Micah 5:1-6
5 [a]Marshal your troops now, 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[b] 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 bears a son,
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 our peace
when the Assyrians invade our land
and march through our fortresses.
We will raise against them seven shepherds,
even eight commanders,
6 who will rule[c] the land of Assyria with the sword,
the land of Nimrod with drawn sword.[d]
He will deliver us from the Assyrians
when they invade our land
and march across our borders.
Listening guide
Discussion guide
Sermon
One of the coolest stories I’ve heard recently....
Church …. Their work was valued at $20 million dollars for the year
One of the most common questions I get asked - Does what you preach make a difference?
Does it make a difference in my life?
Even more, does it make a difference in the world?
Because we can tell kind of, what people feel like their chances of beating evil, badness, despair, darkness, corruption are right now. We hear the stories they tell. We see the choices they make with their lives. One way, one really common obvious way is to look at the movies and the stories that people enjoy: Hunger Games, Game of Thrones, Avengers: Endgame for the most part; The Man in the High Castle, Billions. Disney’s “The Boys”. Even the smash hit Hamilton
Compare that with the poem that has become the hymn, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”. Henry Longfellow. Civil War. A very dark time. Time magazine published an article on that hymn and they calculated that, if the war had taken place now with today’s population, 6 million people would have died.
Longfellow had lost his wife, Fanny, in a dreadful accident in July, 1861. While she was melting a ball of wax to seal an envelope, a breeze through the window caused her dress to ignite. With her clothing on fire, she ran into Henry’s study, and he suffered terrible burns as he tried to put out the flames. She died from her burns the next day.
Two years later, Longfellow’s son Charley – a Union soldier – suffered serious wounds in a skirmish during the Mine Run Campaign in Virginia. Longfellow heard the news on December 1 and rushed to Washington to be with his son as he recovered from his wounds.
And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail, The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.” (https://time.com/5924628/christmas-hymn-for-troubled-times/)
Promise/Adventure
We can beat sin and evil.
Discover victory
Development
“Marshall your troops.” Get to battle. Start fighting.
Ancient Jerusalem, surrounded, under siege. Can’t get out. The most important thing is, who is your god? Who is going to rescue you? Who is going to come and save you?
If the right God or the right ruler or the right help shows up, everything will get better. “And they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth.”
But there is a problem, a big problem. “Israel will be abandoned.” this is historically accurate
That did not mean God did not still exist. He still existed. He made his presence known by using Cyrus the Persian.
That did not mean God did not stick with individual believers. He still rescued and served individual believers: Isaiah, Jeremiah.
But he said collectively, on the whole, on average, he said, I am not with you. I am not for you. I am against you.
I hate being alone. One of the things my wife constantly has to reasurre me is that I am not alone. Why does she have to reassure me of that all the time? Because I am so weak, so powerless, so ineffective that I need someone else. And it makes me panic. It makes me freak out.
Maybe there is good reason for that. Nobody likes to admit that they have been abandoned.
Collectively
Maybe there is
War on immorality
War on poverty
War on drugs
Unless we can admit that we’re fighting alone, we’re never going to get someone else with us. That’s what the king did. He left his father alone. He king became a new kind of conqueror so we could be conquerors.
“Israel will be abandoned until she bears a son; he will shepherd his flock”
Jesus came as shepherd. The commentators point out how unique this is. Why, why does he do this? It’s not like ancient people didn’t have kings and warriors. David
Jesus came as a different kind of king. He came so you would never be alone in your battle against evil.
Christmas says, you don’t just have a king over you, although Jesus surely is that. You don’t just have a servant under you, although Jesus surely is that. You also have a ruler with you.
(Maybe every religion will give you a king or a ruler over you. Islam has ruler over you. Secular America will say every god is here to serve you. Money, sex, family, - they’re all here to make you happy and satisfy
Unless you have the true king, you can’t win the fight. With the king, you can conquer
Action
Did you see what this does?
Let’s join the battle. “We will raise against them seven shepherds, even eight commanders, who will rule the land of Assyria with the sword, the land of Nimrod with drawn sword”
CS Lewis said one time “Christianity agrees with Dualism that this universe is at war. But it does not think this is a war between independent powers. It thinks it is a civil war, a rebellion, and that we are living in a part of the universe occupied by the rebel. Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is” (CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, 45-46)
Don’t think about your life as two nations going to war. Think of this as one nation rebelling against its king.
One of the things people will say about me is that I’m good at asking for forgiveness and forgiving.
My weakness, my downfall is that I’m in so many situations that mean I have to ask for forgiveness in the first place.
We have the keys of the kingdom of heaven. I give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.
One of the neat situations of the year, earlier this year I got to preach on forgiveness one weekend. The A few days later
Because when you embrace Christmas, all that it means, you get the Christmas kingdom the world has ever seen.
Malcolm Muggeridge, converted to Christianity in his 40s, histheo-kingdoms-all_in_one_lifetime (sharepoint.com)
Colonialism
“In one lifetime I have seen my own countrymen ruling over a quarter of the world, the great majority of them convinced, in the words of what is still a favorite song, that “God who’s made them mighty would make them mightier yet.”
I’ve heard a crazed, cracked Austrian proclaim to the world the establishment of a German Reich that would last for a thousand years; an Italian clown announce he would restart the calendar to begin with his own assumption of power; a murderous Georgian brigand in the Kremlin acclaimed by the intellectual elite of the western world as wiser than Solomon, more enlightened than Asoka, more humane than Marcus Aurelius.
I’ve seen America wealthier and in terms of military weaponry more powerful than all the rest of the world put together, so that Americans, had they so wished, could have outdone an Alexander or a Julius Caesar in the range and scale of their conquests.
All in one little lifetime. All gone with the wind.
England now part of an island off the coast of Europe and threatened with dismemberment and even bankruptcy.
Hitler and Mussolini dead and remembered only in infamy.
Stalin a forbidden name in the regime he helped to found and dominate for some three decades.
America haunted by fears of running out of the precious fluid that keeps the motorways roaring and the smog settling, with troubled memories of a disastrous campaign in Vietnam and of the great victories of the Don Quixotes of the media when they charged the windmills of Watergate. All in one lifetime, all in one lifetime, all gone. Gone with the wind.
Behind the debris of these solemn supermen, and self-styled imperial diplomatists, there stands the gigantic figure of one, because of whom, by whom, in whom and through whom alone, mankind may still have peace: The person of Jesus Christ. With Christmas you, I and he can conquer