Small Beginnings

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

Micah 5:2-4; John 10:11-18

December 23, 2012 (AM) • Portage First UMC

It’s no secret that in our world bigger is considered better. A bigger house, we’re told, will make us happier. Why buy a 32-inch television when you can buy a 70-inch? Last year’s Christmas celebration was okay, but this year we have to have something that’s bigger, flashier, more impressive. A few lights on the house last year? Upgrade this year to something brighter and more certain to win the neighborhood lights contest. Gifts are somehow more impressive if they are bigger, and if there are more than last year’s or at least more than our neighbors. Bigger is better. Bigger towns, we think, are better than smaller towns. Bigger cars are better than smaller ones. Bigger bank accounts and larger offices become a way of wielding power and influence. And bigger people even get noticed more. I don’t know if you realize this, but I’m not that big of a guy, and so I was always nearly the last one picked when we would choose teams for a game in P.E. in high school. It also doesn’t help that I have little-to-no athletic ability! But even in sports (maybe especially there, where winning is everything), bigger is better, because bigger helps you win.

And churches have gotten wrapped up in this mindset. We’ve created a consumer culture when it comes to churches, where we think if it’s bigger, it’s better. If it’s larger, it must be a sign of God’s blessing. Or, as author Skye Jethani says, it could just be clever marketing, cute giveaways and a gifted speaker. People today choose their church based less on the beliefs or theology of the church and more on what it can do for “me.” That puts the church in a difficult place in America today. I had a friend who started a church several years ago and found that it was difficult to maintain. He would bring people to Jesus, and almost immediately they would go somewhere else because the church didn’t provide what they needed. There wasn’t enough “for them.” It wasn’t “big enough.” In a culture where is bigger is better, Advent comes along and says, “Maybe bigger isn’t always better.” In fact, God often shows up in small and seemingly insignificant places.

In our Advent series this year, we’ve been discovering the unexpected and surprising ways God shows up, and in our reading this morning from Micah, the prophet continues that theme as he tells the people that God is going to come to a most insignificant place and do his greatest work there. You see, the mantra that “bigger is better” isn’t a new one. It was believed in ancient times as well. Bigger cities were given more notice. Bigger armies were the key to peace. And little, backwater towns like Nazareth, Capernaum and Bethlehem got pushed to the side. Bigger was better. And then along comes Micah, the prophet, who lived in the latter 700’s B.C., contemporary with Isaiah and Hosea. Micah lived during the time when the northern Jewish kingdom, Israel, was being destroyed and its inhabitants scattered across the known world, lost to history, and when the southern kingdom, Judah, was headed down the same road. Many of the things he preached about concerning Israel were fulfilled during his lifetime. He preaches consistently about the contrast between people who think they are in control, who think they can do whatever they want to others and get away with it, and those who are willing to trust in God as the one who is ultimately in control. Micah says that those who want power and control most often resort to violence to make it happen. That’s the way he characterizes Jerusalem. In verse 1 of this chapter, which we didn’t read, Micah calls Jerusalem the “city of troops.” City of violence. City that is supposed to be the dwelling place of God and is, instead, a place of presumed power and military might.

And then, there is an attack upon the city. In fact, Micah describes it as a particularly brutal attack. The image he uses is one of the most insulting pictures he could have produced: the enemy is seen as striking the king’s cheek with a rod, a stick. That was “the extremest of insults” and, in fact, is Micah’s way of saying that the people’s violence will not prevail. The enemies will win; they will defeat the “city of troops” (cf. McComiskey, “Micah,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 7, pg. 426). The capitol is a violent place, a place of power, a place in danger. But just six miles away, a few hours’ walk (cf. Hamilton, The Journey, pg. 96), was and is a little town that in those days, no one paid much attention to. Bethlehem was honored and remembered as the birthplace of Israel’s greatest king, David, but Jerusalem had been David’s capitol, the chosen city. Other than being David’s birthplace, Bethlehem wasn’t much in that time. It stood in the shadow of the big city. In some ways, it still does. It is a short bus ride from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, but today that trip involves crossing a border. Bethlehem is a Palestinian town, a town in dispute, and a town behind a wall. When I was in Israel in 2000, you only had to go through a checkpoint to cross from Israel to Palestine, from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. This past summer, we had to go through the checkpoint and behind a wall to be able to get to Bethlehem. And some see the wall as merely symbolic, others claim it’s for the protection of both sides, but what it’s really done is hurt and damage the economy of Bethlehem. I could see tremendous deterioration in the upkeep and the general well-being of the city from the last time I was there. Bethlehem, now as then, is a town that stands in the shadow of Jerusalem.

To that little town, Micah says this: “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” (5:2). “Ephrathah” was an ancient name for the Bethlehem that was near Jerusalem; Micah uses it here to specify which Bethlehem he’s talking about. There were more than one in his day. He means the one that used to be called Ephrathah, the one where King David was born (McComiskey 427). In Micah’s time, we really don’t know how large a town Bethlehem was, though post-exile, around 200 years later, it had a population of between 100 and 200 (cf. New Interpreter’s Dictionary, Vol. 1, pg. 443). So it was a town about the size of my hometown, and I know from growing up in Sedalia, no one knew where it was. When people would ask where I was from, I’d have to say, “About 20 miles east of Lafayette.” Lafayette they knew, but if I said, “Sedalia,” I’d get blank stares. I think it must have been the same for Bethlehem. “Bethle-where?” Micah says they are small among the clans of Judah. In fact, since David left there and set up in Jerusalem, few people have given Bethlehem a second thought. It’s a relic from the past. It’s a nice momento, but it’s not where things are happening.

Micah might agree. In his time, it’s not where things are happening. It’s not the center of attention. But Micah sees a day when Bethlehem will be on everyone’s radar. “Out of you,” he says, “will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times” (5:2). Out of this small, insignificant place will come one who will do what Israel and Judah have been incapable of doing. This one, this ruler, will do God’s will and he will lead the people to do God’s will. He will do what the human kings have not done, and in fact we know he will be more than a mere human king because, as Micah says, his origins are “from of old, from ancient times” (5:2). His roots, his heritage will be in David’s family, but he will be one who comes from even before David. These words are Micah’s hint that the one who is coming will be more than David, David’s “greater son” (cf. Matthew 22:41-46). From this insignificant, ignored place will come one who will lead, protect and guide the people like a shepherd guides his sheep (5:4).

However, he will not come right away. Even though there is a crisis going on in the land in Micah’s time, the prophet doesn’t see this ruler riding in on a white horse to save the people just in the nick of time. His origins may be of old, but his coming is still in the future (cf. McComiskey 427). In fact, his coming will not avert the current crisis (Smith, NIV Application Commentary: Hosea/Amos/Micah, pg. 525). Micah tells the people they will be “abandoned,” or a better translation might be that they will be “given up” (5:3). There are consequences to their actions, and their refusal to turn back to God, despite repeated warnings, will result in Assyria coming in, destroying Jerusalem, and taking the people away from their homes. Hosea, also preaching about this time, spoke of a time when the people would not be God’s people, when God would “give them up.” And yet, for Hosea (and Micah as well), that time was temporary. It was not permanent, which is where the promise comes in. A savior is coming. One who will rescue the people is coming. “He will be our peace,” Micah says (5:5). And he will come from the most unlikely place—Bethlehem.

Early Christians, of course, understood this prophecy to refer to the birth of Jesus. Matthew, in his telling of the coming of the Wise Men, quotes Micah. The Wise Men came to Jerusalem looking for the newborn king, and King Herod’s advisors have to redirect them. They tell them the messiah was to be born in Bethlehem, just up the road. And that’s where the Wise Men find the baby Jesus, in a house in this still small, insignificant place. You’ve got to wonder if the Wise Men ever discussed the place. It wasn’t a place of power. It wasn’t a place of influence. It was a small house in a small town—not the normal place kings were born. I think that’s why God chose that place for the birth of his son, because though he is a king, he’s not a king in the way the world thinks of it. In fact, Jesus grows up and describes himself not as a king but as a shepherd. In John’s Gospel, one of the seven “I Am” statements is this: “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me…and I lay down my life for the sheep” (10:14-15). Where have we heard that language before? In Micah, of course. And those who heard Jesus on that day would have known that imagery, too. Jesus, the good shepherd, the one who has come to shepherd his flock, the one has come to perfectly do the will of God—the one who has come to save us. And he will do that, he says, by laying down his life for those who are part of his flock. He will do that, we know, by dying in our place, taking the punishment for our sin, taking the worst the world (the “city of troops”) has to offer and redeeming it. You see, there would have been very little question among those who heard Jesus claim his place as the good shepherd as to who he claimed to be. He is from Bethlehem. He is the shepherd. He is the one who has come to save his people. From small beginnings come great things. From a small town in Judah comes the hope of the world.

Advent reminds us, then, that of a constant theme in the Scriptures: God often uses the least likely to accomplish his purposes. God called an ordinary man named Abraham to leave behind everything he knew and move to a new land—a land that wasn’t much to talk about, land that is a desert in the middle of many more powerful countries, a place that would be the center of conflict for most of history—God called Abraham to move there and to trust that God would provide him an heir, that his decedents would be as numerous as the stars. God called a stutterer named Moses to be the one who would rescue his people from slavery in Egypt. God overlooked all the handsome, strong young sons of Jesse and chose a little runt who was only good enough to tend sheep. That shepherd boy, David, he made king. And God called a “lowly” young girl from a backwater town to be the mother of his son. Mary describes herself that way, using a word that means “little” or “near the ground” (cf. Luke 1:48). God chose fishermen to be the first preachers of the Gospel. Not orators or powerful political figures. Fishermen, and they turned the world upside down. God often uses the least likely to accomplish his purposes.

Edward Kimball was a Sunday School teacher who was faithful in telling young men about Jesus. Every Sunday, he would teach and one week, a young man named Dwight gave his life to Christ because of Kimball’s witness. Dwight L. Moody went on to become a lay preacher who helped many find Christ and others gain assurance and certainty in their faith. One of those was a man by the name of J. Wilbur Chapman. Chapman became an evangelistic preacher, and he had a young assistant named Billy Sunday who later went on to preach on his own, and to organize prayer groups. In one such group, he invited the preacher Mordecai Ham to come and speak, and in 1934, as Ham preached the good news, another Billy was converted to Christ. That was Billy Graham, a man who has led literally millions to the foot of the cross. Who can say if, without the faithfulness of Edward Kimball, a person very few of us have heard of, would Billy Graham have ever come to know Jesus. Would he have ever shared the good news literally around the world? Sunday School teachers, take note: you don’t know who in your class today might grow up to touch untold numbers of people’s lives. God uses the least likely, the unnoticed, those who think they are insignificant to change the world. Bethlehem, you are small, but you will change the world. God uses the small, the seemingly insignificant—even you and me—to change the world when we follow this shepherd God has sent.

Changing the world seems like a huge calling. How do we do that? How do we live that out, especially when the problems of the world seem so overwhelming? Micah himself gives us direction in the next chapter. It’s a fairly familiar verse to many. Micah says to Judah, the secret is simply this: if you want to be faithful to God, if you want to follow the shepherd and change the world, do this. “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (6:8). To act justly, to live in a way that is just or right. It’s more than simply being nice to someone else. Justice is a characteristic of God, and so doing justice means to treat others as God would treat them. Some people see that as simply “welcoming everyone,” and while everyone should be welcomed, to see people as God sees them means we recognize when there is brokenness and sin. We can’t condone things God doesn’t condone. All are welcome. Jesus died for all, to forgive the sins of all of us. And there is no place for us to judge someone else. “For all have sinned,” Romans says, “and fall short of the glory of God” (3:23). Doing justice is practicing those things that bring true healing. Jesus healed in order that the person’s sickness wouldn’t be an obstacle to their accepting his forgiveness. He also healed because, in those days, sickness was seen as evidence of sin, so healing was a clear sign that the person had been forgiven. Justice involves bringing healing—not just a cure, but healing. Today, we live out justice very often in small ways. Sixteen of you provided a Christmas box of food for a needy family in our community. It only cost you $25, the equivalent of dinner for two at Applebee’s, but for that family it made a world of difference. It told them someone loved them, and might just open them up to the possibility of God’s grace. Through this church, we’ve been feeding children on the weekends for three years now with the “Feed My Lambs” program, for the same reason. It’s a small thing that makes a world of difference. Mother Teresa put it this way: “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.” Micah says, “Act justly.”

Then he says, “Love mercy.” “Mercy” is that untranslatable Hebrew word I’ve taught you before: hesed. Most often in the Bible it’s translated as “lovingkindness,” but it’s really impossible to narrow its meaning down to just a word of two. The best translation of this word would be this: “When the one who owes you nothing gives you everything.” Well, that’s easy. We love it when people show us that kind of mercy. But do we “love mercy” enough to show it to others? Are we able to give everything to that person whom we owe nothing? What about that person who hurt you this year? Or the person who took away your livelihood, your job? What about the person who left you, who filed suit against you, who ran your name through the mud? What then? Can we “love mercy” enough to show forgiveness toward that person? Often, we deal with situations like that by simply saying, “Well, I’ll never see them again, so it’s okay. I don’t have to deal with it.” But I know, in my own soul, that though they may never ask for forgiveness, though they may never expect mercy, though they may not even deserve mercy, I need to give it. I need to be merciful, for my own spiritual health. Otherwise, that hurt, that wound, that insult will tear at my soul for years to come. Do we “love mercy” enough to show it to those who deserve it the least? Those sorts of struggles and that sort of story will probably never make the evening news. No one may ever trumpet your success in showing mercy to someone who doesn’t deserve it. No one may ever even know, including the person you’ve decided to be merciful toward. And yet, that small thing, that act of mercy, will change the world because it will shape you and me more into the image of our shepherd, the one who, as they were nailing him to the cross, said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). Act justly. Love mercy.

And, as if the first two weren’t hard enough, walk humbly with your God. Now, we may think this one is easy compared to the other two, but let’s consider what this means in light of the season we are in. “Humbly” means “to be lowly, to be modest.” To walk humbly with God has a couple of different levels of meaning, then. For one, we recognize where we stand in relation to God. He is God, we are not, to borrow a phrase. That means he guides us, we don’t guide him. Micah was trying to tell the people that. They didn’t get to determine what was right and what was wrong; God does. They were meant to follow God’s plans, not try to force God to follow their plans. The same is true for us. Walking humbly with God means we let him lead. He is the shepherd. He knows the route. He knows the way.

But, more than that, in this season, we’re faced with a huge challenge to our faith, and that’s the way we celebrate Christmas. Consumerism is the constant challenge, and while we don’t often think of that as a spiritual problem, the fact of that matter is that when buying and buying and getting and getting becomes the driving force behind this holiday, we’ve missed the point. Bigger is not better, especially when we consider the way the guest of honor came. In a borrowed manger, a feeding trough. In a small, backwater town. In a place where Wise Men wouldn’t have thought to look on their own. There’s nothing wrong with giving gifts; that’s certainly part of the first Christmas story. But when we go deeply into debt just to have the “best Christmas ever,” does that really honor the one whose birthday this is?

When we were in Bethlehem this summer, our first stop was the Church of the Nativity. This church was built in the fourth century AD and is considered to be the oldest continuously operating Christian church in the world. It was built over the traditional site of the manger, of the cave where Jesus was born, and that’s what we went to see. But it was crowded. We had hoped to get there earlier, but a much larger tour group beat us in the building and so we stood in line for what seemed like forever. It was hot, Rachel got a bit woozy, and when we went down to the cave itself, underneath the altar, there is a silver star that marks the supposed place where Jesus was born. Lamps and decorations and all sorts of stuff clutter the interior of this cave now, presumably seeking to honor the baby of Bethlehem. And while it’s cool to touch that star, that place, I find it quite a contrast to what I picture of that first Christmas. In fact, I find it more appealing to be at Shepherd’s Field, which is still very much pastoral in nature, with a simple chapel and a cave with benches inside. I wonder if that isn’t why Phillips Brooks, on a visit to the Holy Land, took some time outside of Bethlehem, away from the clamor and the noise, to look at the city, to consider the first Christmas. Three years later, as he was reflecting on that visit, he wrote these words:

O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie

Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by

Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light

The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

Those words don’t echo the hustle and bustle of modern Bethlehem, but they reflect a quiet space, a manger, a stable, an insignificant place where one could walk humbly with God.

If we seek to honor the Christ of Christmas, perhaps the greatest celebration is the simplest. A quiet meal, family and friends together, gifts given to honor each other (not just because we feel we have to give something), and a gift given to one whose birthday it is that celebrates something close to his heart. Jesus’ concern, as is evidenced all throughout Scripture, is for the least, the last and the lost. A couple of weeks ago, I challenged you to reconsider your Christmas celebrations, and to think about giving an amount equal to what you spend on each other to our Christmas Candlelight offering. Tonight, as we begin our Candlelight services, and tomorrow as we have two more, each person who attends will be given the chance to make a difference in a small way—small ways that will add up to changing the world. Half of what you give in the Candlelight offerings will be given to provide clean water in Guatemala. It’s a project our children started with Bible School this summer, giving pennies—small things—toward filters that clean the water. One out of nine people in the world lack access to clean drinking water. 2.2 million people die of water-related diseases every year. Every 20 seconds a child dies from one of those diseases and 90% of those could be prevented if they simply had clean water—something you and I take for granted. So half of what we give tonight and tomorrow will help, in a small way, chip away at that worldwide problem. And the other half will go to feed children in our community through the “Feed My Lambs” backpack ministry. We’ve made significant strides this year, but we’re still only making a dent in the elementary schools—not to mention the middle and high schools. It’s a small beginning that makes a world of difference right here in Portage, and it’s a way we can begin, this Christmas, to walk humbly with our God. Small steps, small things done with great love. Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God. As you consider your response this Christmas, listen to this.

VIDEO: You Came To Us

This Christmas, let’s not give in to the hype and the commercialism. Let’s turn Christmas upside down and honor the one who came in a humble way, who sought justice for all, and who always extended mercy. May we anticipate his coming as we follow his leading, as we live out his mission in small ways. “And he will be our peace” (5:6). Let’s pray.