Prophecy [Micah 5]

[read the tale of three trees]

You know what I love about that book? It’s so clever - when we start out, we have pieces to a puzzle, but we can’t quite see the picture. We don’t know how all the pieces come together to make a complete and beautiful picture. I’d never heard that story before I got married, but my wife Sara knew it from her childhood - and we’ve read it to all of our children. I can’t figure out if it’s a Christmas book or an Easter book - I think it works for both. On your seat you might have noticed there was a puzzle piece when you walked in. Hopefully you can still find it. As we get into the message today, I’d like to hold on to that puzzle piece, because what we are going to see is that whether it’s in an adorable children’s folktale, the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem all those years ago, or your life here and now today - God has a habit of bringing all the pieces together. And so I want you to hold onto that puzzle piece and try to imagine - what is the picture that your puzzle piece completes?

Today is the last Sunday before Christmas Eve! Husbands, if you haven’t started Christmas shopping - it’s too late. Just skip to writing the apology letter. For the last few weeks we having been exploring the miracles of the birth of Jesus and the moments when heaven breaks through in our lives. We talked about the virgin birth, we talked about the star and the magi - last week we got into the story of the shepherds getting visited by angels and today - well, today I want to talk about puzzle pieces and prophecies.

So if you want to grab your bible - we’re going to open up in Matthew, chapter 2 - but it’s a trick, don’t open to Matthew, I want you to open up to Micah, chapter 5 - that’s way back in the old testament. Micah, chapter 5, but the story starts in Matthew 2, where it says, [read v.1-4]. Now we already covered this with Pastor Amanda a couple of weeks ago, but I wanted to give you a refresher. The three wise men visit King Herod, who sees a new king as a threat to his reign - and so he wants to know all about this kid. So he asks, “where is the messiah supposed to be born?” and his priests answer, [read v.5-6]. Herod asks, “where is the messiah supposed to be born?” And the priests know the answer, because the Jewish people have a prophecy about this. Anybody want to guess where it comes from? The book of Micah! Micah, which came 6 or seven hundred years before Jesus. (six seeeeven - you gotta give something to the teens sometimes). Hundreds of years before Jesus, around about the same time as the prophet Isaiah, there was this guy Micah who made prophecies about the messiah, the guy who would save God’s people. Chapter 5, verse 2, [read v.2]. Now maybe this is sort of obvious, but I just want to take a second to show you how the dots connect. Bethlehem, a tiny town, but it’s the location that a great ruler will come out of. Check. One whose origins are from the distant past - which is sort of an intriguing phrase, but what we believe as Christians is that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but he existed before that. Jesus is one with God, he’s separate, but he’s also the same essence. The gospel of John, the only story of Jesus that does not have a Christmas story in it, opens like this, [read chptr 1, v.1-5]. So when Micah says, “he’s going to be born later, but his origins are in the distant past” - that’s a weird thing to say! He probably didn’t even understand it when he said it - but when we get to Jesus we can go, “oooh, that’s how it fits together.” Back in Micah, verse 3 [read v.3-5a]. So we see the bit referencing Mary - Israel will be abandoned to their enemies UNTIL the woman in labor gives birth, which is pretty cool and then it shifts to Shepherd language. Verse 4 says, “he will stand to lead his flock with the Lord’s strength.” Anybody want to take a wild guess as to the most prominent metaphor used to describe Jesus? The good shepherd. I don’t mean to jump around all over the bible, but John chapter 10 verse 11, Jesus himself uses these words, [read it.]. Seven. Hundred. Years. Between Micah and Jesus - and yet the puzzle piece of Jesus fits perfectly into the picture. 

Now here’s what I’m trying to get to with all of this - I don’t think a lot of us think about prophecy when we think about the miracles of Christmas. I think for some of us, it feels a little hokey. A little mystical or whatever. It can be kind of fun when we see it in movies and such - the Dune Movies have prophecies, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter - I think i’m kind of outing myself as a major nerd right now - but there’s lots of times when a story will have a prophecy, and it’s kind of fun to see a prediction and then see how all the pieces come together. And it can be kind of fun in popular media - and we’ll think, “Aha, that’s clever” but we’re not too impressed because we know the one who wrote the prophecy at the beginning of the book, also wrote the end of the book, right? JK Rowling was able to write a prophecy into her books, because she knew how she was going to end them. Same thing for Star Wars! George Lucas can put a little prophecy in there, because he knows where he’s going with those movies. Or Dune or any of them! In fiction, prophecies aren’t that big a deal - because we know the author who made it up also gets to write the end of the story. It all comes together because the author is the one in control. But what I want you to see today is that it is the same thing in the real world. The author of the prophecy is also the one who gets to write the end of the story. It all comes together because the author is the one in control. When we read prophecy in Micah, and then 700 years later see it come to life in the birth story of Jesus - I don’t want you to walk away thinking, “Wow, that Micah guy was a really good predictor!” No, no, no - I want you to realize, “wow, God really is the author of this story.” Do you still have your puzzle piece? Do you start to see how it all fits together?

This actually points at something really important that a lot of people misunderstand. Prophecy is NOT about predicting the future. I know it’s exciting, but so many people get hung up on the parlor tricks of prediction that they lose sight of what prophecy is actually for. Prophecy is designed to give us hope. If you learn one thing today, this is what I want you to walk out of here with - prophecy is designed to give us hope. So, keeping that in mind - let’s go back to Micah. Why did Micah need hope? Well as it turns out Micah is from a little town on the south side of Israel. Actually, at this time Israel had gone through a civil war, and so there was Northern Israel and then the south side was called Judah. Micah was from Judah. And God had warned him that bad things were coming. At this time there was this neighboring kingdom called the Assyrians, and they were going to come and destroy Israel. And then right behind them was another empire called the Babylonians - and so Micah is living in a time of conquest, and losing battles. Of deportations and fear that soldiers were going to kick in your door and steal your family to serve as slaves in a foreign empire. It was a terrifying time to be alive. And Micah gives all those warnings - bad things are coming, if you read the whole book of Micah, or any of the prophets, Isaiah was in the Northern kingdom at the same time - his book is not more cheerful. There’s a lot of honest description of the bad - but every single time Micah ends with hope. He is looking at his neighbors, who are terrified, they can hear the war horns on the outside of the city, fires burning in the night sky, and they look to him with tear streaks on their cheeks and fear in their eyes. In that moment, Micah is not performing a magic show to impress them with his predictions. Is this your card? How did he do it? No! No - he is giving them reassurance. He is placing a hand on their shivering shoulders, looking deep into their eyes and saying, “Even in the darkness, there is hope.” Micah 5, verse 3, [read v.3-5a]. Prophecy is designed to give us hope.

So what about you? You don’t live in Jerusalem two thousand seven hundred years ago. We’re not afraid of armies knocking down our doors. You don’t live in Bethlehem, two thousand years ago. We’re not afraid of Herod or Roman oppression. The world is very different than it used to be - but at the core of who we are as humans - our need for the light is the same. Maybe you’re grieving - whether it’s the loss of a loved one, or the end of a relationship and you’re surrounded by all these happy faces and Christmas festivities and in the shadow of all those christmas lights it feels like you’re drowning in darkness. Or maybe there’s a medical procedure - you’ve been battling cancer for a long time, or you’re just going in for a little thing, just to check, just to make sure. Or maybe there was trauma - a single terrible thing that happened that just consumes your life and paralyzes you, and you can’t understand why the rest of world just keeps going at the same speed as if what happened to you didn’t happen to all of them. Or maybe it’s a person - the holidays not only pack out our schedules, but it also brings us into contact with so many people. Sometimes people we’ve been hoping to avoid. The wayward nephew, that one co-worker who makes your life miserable, the frustrating uncle. The brokenness of this world touches our lives in different ways, but even in the midst of all the joy of the holiday season - our need for hope is the same. In your life do you need the reminder that the author who wrote the prophecy, also gets to write the end of your story? 

Or if we jump forward from the time of Micah to the time of Herod. Micah’s people are about to be conquered, but Herod’s people have BEEN conquered. Beat down into submission for a long time. The last prophecy was 400 years before this moment. Jesus’ parents grew up in a time where they had been waiting for a messiah for 400 years! After all that time - how much hope did they even have left? How strong was the temptation to look at their life and say, “this is how it’s always going to be”? How many of you are in a season, and you’ve been in that season for a very long time? I feel like we see this the most with family fights. Whether it’s trying to break through to a teenager who you love so much, but you just don’t know how to reach them, or the tension between you and your parents - and they’re disappointed with you or maybe you’re disappointed with them and it’s been so frustrating for so long and you just don’t want to deal with it anymore. You’ve been waiting for answers, for resolution, for months - maybe even years. If that’s you - if you have a situation in your life and you feel like you’ve been waiting and waiting for answers - I just want you to resonate with the people of Israel when God finally does show up.There is a moment when the puzzle pieces come together - that wonderful, delicious moment when you suddenly see it, see how all the pieces fit together. And even if you’re not there yet - prophecy is designed to give us hope, to help us hang in there. The light is coming, the baby is coming - hang in there. 

The miracle of fulfilling prophecy is a little bit nebulous. Like, this is a tricky message I’m trying to give you this morning. But what I hope you’re starting to see is that when we look back and we see how God has made puzzles in the past - he has crafted moments where all the pieces came together over literally hundreds of years, fulfilling prophecy - that should  give us confidence that Jesus IS who he says he IS, and that Jesus can do what he says he can do. So when he says “you are a beloved child of God.” You are made in God’s image, you are worthy of dignity and respect. When Jesus says, “I love you so much I’m going to break into this world - for you. I’m going to live and teach and serve - for you. I’m going to die on the cross - for you. And I’m going to rise from the grave, defeating death so that you can have eternity with your loving Father in heaven - for you.” You can trust that. Because prophecy shows us that God is actually God, and no matter how strong the darkness seems in your life - the author knows how the story ends. That’s the good news I have for you today - the author knows how the story ends. Jesus, in his life, fulfilled literally hundreds of prophecies - I’ve just pointed out like 2 or 3 of them here today - and looking back on that should give us incredible confidence. 

Think about it this way - my children are still very young, and sometimes they get scared of the dark. There’s a hallway in my home upstairs - and some of my kids, they won’t go up there if the light is turned off. Nope - too scary. I’m not doing it. And as a parent it can be sort of exasperating, “bud, you’ve been up those stairs ten thousand times. And it’s a really short hallway, and the light switch it just right there in the middle. I know you can make it.” Nope - too scary. We think our children are silly to be scared of the dark. The sun sinks behind the horizon, but we smart adults - we know, don’t we? We know that the sun’s coming up again. It’s done it every single day of my entire life. I looked it up, the sun has risen 13,550 times in my life - and I look back on all 13,000 sunrises and I’m feeling real good about the sun coming up tomorrow. It’s actually a sign of maturity to be able to look back at all the sunrises in our past and say, “I can make it through this darkness, because I know the sun is coming back.” And in the same way - it is a sign of spiritual maturity to be able to look back on all the times that God has shown up, all the times God has brought transformation to this world and kept his promises and protected his people and completed the puzzle - it is a sign of maturity to look back, see God’s faithfulness and feel confident that he can get you through this present darkness.

And I guess the last step for this teaching is to connect this confidence that we have when we look back and see prophecy fulfilled - connect that to Joy. Christians teach that Jesus came, born of a virgin in Bethlehem, fulfilled a bunch of prophecies with his life, he died on the cross - rose three days later, which was pretty epic, it’s why we worship him. Then in the end, he ascended into heaven and before he left he said, “someday I’m coming back. And I’m going to get rid of all evil, and I’m going to wipe away every tear, and I’m going to set up my kingdom on this earth.” The very last book in the bible is actually a book of prophecy. And a lot of people get really hung up on the parlor trick, on the prediction stuff. But let’s see if you’ve been paying attention - what is the prophecy for? HOPE, that’s right. The book of revelation is not there to tell us how the world is going to end - if it was, they wouldn’t have used all those weird metaphors and images that we don’t understand. The point of Revelation, the last book of prophecy that exists in the modern world, is not predictions - it is hope. They actually wrote a song about this! People think it’s a Christmas song, but it’s not - it’s a song about the end of the world and Jesus’ second coming and setting up his kingdom on this earth - do you know what I’m talking about? Anybody? Joy To the World! Not a Christmas song - seriously look up the lyrics - there’s no shepherds, no wise men, no angels. There’s no manger, there’s no Santa, there’s not even snow. Little fun fact to make people roll their eyes at the Christmas party - Joy to the World was written by Isaac Watts in 1719, based on Psalm 98, and has nothing to do with Christmas. It’s actually about Jesus coming back. Jesus didn’t just fulfill prophecy thousands of years ago in Bethlehem. Jesus is still fulfilling prophecy. He is still giving us hope, and that hope leads us to joy.

Do you still have your puzzle pieces? Hold ‘em up if you’ve got them. Anybody want to take a guess as to what this picture looks like? [field guesses]. If your life is this puzzle piece, it might be a beautiful little piece all on it’s own, but we have to remember that we are just one part of a masterpiece that God is creating. My challenge for you this week is to put your future, your life, your puzzle piece in God’s hands. Trust that the author of all prophecy will write the end of the story. Stop trying to wrestle control of the universe away from God - that’s a fool’s errand. And don’t cut up your puzzle piece trying to get it to fit somewhere it’s not supposed to go! Maybe you’ve given up on God’s picture, and you’re just trying to get your life to fit somewhere it shouldn’t be. But my challenge to you this week is to trust the one who made the full picture. Let’s take a look at what this puzzle creates [ put the picture on the screen]. That’s lovely, isn’t it. And I’ve got a little piece here, and I’m looking at this piece, and I’m looking at that picture - and I don’t think I could have come up with that. I didn’t know that’s how my little puzzle piece was going to be used. But that’s what it means to trust God with our life, right? It means that no matter what darkness you are walking through right now - knowing that there is a bigger picture gives us hope to carry on. When we read the scriptures, and we hear about God’s promises and what that means for our life - it’s like we’ve taken our puzzle piece and we’re holding it up against the picture on the box. That’s how we make puzzles, right? We hold the picture up as a reference. We check the cover of the box, so we know what we’re working towards. In the same way we hold up God’s love to our life to figure out where we are heading, to feel comfort and reassurance to get us through the hard parts. 

Knowing that there is a bigger picture transforms how we approach our struggles. It can transform exasperated, exhaustion where you’re right on the edge, it can transform that into enduring patience. It can take hopeless cynicism, where you just think it’s never going to change and it’s always going to be like this - and turn it into confident expectation. It’s the difference between feeling like you’ve been abandoned, and you’re hanging out there all by yourself, and getting the call that help is on the way. And the way to do that is to stop looking at your puzzle piece, and start looking at the whole picture. [hold up the bible]. 

God is breaking through the darkness, the baby is coming. The author is about ready to write the next chapter and the master puzzlemaker is about to bring all the pieces together in your life. Let’s pray.