When Voices of Hope Evangelistic Team is ministering in Word and Song their Fire Choir will sing several songs and then lead the Congregation in singing. Since that isn't possible on-line, please click here and may you be blessed by the song, "Joy To The World, The Lord Has Come. "
Christmas in the Old Testament
Micah 5:2
We’re going to celebrate Christmas this morning but in a way that some would think strange.
Everyone here knows the story of Jesus’ birth as recorded in Matthew and Luke, “For unto you is born this day a Savior, which is Christ the Lord; but if that’s all we know we don’t recognize how long God was planning and preparing and moving all of the pieces of the world in order for us to receive the greatest gift that has ever been given to man, which is Jesus Christ, His Son.
Find the little book of Micah? Micah 5, and in just a moment I'm going to be reading verse 2. The title of our message today: "Christmas in the Old Testament."
The Book of Micah is a small book, and in this small book—it speaks of a small town. And, in that small town, a very small Baby is going to come into the world.
Look in Micah 5:2: "But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee"—out of Bethlehem—"shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting."
Jesus had His birth at Bethlehem, but He did not have His beginning at Bethlehem. He has been from everlasting.
People sometimes ask, "How can I understand the Bible?" and, especially, "How can I understand the Old Testament?" There is a master key that will help you to understand the entire Bible.
That master key is a person—His name is Jesus and He has given us His Holy Spirit. The entire Bible is about the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus is the theme of the Bible; Jesus is the hero of the Bible; Jesus is the message of the Bible; and, rightly understood, He is the author of the Bible.
So, if you want to understand any book, if you know the author, and understand the theme, and are related to Him, I think indeed you could understand this book.
The Bible is a Him-book; it is about Him—the Lord Jesus. Sometimes people mistakenly get the idea that the Old Testament is about Israel, and the ceremonies of the Old Testament, and that the New Testament takes a new departure, and now the New Testament is about Jesus.
But, the entire Bible is about Jesus—and He Himself said so. Jesus said, in John 5:39—He is speaking to the religious leaders of the day. He says, "Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."
When he said, "Search the scriptures" to that crowd, the New Testament had not yet been written.
Now, I’m aware that Micah 5:2 is not a place you traditionally turn to for a Christmas sermon. But the reason that I've chosen it and feel led of God to speak from this prophet's perspective is because the Bible is about one thing, God's desire to connect with us, and to connect us with Him.
In the very end of the New Testament it connects us back to the beginning of the Old Testament, in Genesis 1:1, where it says, "God created the heaven and the earth."
God being outside of time, being in eternity past, realized that if He created heaven and earth, if He created Adam and Eve, if He brought mankind to this creation, we would need a Redeemer; we would have to have someone to come and be our sacrifice. And knowing all of that, He did it anyway. What a mighty God we serve!
I give glory to God; being a sovereign God, He preordained the place "Bethlehem." It's unassuming when Micah speaks of it. He says, "Though you be small among the thousands of Judah."
You would think that if God was going to do something special, why small Bethlehem?
"Bethlehem" is actually two words brought
together. Anywhere you see "Bet," B-E-T, in the Bible, that means house. So you have Bethesda and Bethany here we have Bethlehem. This is "House of bread".
For practical reasons it was called "The house of bread" because it was a city in the middle of wheat fields. And wherever the wheat was harvested, there was a threshing floor.
This is where the grain was separated from the chaff, and it was ground into flour so that it could become life-giving bread.
Bethlehem, the house of bread, in the natural, it made perfect sense. But in the supernatural this is the house where God is going to bring you and I the Bread of Eternal Life.
This is the place where the one who is going to be sacrificed for us is going to begin His life. And His life is where He was sent into His own and they received Him not.
Where He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. He was chastised for our peace, and the punishment of our sin was upon Him.
He was ground from the seed that was sown into the flour that could be made into the Bread of Life which gives you and I the opportunity to become sons and daughters of the Most High God.
I thank God for Bethlehem because though it was
unassuming in the eyes of men, it was everything in the hand of God. And when something is in God's hands, He can use it to change our world forever.
So often, I'm concerned about the treasure that God has given us, because we have forgotten the power that it has empowered us with.
Today, I want you to come with me to a place of God's grace, His mercy, the house of bread in Bethlehem, and recognize that it was an appointed place.
God has an appointed place to pour out His blessings in our life. Nothing happens by accident. Nothing happens by happenstance.
And oftentimes, we as Bible-believing Christians filled with faith want to put our faith in things like irony and luck.
How many times do you hear people say, "Well, I was fortunate." You're not fortunate, you’re favored. And there's a God who has His hand of favor on you.
God chose Bethlehem, because it was in the ancient city of Bethlehem where the first person, who was outside of the lineage of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, was grafted into the promises of God.
We read in the Old Testament, in the book of Ruth, that a man from Bethlehem was in a famine and left Bethlehem for Moab. And there in Moab, his sons took Moabite wives, one, Ruth: and the other, Orpah.
Those sons and Naomi's husband die. Naomi returns to Bethlehem. And this is where we get the Ruth statement, "Entreat me not to leave thee, nor to turn back from following after thee. For where you lodge, I will lodge. And your people shall be my people, and my God shall be your God, and where you die, I die." The loyalty oath.
Many times we use those words at weddings.
So we find that Ruth came to Bethlehem a nobody. No covenant, no place to sacrifice, no altar where she could pray, no voice to be heard in heavenly places, not represented because she had no priest that she could go to.
But there on the threshing floor at Boaz's wheat fields, she encounters a kinsman redeemer. And in one act of grace, he grafts her into the covenant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
In one act of grace, she goes from being an outsider to an insider, from being barren to being blessed, from being a woman without to being someone who is now in the lineage of Jesus Christ.
Why did Micah say, "And you, Bethlehem Ephrathah"?
"Ephrathah" is a word that recognizes this is a place where outsiders become insiders. Why did God choose Bethlehem, because His purpose was not to bless a group of people His purpose was to bless all of the people in every nation on every place on the face of the earth.
He wanted us. He sought after you and I. And He sent His only begotten Son to die for us. Now tell me God doesn't care about you.
After all that He has done to pursue us and provide a means of escape and salvation from sin, many people to this day believe God doesn't care about them.
He not only wants all of us, but He wants each and every person throughout the world, He wants us to be grafted into the promises of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
He wants us to become sons and daughters of the Most High God. He wants us to have every promise and every covenant that is written in His Word and that is yes, and amen, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
He wants us to go from darkness into light. He wants us to walk from shackles into liberty. He wants us to know what it's like to be a son and a daughter of the Most High God!
Thank God for Bethlehem! He chose Bethlehem before He made Eden; the message that brings us hope today is the same God who created heaven and earth is the same God who still knows exactly what we need, exactly when we need it.
All He asks us to do is trust in Him. He knows exactly where we are today, physically, financially, emotionally. He knows exactly where we need to be blessed today.
And He has chosen the exact place and the exact time for us to receive exactly what our heart's desire is.
Just as He waited for all things to come to pass in order for every detail to be placed before He put His Son in that manger, He is patiently waiting for every detail in our life, for us to become who we need to be to receive the power of God that He has stored up for us.
Today, don't bury the promise of Christmas underneath the burdens of your situation, but let God arise and let His enemies be scattered. Because God has a place to pour out His miracle power in your life!
Bethlehem is not just a place it's the only place, because the place of God's purpose is the place of God's power.
We go someplace and we feel God's power, and then we want to pretend as if we get to decide where God's power goes. It's not our power: it's His. God has a place where He's chosen to pour out His power in our life. Maybe it’s each and every Sunday in His house.
This is what He told the children of Israel as they
came out of Egypt, "Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy."
This is what the Psalmist David said when he wrote, "I was glad when they said unto me, 'let us go into the house of the Lord.'"
Why? Because he realized that in God's house was God's place of power, and that you could receive what you needed from God when you got into that place.
In our modern world, we want to pretend like I can find God anywhere. "God and I have great conversations on the golf course." We all have heard people say something like that. Most of what I've heard on the golf course you can't repeat in God’s House.
"Oh, I see God in nature. I find God all over the place." You may think you do, but God has a place of power, and His place is His house, and His house is on His day, and that's right where you should be.
Bethlehem was a threshing floor. What's the big deal about a threshing floor? Well, all of the equipment that you needed to thresh wheat was there. And if you didn't thresh wheat, you didn't get flour. If you didn't get flour, you didn't get bread. If you didn't get bread, you got dead.
In that day bread was the most important food. So where does the process begin? On the threshing floor. Where's the threshing floor? At Bethlehem.
Go ahead, take the wheat home and thresh it there. You're not going to enjoy the bread. The point is, God has a way of doing things. And if they don't align with the way you do things, you adjust because He's God and we are the sheep of His pastures. Bethlehem is not just anyplace. Bethlehem is the only place.
Had Ruth gone to anyone else's fields, she would have not been redeemed. Had she gone back to anyone else's city, she would've been forgotten.
But because she went to the place where she could be grafted in, 28 generations later on the threshing floors of Bethlehem, eternity would be shaken, as Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life, broke the silence of the night with an infant's cry.
With the cry of an infant, God Almighty put hell on notice that they had been defeated. With the cry of an infant, God Almighty told sickness and death that they would be conquered.
With the cry of an infant, God said to the generations of the world, "Though you were far from Me, I've now reached out and brought you near to Me.
Though you were lost, I've made you found. Though you were dead, I've given you life. Though you were slaves, I've set you free."
Child of God, you are an heir and a joint heir, a full recipient of God's great grace because of what
He did at Bethlehem.
Bethlehem is not only an appointed place, but it's a place of purpose. And the purpose of Bethlehem is not to remind us that every 12 months, we come tickle baby Jesus under the chin.
We like baby Jesus because we can control Him. But you don't have to read too long in the gospels. Luke 2:40 reads, "And the Child grew."
What does that mean? He came as a baby but He grew to be the King of kings and the Lord of lords: the conqueror of death, hell and the grave.
Follow Him from Bethlehem. The Bible says He grew in spirit and wisdom and grace. Follow Him to the banks of the river Jordan. There, John the Baptist is baptizing people for the remission of sins.
Symbolically, with every human being that is put under the waters of the Jordan, the sin in their life is washed off of them, and it's floating around in this river as it runs downstream.
And while John is baptizing, he looks up and he sees the only begotten Son of God coming, and he prophetically says, "Behold the Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world."
He was letting everyone know who would ever hear those words, "This is no baby in a manger; this is the sacrificial Lamb that paid the price for your sins." Into the waters of sin, a sinless Son goes.
There He stands to be baptized, the sinless One in a sea of our transgressions. He parts the waters. It's a symbol of a grave. He comes out of that watery grave, and the voice from Heaven says, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I'm well pleased." It was God telling us, "I have paid the price for your sins."
Follow Him from the river Jordan. Everywhere He went, He crushed the head of the serpent. 1 John 3:8, "The Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil."
Everywhere He saw the sick, He healed them. Everywhere He saw the blind, He touched them, and they could see. When He encountered the deaf, He opened their ears, and they could hear. When He saw those who were demon-possessed, He said, "Be free.".
When He saw those who were bound in grave clothes, He said, "Loose them and let them go". Why, because He was the Son of God, sent to destroy the works of the devil.
When He saw those who should've been condemned under the law, He said, "Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more".
His grace was sufficient. Follow Him from His ministry, back into the City of Jerusalem. There they take the palm branches and they shout, "Hosanna, Hosanna" only a few days later denying
Him and demanding His crucifixion.
Knowing that He was the Lamb of God from the foundations of the earth, slain for sinners, He kneels in the Garden of Gethsemane, and for the first time in His years of living, He asks something for Himself.
He says, "Father, if it be thy will, let this cup pass from Me." As the burdens of my transgressions and yours were placed upon His shoulders, Jesus answers Himself, and says, "Nevertheless, not My Will but Thine be done".
What do you do when you ask God to change His plan, and He's silent? If He doesn't respond, it means He hasn't changed His mind. Carry on. How often do we interpret God's silence with our will, rather than understanding if He had something else to say, He would?
"Nevertheless, not My Will but Thine be done." And from there, He allowed them to arrest Him. Don't ever confuse the fact that He was taken into custody with the fact that He was the Lamb who laid down His life.
No chain could hold Him. He held the stars in the palm of His hand. He said, "No one takes My life. I lay it down." He let them arrest Him. He let them try Him. He let them mock Him. He let them beat Him. He let them scourge Him with a cat-of-nine-tails until you couldn't recognize His physical body. Why? So you and I could become sons and daughters of the Most High God.
Follow Him from His trial and His mocking and His beating to a place called Calvary. See what happens to the baby in Bethlehem as the treasure that God placed there is now stretched between heaven and earth, and there He cries these words, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me"?
He was forsaken so that you and I could be forgiven. He was rejected so that you and I could sit here today, accepted, not of anything that we've done, but because of what He has done for us.
He bore our shame, so we could stand in this place and boldly go before God the Father into the throne room of grace.
He gave us His Name so whenever we called upon Him in the Name of the Lord; we would receive an answer from Heaven.
What was born in Bethlehem as a baby is now seated at the right hand of God the Father. And He has the Name that is above every name, and that Name is Jesus the Christ.
At the Name of Jesus, every sickness is defeated. At the Name of Jesus, mountains can be moved. At the Name of Jesus, your life is filled with power. At the Name of Jesus, you go from death unto life.
At the Name of Jesus, you receive victory and you have that victory today!
God has given us a treasure at a place called Bethlehem. Don't bury that treasure, embrace it. Receive it for the gift that it truly is. And then share it with all who need to know.
Don't let God's greatest gift in your life be lost in the distractions and the details of circumstances and situations that will not matter in days to come.
Realize that what He gave to us in the form of His Son Jesus Christ is life-giving bread. It's not a mystery. It's a miracle.
People say, "Well, I just don't understand." If we limited our lives to what you didn't understand, we would have a lot less. Don't try to make it confusing. Receive it and celebrate it as the gift that it is.
Rejoice that the treasure of Bethlehem has defeated sin. Rejoice that the Son of God has paid for your forgiveness. Rejoice that the charges that were against you have been dropped, and you're now set free: for whom the Son sets free is free indeed.
Receive this treasure today, and let those who desperately need it, know that our Savior, Jesus Christ, was not only born in Bethlehem but He can be born in you.
He has risen, and He is King of kings and Lord of lords, to the glory of God the Father.
I trust you all have a Merry Christmas, in Jesus’ Name, Amen!
We often sell ourselves short when we say to each other simple clichés, like, "Jesus is the reason for the season." But the reality of it is, is Jesus is not the reason for the season; Jesus is the reason, period.