Promising Signs

I was talking to a man last week about our birthday party for Jesus, which is the informal family worship time we have here on Christmas morning. It’s capped by having the children blow out the candle on Jesus’ birthday cake. And he asked, “How can you fit 2003 candles on one birthday cake?”

Well, of course we only put one candle on the cake, for obvious reasons, but it got me to thinking. We also put only one candle on the cake is because until Jesus comes for the last time, there is still time for late-comers to follow the star and find the newborn King. Everywhere around the world, someone is always meeting Jesus for the first time. And whenever that happens, the joy and wonder of his birth echoes again with the angels’ song. “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” [Lk 2:14]

Many of us here have known Jesus since babyhood, and it’s a little hard to imagine the incredible difference it makes, meeting Jesus for the very first time. Even I sometimes start taking for granted the comfort and joy that knowing Jesus brings, and I start wanting more ... wanting all the world to be ruled by the Prince of Peace, wanting people to stop using his name as a swear-word, wanting people to stop stepping on each other to get to the top... Well, I’m not the first to say “Come, Lord Jesus!” [Rev 22:20] and I won’t be the last.

Micah first made this prophecy, the one we’re looking at this morning, over 2,700 years ago, at around the same time Isaiah was preaching. It was a volatile and insecure period in Israel’s history, and it never got much better. People were scared to death. Assyria was in the process of annihilating the northern kingdom and once even got far enough south to besiege Jerusalem. That’s when King Hezekiah listened to Isaiah and trusted in God for deliverance, and Sennacherib’s troops withdrew, but other kings before and after him tried diplomacy and dubious alliances - including paying tribute to Assyria - to purchase a temporary illusion of safety. Thousands of people were killed during the various wars; farms and cities alike were destroyed. Society was in turmoil. Refugees from the northern kingdom of Israel poured across the borders. During the hundred years before the Babylonian exile, archeology shows that Jerusalem more than doubled in population - and that meant cheap labor and food shortages on top of the devastation already caused by the wars. Rulers and merchants were equally corrupt, justice was for sale, and life was cheap. People needed hope.

Isaiah and Micah gave it to them. Both Isaiah and Micah promise that a savior will come to deliver God’s faithful people from the violence and oppression they have been enduring. What wonderful promises they are, too! Listen again to this morning’s text: “O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.... And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God. And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth; and he shall be the one of peace.” [Mic 5:2-5a]

But you may not have noticed... I left out the middle part. I left out the part about waiting. “He shall give them up until the time when she who is in labor has brought forth.” [Mic 5:3]

Why does God do that? Why does he delay so long? Doesn’t he know how hard it is to hold on to a hope that keeps receding further and further out into the future?

Well, as I’m sure you all already know, the reason God does that is to make sure that his harvest at the end of the ages will be as large as possible. We’ve spent all year looking at John’s vision in Revelation, and at the many ways that God tries to get people’s attention, and the many times he gives us a second chance - and then a third, and then a fourth.

But still, it’s hard to wait. Many people in John’s day were losing hope. I am equally sure that many people in Micah’s day also lost hope, especially when they saw the refugees pouring into town and heard the terrible stories. And many Christians over the last few generations and centuries are tempted to accept the notion that Jesus’ second coming is just allegorical, metaphorical, symbolic, rather than a promise of a real event that we can count on.

How do we hold on to the hope?