At Christmastime we speak and sing a lot about joy. CS Lewis writes about joy this way:
It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
Our passage today is from Micah, a contemporary of Isaiah who was sent to the kings of Judah, while Micah was sent to the common people.
The book of Micah is broken into three sections. Chapters 1-3 are called “The Book of Doom.” Chapters 4-5 are “The Book of Vision,” and chapter 6-7 is “The Book of Judgement and Pardon.”
In the Book of Doom, Micah, like Isaiah preaches about the coming war and Babylonian captivity and preaching against the false prophets who insist that peace will continue.
In The Book of Visions, it echoes Isaiah 2 in foretelling the reign of the Lord – this is where the prophecy about Bethlehem comes. And finally, the Book of Judgement and Pardon is a promise of God’s steadfast love in the midst of judgement. It is where we find the most famous verse in Micah, Micah 6:8 – “He has shown you, oh man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you–to do justly, live mercy and walk humbly with your God.” This admonishment comes in response to those who want the easy way out of ritual and sacrifice in response to God’s judgement.
But back to Micah 5:2-5. He calls out the town of Bethlehem as small and unimportant, but nonetheless the origin of the coming messiah, which Matthew confirms during the story of the Magi who come seeking a prophesied king. But Bethlehem plays a vital role throughout the Old Testament in ways that point ahead to the story of Christmas.
We first come to the area of Bethlehem in Genesis when Jacob’s wife Rachel is buried in that area. In Jeremiah, the prophet speaks of “Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more,” calling ahead to the Slaughter of the Innocents that would come following that story of the Magi. But that chapter also holds the promise of the New Covenant:
I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.
We also see Bethlehem in the Book of Ruth – when Ruth and Naomi are redeemed from poverty by Boaz, the “Kinsman Redeemer” in a clear type of Christ.
And Ruth in Bethlehem leads to the birth of David in Bethlehem, Israel’s greatest king, making it the Corsica of Israel. This leads to a number of stories, including when David and his men are holed up near his childhood home and out of water. David’s men scheme to battle their way into Philistine-controlled Bethlehem to get him a drink of water. Upon receiving it, David pours it out as a drink offering – again, a symbol of the coming Christ.
As the hometown of David, Bethlehem is also referenced in other prophecies – Isaiah speaks of the “shoot [that] will come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch will bear fruit from his roots.”
Bethlehem can be translated either “House of Bread” or “House of Flesh”, calling to mind the words of Jesus in John 6: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
This is where our joy is, our lasting joy that Lewis speaks of, the joy prophesied by Micah, Isaiah and Jeremiah, the Savior “whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days.”
-Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, December 13, 2020