First Presbyterian Church
Wichita Falls, Texas
April 27, 2011
THE KING WHO RULES GOD’S KINGDOM
Jesus Christ -- The Center of Our Faith: Part 4
Isaac Butterworth
Micah 5:1-5 (NIV)
1 Marshal your troops, O city of troops, for a siege is laid against us. They will strike Israel’s ruler on the cheek with a rod.
2 “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.”
3 Therefore Israel will be abandoned until the time when she who is in labor gives birth and the rest of his brothers return to join the Israelites.
4 He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God. And they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth. 5 And he will be their peace.
‘A siege is laid against us.’ So wrote Micah to the people of ancient Jerusalem. ‘Marshal your troops,’ he urged. Get ready for battle. Not that it would do any good, of course. It was a lost cause even before it started. ‘They will strike Israel’s ruler on the cheek with a rod,’ said Micah. In other words, they would not only defeat Israel’s king; they would humiliate him.
And that’s the way it turned out. After besieging Jerusalem for two long years, the Babylonian army broke through the wall of the city. The king tried to escape, but the Babylonians overtook him and brought him before their own king. The Scriptures then tell us: ‘They killed the sons of [Israel’s king] before his eyes. Then they put out his eyes, bound him with bronze shackles and took him to Babylon’ (2 Kings 25:7). Truly, as Micah said, they struck ‘Israel’s ruler...with a rod’ and then some!
It was the end of the war, and God’s people had lost. And if that weren’t bad enough, it seemed to them as if God himself had abandoned them. Long years before, God had promised King David that he would ‘establish the throne of his kingdom forever’ (2 Sam. 7:13). God had said, ‘David will never fail to have a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel’ (Jer. 33:17).
But now their king was in shackles, a prisoner of war. And the palace and with it the temple and, for that matter, the whole city was reduced to rubble. Not only was there no king on the throne; there was not even a throne. So, in Psalm 83 we read, ‘You have rejected, you have spurned, you have been very angry with your anointed one. You have renounced the covenant with your servant [David] and have defiled his crown in the dust’ (vv. 38f.).
But now, in our text for today, Micah tells us that the line of David is not ended. God will keep his promise yet. ‘Out of [Bethlehem],’ God says, will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel...[and] his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth’ (Micah 5:2, 4).
Over the last several weeks, we have been talking about Jesus Christ and acknowledging him as the center of our faith. We have affirmed that he is the Prophet who speaks God’s Word to us and that he is the Priest who shows us God’s mercy. Now, today, we look upon Jesus as the King who rules God’s kingdom.
We’re using Micah, chapter 5, to frame our thoughts in this direction, and I thought it might be helpful to ask a series of questions -- three questions to be exact -- and to see if we find their answers in these words of Micah. So, let’s proceed along those lines and ask the first question, which is this: Micah speaks of a king. Who is this king? Can we identify him?
If we search our text for the answer, we will notice two things about this king. First, he will come ‘out of’ Bethlehem (v. 2). Second, his ‘origins are from of old, from ancient times’ (v. 2). If we ask who this could possibly be, if ask, ‘Who is this whose birthplace is Bethlehem, yet whose origins preceded his birth?’ then our answer is clear. It is none other than Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ -- the Messiah, the ‘Anointed One’ -- of God.
We know his birthplace to be Bethlehem, for the Gospels tell us so. Herod asked the scholars of his day, ‘where the Christ was to be born,’ and they told him: ‘In Bethlehem in Judea...this is what the prophet has written’ (Matt. 2:4f.). And was that not the message of the angel to the shepherds on that first Christmas night? ‘Today in the town of David,’ he said, ‘a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord’ (Luke 2:11). ‘In the town of David:’ this is none other than Bethlehem!
It is Jesus, then, a descendant of David, and yet also the preexistent Son of God, who is to be the King about whom Micah wrote long ago. Isaiah also said of him: ‘He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing it and upholding it from that time on and forever’ (Isa. 9:7). The answer to our first question is Jesus. He is the King.
That presents us with a second question: Whom shall this King serve? It is clear that the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah, with but few exceptions, served only themselves. It was a sorry state of affairs, actually. God said to Ezekiel, another of his prophets, ‘Prophesy against the shepherds of Israel.’ Ancient kings, you know, were often called shepherds. But what horror-inducing shepherds these kings turned out to be. They were like foxes in the hen house. So God said, ‘Woe to the shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? ...But you do not take care of the flock’ (Ezek. 34:2, 3).
Not so King Jesus! God says through Micah in our text for today, ‘Out of you [Bethlehem] will come for me one who will be ruler...’ (Micah 5:2, emphasis added). One who will be ruler for me! And was that not Jesus’ great vocation, to do the will of his Father in heaven? ‘Here I am,’ we read in the Fortieth Psalm. These words were scripted for none other than Jesus. ‘I have come,’ he says. ‘It is written about me in the scroll. I desire to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart’ (Ps. 40:7f.). And in John, chapter 6, we find Jesus saying: ‘I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me’ (John 6:38). And when all is said and done, will King Jesus hold onto his crown like some desperate, petty tyrant? No. For Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15, ‘Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father’ (v. 24). Earthly rulers -- many of them -- arrange things to their own benefit. But our King, our beloved Jesus, has not and will not seek his own advantage. All he does he does for the Father. ‘He rules for me,’ God says. And clearly it is so.
Our third question has to do with this King’s platform. What is it that he will do? And Micah tells us.
1. In verse 2, he says, he ‘will be ruler over Israel.’ But notice that it is not Israel only. When Pilate crucified Jesus, he ‘had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS’ (John 19:19). Several of the onlookers complained about it, but in a stubborn reply uncharacteristic of Pilate, he told them, ‘What I have written, I have written.’ Little did Pilate know, however, nor did the plaintiffs that day even imagine: Jesus was not just the king of the Jews. For Micah had said of him, ‘his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth’ (5:4). Or, as Isaac Watts put it in his great hymn, ‘Jesus shall reign where’er the sun does his successive journeys run; His kingdom stretch from shore to shore, till moons shall wax and wane no more.’
2. This is the first thing our great King will do. He will rule. And as he rules, he will restore his people’s hope. Israel may feel abandoned, but, according to Micah, it will be only ‘until the time when she who is in labor gives birth’ (Micah 5:3). When the Son of God was born to Mary, the time of abandonment was up. Everything was about to change. The old man, Simeon, recognized it. He was in the temple on the day Joseph and Mary brought the baby Jesus for his dedication, and, seeing the child, he asked to hold him. There, with the infant Jesus in his arms, he cried out to God: ‘My eyes have seen your salvation...a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel’ (Luke 2:30, 32).
3. So, he will rule, and he will embody the hope of his people. And one more thing Micah tells us about this king. He will protect us. Those over whom Jesus rules, Micah says, ‘will live securely.... And he will be their peace’ (5:4, 5). No one need fear when Jesus is their King. The prophet Zechariah assures us of this. He says: ‘Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey’ (Zech. 9:9). It makes you think of Palm Sunday, doesn’t it? Zechariah goes on; only, it is God who is speaking really. And he says: ‘I will defend my house. Never again will an oppressor overrun my people, for now I am keeping watch’ (Zech. 9:8). My King ‘will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea’ (Zech. 9:10). This is our King! This is our Jesus! He will rule over us. He will restore us. And he will protect us.
Do you see it? Can you affirm it? God has established Jesus as King over all the earth. What are you and I to do with this proclamation? How are we to respond? Let me offer for us three replies that we would be wise to make to this good news.
First, let us submit to this King. The Shorter Catechism says that ‘Christ executeth the office of a king in subduing us to himself.’ The apostle Paul writes: ‘At one time we...were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us...’ (Titus 3:3ff.).
Listen to me: You and I don’t ‘make’ Christ our Lord. We err if we think we are in any position to bargain with him, to give him a little of ourselves in exchange for what he has to offer. If he is your Lord, it is because he has graciously conquered your little kingdom of self. I urge you to do this: Examine yourself to see: ‘Has Christ subdued my self-will, my self-centeredness, my self-interest?’ Many will claim that he has when really nothing more has happened than this: that they have brought forward in their own darkened minds some fabrication of Christ, some tame caricature of our Lord with which they may fool themselves and say, ‘Yes, Christ is Lord,’ when in fact he is not. They still sit upon the thrones of their tiny domains they call their lives and fool themselves into thinking that all is well between them and God. Probe your heart and see for yourself. Do you serve Christ, or do you still serve yourself under the cloak of empty and self-deceptive talk?
My second word of counsel: Flee to this King. The Shorter Catechism says that ‘Christ executeth the office of a king...in ruling and defending us.’ Are you able to say with Psalm 91, ‘I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust”’ (v. 2)? ‘Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God’ (Psalm 20:7). Can you say that? In what or whom do you put your trust? Remember the words of George Duffield in his hymn, when he says, ‘The arm of flesh will fail you; ye dare not trust your own.’ Flee, then; flee to this King for protection.
And finally: Enlist with this King. Join his army in the great battle against evil. The Shorter Catechism says that ‘Christ executeth the office of a king...in restraining and conquering all his and our enemies.’ When you bow before Jesus and acknowledge him as your King, you should know that others won’t. The forces of evil surely won’t, and they will engage you in battle, fierce battle. But do not be afraid. The apostle Paul tells us that Jesus ‘must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet’ (1 Cor. 15:25). And one day, ‘every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father’ (Phil. 2:10f.).
God has established Jesus as King over all the earth. The question now is: Is he King over your heart?
