Micah 5:2-5
Introduction
We are very familiar with Christmas but is it possible that we are too familiar with it? Is the story so well known that we have stopped thinking about actually took place.
Here is how I understand what happened. God created the world, including humanity. Humanity rebelled against God, forsaking his way that leads to life for a path leads to death. Instead of just giving up on us, the Son was sent to earth as a human baby. The one who had been omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, was now a helpless baby with all of the limitations of a regular baby. That baby was born for the purpose of growing up, being crucified in a painful and humiliating manner in order to pay for our sins. Let that sink in. Why would God do something so strange, something so radical?
I am going to suggest that it was because of love. A great place to start is John 3:16. “For God so loved that world that he gave his only begotten son…”
The problem with this is that if we are too familiar with the Christmas story, we are also too familiar with the concept of love. Love is used so much in popular language that it has come to mean everything thus it has come to mean nothing.
I think that the average person uses love to describe feelings of affection. Think about the idea of being in love. How do you know if you are in love? It is based on your feelings. You fall in love and this means that you can fall out of love as well.
Love is not just about romance. It can mean anything that we feel affection for, whether human or not. You might love your pet or love chocolate or love gardening. The reason for that is that those things create feelings. Speaking of pets, I can love my dog or cats but I never speak of loving my fish. I might love watching the fish swim around the aquarium but I don’t love the fish as individuals. They can easily be replaced with no emotional loss.
Think of inanimate objects. I love this Bible, not because it is alive but because it creates feelings within me. This is the Bible that my mother gave me and so it creates feelings of nostalgia, we well as reminding me of how much my mother loved me.
A basic belief of most Christians is that God loves us. That is fine but what do we mean by that? Do we mean that God experiences strong feelings of affection toward us?
It is interesting to note that in the ancient world, feelings of affection were not considered essential for either a husband-wife or a parent-child relationship. Love was important but not necessarily feelings of affection.
We are going to look at what the love of God for us was like and then try to understand what that means for how we show love to others.
For God So Loved Us…
We are still in that same general historical era of the Bible. Micah is slightly earlier than the others and he would have been a contemporary of Isaiah. He was living at the time that Assyria was threatening the northern kingdom of Israel. The southern kingdom of Judah was watching the events unfold and they were well aware that they were not safe. Being between Egypt and the Mesopotamian nations of Assyria and Babylon, they were in one of the most unstable regions in the world.
At just such a time, it would be really nice to receive a reminder of God’s love. The way God spoke at that time was through the prophets. But what does Micah say? He does not remind them of the affection that God feels for them. He does not tell them when God thinks of them, he feels all tingly inside.
Instead he tells them that Bethlehem, that was far from being a major centre, was going to be the town from which someone important was going to come. Only one important person had come from Bethlehem before and that was David. It was to David that an everlasting throne was promised. The problem was that the davidic dynasty was looking rather weak. The only option was to go right back to the foundations. They needed more than just another descendent of David, they needed someone as great as David and that is why it would have to begin in Bethlehem. What they did not know was that the leader that was promised would have origins farther back than David. It would go back to ancient days.
What we know is that this messiah was Jesus, the son of David that was born in Bethel. He went back to David and even farther. The Son was co-eternal with the Father, one who participated in creation. This was even more ancient than ancient days. This is the story of Christmas and it was initiated out of love.
The point is that it was not the fluffy love that is portrayed in entertainment. This was love in action. It was not enough for God to feel love, God needed to act on love. That act was giving, a very sacrificial giving. The sacrifice was not just the cross but the incarnation. That God would go back to the town where David was born and become a baby was love long before Jesus entered Jerusalem to go to the cross.
…So We Should Love Others
It is wonderful that God loves us and that God has acted on that love. But one of the expectations is that we would respond to God’s love by loving others. What does that look like? We may still be in the default mode of seeing love as affection. While it is nice when we feel that for people, we cannot manufacture it on demand. When you hear about the importance of loving others, you may think: “Love them? I don’t even like them.” The good news is that biblical love does not require that we like someone. In fact it may or may not be accompanied by feelings good or bad.
Rather than affection, biblical love is closer to the concept of kindness. Think about someone that you consider kind. It usually has something to do with what they do. Growing up, we had a neighbour who had a snowblower and would blow the snow off our sidewalk and driveway. Perhaps it is someone who drives you around or takes you out for coffee or sends you a card. Kindness is not something that can just be felt. Kindness is love in action.
The Bible speaks of two acts of love for us as Christians. One is within the community of faith. Part of the early attraction of Christianity was that people saw how Christians loved one another. They did that by taking care of each other’s needs. This should be the starting point of our love. If we don’t love our own Christian family, we cannot love our neighbourhood. That brings us to the next step of love. We don’t love just Christians. We are to love all people, no matter who they are or how much we might disagree with them. Again, it has nothing to do with how you feel about them. When you have an opportunity to show love, to demonstrate kindness, will we take it. It does not mean that you give money to everyone who asks. But are we looking for appropriate ways to help people in tangible ways.
Conclusion
Jesus told his disciples that people would recognize them by their love for one another. Love your neighbour as yourself. The example Jesus gave was the parable of the Good Samaritan, a story of people separated by ethnic differences and yet a choice was made to help in a time of need. This love is possible because God first loved us. How did God love us? By sending Jesus into this messed up world. God acted on his love. God fulfilled the promise that was made through Micah. Out of the little town of Bethlehem would come from of old, from ancient of days, the Messiah, the one we know as Jesus. That is love. Let that love spill out of our lives into the people around us. Whether we feel it or not.
