eternal, and lasting peace.

Such a promise is rudely interrupted by verse 1 of Chapter 5. This first clause is a little difficult to translate. The ESV says “Muster your troops, Oh daughter of troops”, this could also be translated “City of Troops.” This word for troop is pointing to really a small group of soldiers. Israel cannot summon an army, at this point they have meagre military resources. So the command here is futile in the face of the seige being laid against the city.

That’s the idea here. It’s hopeless. The assailants will strike the cheek of the judge of Israel. This is such a condescending idea that the leader of Israel isn’t called King, but is simply called judge.

While God promised victory in the future, what the people faced in the present was total humiliation, completed destruction, utter darkness.

This is so often where God begins his work, isn’t it? In our darkness, in our helplessness. We often don’t know why God allows darkness to persist in this world or in our lives. I know many of you can relate to seasons, even years of darkness. Maybe its a diagnosis you didn’t expect, or job loss and financially difficult times.

In the seven years that my wife and I have been married, we’ve faced several dark seasons: financial struggles, periods of great discouragement, a miscarriage. In each case it was impossible for us to see what God was doing in us and through us at that exact moment. It was all we could do to hold onto his precious promises. We had seen God be faithful in the past, so we were determined to trust him to be faithful in the future. As we did so, we were calmed by a sense of peace which we know can only be found in Christ.

The 17th Century Puritan John Flavel captured this thought well when he said:

If believers only thoroughly understood how dear they are to God, what value they are in his eyes, and how well they are secured by his faithful promises and gracious presence, they would not tremble at every noise and appearance of danger.

We don’t always know why God allows darkness to befall us, but we can trust that he will be faithful to us. The guarantee of this unbreakable promise is found in Christ, which is where our passage takes us next.

An Unbreakable Promise

The juxtaposition of 4:13 and 5:1 is purposeful, because it sets us up for the promise found in verse 2. How will God achieve this final victory and peace for his people, when we are so often consumed by such darkness in the present? He will do it through the King.

While all of the surrounding verses are in the voice of the prophet, in verse 2 we hear the voice of God himself. The Lord declares that out of Bethlehem will come a King. The significance of Bethlehem is three-fold. First, it is the town where David’s family was from. Thus, by mentioning Bethlehem as the birthplace of the King, we are to recall God’s promise to David that his descendants will sit on the throne forever.

Second, the significance of Bethlehem is precisely its insignificance. It’s so small isn’t not even numbered among the 46 cities of Judah inJoshua 15. God has made much out of insignificance in the past, and he will do it again when his victorious King comes into the world.

Which means, third, that the mention of Bethlehem has an ominous ring to it. When this victorious future King comes into the world, it will not be in riches and power in Jerusalem, the city where the kings rule, but it will be in poverty and squalor, in an insignificant not-even-worth-mentioning place like Bethlehem. That this King is born here, and not in Jerusalem, assumes that the family of David will have lost the throne. The royal line will have failed. Israel will have been conquered. For a new King to arise, God will go all the way back to the stump of Jesse, from where it all started so many centuries before.

This new King will be “for me” says God, he will rule over all of God’s people. He will be a king whose coming forth is from ancient days, even from eternity past. The promise is that this King will be God himself, born into insignificance, to redeem and save his people.

In Luke 2 we read that by means of a Roman Census, Mary and Joseph returned to Bethlehem to be registered. It was here where the lowly babe was born, in this insignificant place, to fulfill what was promised in the days of the prophet Micah. The King had finally come.

You see, this promise in verse 2 and its fulfillment in Christ answers many questions about the nature of the promises of God. “With the royal line defunct, has God’s judgement demolished God’s promises? Will the tree of Jesse remain a stump forever? Will God be unfaithful to his Word? Has he given us cause not to trust him? Will he remain silent while I cry out from darkness?”

The answer in every case is no.

The 20th Century Theologian Herman Bavinck made the connection between God’s promises and their fulfillment in the birth of Christ when he wrote,

The content of God’s revelation has the one, great, comprehensive promise of the covenant of grace: I will be a God unto thee, and ye shall be my people. And as its high-point this revelation has its Immanuel, God with us. For the promise and the fulfillment go hand in hand.

Beloved, here in Micah we find exactly what each of us need this Christmas and for this new Year: An ancient, unbreakable promise. God has and will save his people. And he’s done it all in Christ. This is the foundation for our hope and expectation for the future.

Our Great Expectation

How should we respond to such a promise? How should we respond knowing that a King has come, and will come, who has saved, and will saved his people, who has restored and will restore all of creation?

We find out how some responded to this promise being fulfilled in the gospels. In John 7 , some of the people played ignorant, and pretended not to know that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. It wasn’t that they didn’t know the truth, but that they didn’t want to believe it.

An even more severe response comes In Matthew 2, when King Herod heard that the King of the Jews had been born, you know what his response was? Not to bow down in worship, not even to play ignorant, but in a violent rage he had his servants go to Bethlehem and kill all the male children two years and under. Why? Because the thought of a King, anyone other than himself, was repulsive to him. He would not submit to anyone other than himself.

What is your response to this promise of a King this morning?

Now I don’t know where each of you listening to this message this morning are coming from. Maybe you’re still exploring Christianity and find some of its teachings hard to accept. That’s OK, I’m really glad you’re listening in this morning. One question you might be working through, which is very common, has to do with the ongoing presence of darkness - sin and evil - in the worth. How could this promise be true, if so much darkness still exists? Why hasn’t God done something about it?

The answer, you see, is that he has! But not in the way any of us would expect. He has not destroyed evil and suffering from above and from a distance, as we might expect him to. And for this we should all be grateful. For if he judged the world as a distant judge, we would all be caught up in the judgment. Not one of us would survive. The Bible says that each of us has been born into sin and is deserving of God’s just judgement. Apart from Christ, we stand condemned as one of God’s enemies.

But our God is not one of justice alone, but also of grace. So he did not simply judge us from without, but to save us from within. You see in verse 3, the rest of his brothers, meaning those who follow the King, shall return to him. The teaching of the Bible is clear, in places like Romans 8 and Hebrews 2, that Jesus rejoices in being joined to his people. And being so joined to his people, it says in verse 4 that he stands among his people as a shepherd for his people, and they shall dwell secure in him.

Yes, a final judgment is coming, as we’ve seen, where sin, evil, and God’s enemies will be destroyed. But in the meantime, God is redeeming and saving his people. This is how God has determined both to defeat evil and save his beloved people.

What does that mean for you? The Bible teaches us that on our own, we are each as helpless as Israel was in verse 1. Any efforts to make ourselves right with God are futile. But there is hope for you and for me, and it is found in the King. Will you trust in Christ today to be not just your King but your shepherd? The one who will care for you, guide you, protect you, in whom you can dwell secure? Will you look forward with eager expectation to what the King has and will do for his people?

Let me draw your attention to what those who trust in the King can look forward to in expectation. Three things, very quickly.

First, limited affliction. You see in verse 3 that God’s people will suffer, there will be affliction, but it will come to an end. Some time after this king who is to come, affliction will end. If we know this to be true, then we can face all suffering with a sober hope. Sober because we know that suffering is a promised reality. You see, even though a siege may be coming, even though the present suffering may seem unbearable, we can endure.

Suffering has a way of eliciting strong reactions from us. Sometimes we give ourselves over to complete despair. Other times, we are consumed by a great fervor trying to work ourselves out of suffering. We despair, often, because we heap condemnation on ourselves, believing that we must deserve our suffering because of how awful we are.

Other times, often, we would rather exhaust themselves by working to get out of suffering. Why? Because we believe we don’t deserve it, and that we have the means to end their darkness ourselves.

But the message of God to us through Micah says: It doesn’t matter whether you deserve your suffering or not. Why? Because its a reality, no matter who you are. Suffering will befall us no matter what. You can’t escape it. So do not despair, do not think yourself highly able, but face it sober minded about its reality in this fallen world.

But we must not only be sober, but hopeful because we know that one day God will bring it to an end, and he will wipe every tear from our eyes.

I have a great fear of needles. It hasn’t always been that way, but about 9 years ago I went to give blood immediately after a workout when my heart rate was still elevated. Well, my body pumped the blood out so quickly that I got extremely dizzy and nearly fainted. Since then I just can’t do needles, whether it’s getting samples or shots, it’s awful. But what gets me through the shot is knowing that its temporary, that it will be over soon.

Beloved, this present darkness will not endure forever. Whether or not it gets better in 2021, I do not know. But I do know that a world is coming where the Light has swallowed up the darkness.

Resurrection day approaches, friends. Hold on.

Second, restored unity. Look at the second half of verse 3 into verse 4. Israel shall return, along with the rest of Christ’s brothers. What is this speaking of? The church. God’s new people made of faithful Israelites and believers from all tribes and every nation coming together in one, unified community.

This is a promise which is articulated several times throughout the New Testament, but perhaps nowhere more clear than in Ephesians 2. There the Apostle Paul tells us that Christ has abolished dividing walls of hostility among all those who believe in Him. Christ himself is our peace. In other words, we have unity and peace with one another in Christ. This is an actual, real, present peace. It is not our job to create that peace. It is our job to live in light of that unifying peace. To make it tangible. Effectual. To display it for all of the watching world in their desperation for a place of unity and peace.

How does the old carol go? “Bid our sad divisions cease, be yourself our King of Peace.” That’s the promise. One day that will be true. It’s hard to believe though, isn’t it? I’ve never been more discouraged by the state of the believing church than I have in 2020. Perhaps more than anything else in this passage, this promise, this expectation, is the hardest for me to accept.

As weak as my faith is, I know that one day this will be true. And it is true, now, as the gospel goes forward, as Christ’s name is made great to the ends of the earth, as he reconciles people to one another in small, insignificant local churches. God has made much of insignificance before, and he promises to do it again, through us.

Our fellowship now can be evidence of the promise we eagerly expect to be fulfilled.

Third, lasting security. See verses 4 and 5. We know our salvation is secure in Christ, and thus we are spiritually secure now. Yet danger still looms around every corner.

Though markets may fail and collapse, though disease may threaten and take away, though leaders may rise and fall,

English Standard Version Chapter 5

they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great

to the ends of the earth.

5  And he shall be their peace.

Beloved, this Christmas and this New Year let us be reminded, and remind one another, of the expectation and hope we share. I don’t know what darkness this year, what this season, has brought for you or your family. But we have all that we need in Christ. In Christ, there is strength for today and hope for tomorrow. As we head into this New Year, may we draw nearer to Christ, the shepherd who was born in Bethlehem, the King who is our peace.

Amen.