Micah 5:2-5a
“His Promise to Shepherd You”
December 23, 2012 - Fourth Sunday in Advent

         A brown and white cloud drifted down the hillside ahead. At least that’s what it looked like until our car drew closer. Then we saw a flock of goats meandering down and out onto the road in front of us. We braked to a stop and then watched as the goatherd appeared in the middle of his goats, ambling along, casually flicking a thin stick back and forth. He never struck one of the animals, but somehow his presence and gestures kept them together, kept them moving until slowly but surely they were all across the road and disappearing into the rocky, dry terrain of the Greek Peloponnese.

         I’ve had just enough brief experiences with sheep and goats to admire the calm skill of that herder. He made it look easy, but I imagine it was a lifetime of experience that let him so deftly guide his unruly charges across that road and along the path to wherever they were headed.

         Sheep and goats are not bright. Yes, they will naturally bunch together, but their innate tendency is not to head in any particular direction. They are much more likely to amble this way and that rather than point their noses down a path and follow it together. It’s an art to get them all aimed the same way, moving in a single direction. As the Bible suggests over and over, they are in this respect very much like people, like you and I.

         This Advent we’ve wandered through the minor prophets more or less backwards, starting near the end and working forward. We’ve seen each Sunday how God made a promise to His people and then fulfilled it Jesus Christ. God kept His promises to us through Christmas, Jesus’ birth.

         We saw in Zechariah how Jesus fulfilled God’s promise to save us. We pondered with Malachi how God promised to refine us and remake us in Christ. Last week we heard from Zephaniah the beautiful promise that God will actually delight in us through His Son. Now we have moved back to our last stop among these prophets. In Micah, chapter 5, verse 4, we hear our heavenly Father promising to shepherd us.

         Did I mention that sheep are dumb? Sheep are weak. They are nothing but inefficient generators of wool socks and lamp chops. They make cute stuffed toys for kids, but they are not the sort of creature on which to pattern your life. Promise to make me fly like an eagle, or to be strong like a bear, or even give me wisdom like some old ele­phant, fine. But promise to have me bleating like a sheep, and I will run the other way.

         Yet down the centuries Jews and Christians both have found a great deal of comfort in the picture of the Lord as our shepherd. Psalm 23 is probably the most dearly loved passage in the Bible. City people like us—most of us a long way from the farm even if we grew up there—still find the image of Jesus with His shepherd’s staff heartwarming and comforting. God comes to us, saving and healing and carrying us home like lambs on His strong shoulder. When wolves attack and life wounds us and leaves us helpless, then I am more than glad to be nothing but a sheep and to have a shepherd like Jesus.

         However, my initial feelings about being a sheep are not all wrong. There is more to the Bible’s idea of a shepherd and his sheep than we often consider. Verse 4 says the promised One will be a shepherd and that His people are His flock. But the context goes beyond our warm fuzzies about sheep and shepherds.

         Up until verse 4, the picture Micah paints of the Messiah is anything but pastoral and peaceful. Verse 1 talks about a ruler who was a weakling. Invaders from Assyria would slap him on the cheek. Micah prophesied when the Assyrian empire was expanding around the Hebrew people. Their king would be a puppet under a foreign ruler.

         Verse 2 promised a different ruler for Israel, one from Bethlehem, one from the ancient line of kings de­scended from David. David was from Bethlehem. This new ruler from Bethlehem would stand up against Israel’s enemies. It is a promise that has little to do with a kindly shepherd search­ing out lost little lambs.

         All over the ancient world images of a shepherd, a king, and a war­rior were intermixed. In the Iliad, Homer refers to the great Greek kings and war heroes Agamemnon and Hector—who faced off at the battle of Troy—as “shepherds of the people.” That image may have come to him from the mideast, from Hebrew usage.

         David, the first great king of Israel, was literally a shep­herd before he was anointed king. In II Samuel 5:2, when the tribes of Israel came asking David to be king over all of them, they told him, “the Lord said to you, ‘You will shepherd my people Israel, and you will become their ruler.’”

         So the images of shepherd and ruler and commander were intertwined in the Hebrew mind. That’s how Micah gets from verse 2 about a new king from Bethlehem to verse 4 and the image of standing and feeding his flock. That’s why Matthew 2 tells us how King Herod asked the chief priests and teachers where the Messiah would be born, and they quote Micah 5:2 about the ruler from Bethlehem and then add that He “will be the shepherd of my people Israel.”

         God’s promise to shepherd His people goes well beyond simple care and comfort for their physical needs. People are more than sheep. We need and want more than just a safe place to sleep and our next meal, as important as those things are. We need direction. We need purpose. We need a way to come together and move toward something better and brighter than the chaos in which we often find ourselves. The promise of a Shepherd is the promise of someone to lead us.

         Micah’s prophecy looked ahead to Jesus. It went further than an immediate need for a leader capable of dealing with the Assyrians. The immediate future is bleak. Verse 3 speaks of God “giving up” Israel. For awhile they would have no king, no shepherd to guide them. They would be ruled by kings of other countries. Israel would be abandoned, leaderless.

         In between the Old and New Testaments, the flock of Israel managed to draw together a bit. They threw off their enemies and put a king of sorts on the throne. That’s why king Herod was there when Jesus was born. But the great line of kings coming from that first shepherd king, from David, was almost gone. So God promised to go back to where it started, to little Bethlehem, and bring forth a true Shepherd, a true king and leader for His people.

         God fulfilled the promise in these verses when Mary gave birth to Jesus in Bethlehem. As verse 3 says, the promise was waiting, “until she who is in labor has brought forth.” Mary herself understood some of what it would mean for her Son to be the Shepherd, to be the ruler of Israel. We heard it as we listened to and then sang her song from Luke chapter 2 this morning,

         The power of God’s righteous arm
         amazing things has wrought;
         earth’s mighty ones he has subdued,
         like dust they’ve come to naught.

         The Shepherd that the shepherds went to see in Bethlehem is more than just a kind-hearted soul who loves animals. Mary’s baby grew into a Man who would do what Micah said in verse 4, “stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.” His origin is “from of old, from ancient days,” it says in verse 2. Jesus came to be a “shepherd of the people” in that full and ancient sense. He came to be king and commander.

         I remember several years ago when one little boy in our children’s group heard us singing together Brian Howard’s song, “I just wanna be a sheep, ba, baba, ba.” He slumped in his chair, folded his arms, and said, “I don’t wanna be a sheep.” Who can blame him if all it amounts to is being led around like a dumb animal waiting to be fed and cared for?

         But if our Shepherd is our king and commander, then it’s more exciting. To be in Jesus’ flock is not going out to pasture. It’s more like joining the American revolution to serve under George Washington or shipping out to invade Normandy under Dwight Eisenhower. It is to place yourself under Jesus’ orders and direction, making the Lord’s goals your own goals, making His invasion and salvation of this world your own battle.

         As Jesus looked out over crowds of people, Matthew says they seemed to Him like “sheep without a shepherd.” We hear that to mean there was no one to care for them, to feed them. But hear it now with ears schooled by the prophetic image of a ruling shepherd. Those “sheep without a shepherd” were a nation without a leader, an army without a general.

         God’s promise to shepherd you is a promise to give you direction. It is not just a promise to feed and tend and care for you, taking care of your basic needs. It is the Lord’s commitment to command and order your life so you can be part of what He is doing in this world, be part of His kingdom as it invades the world with peace.

         Verse 4 says people living under the Shepherd King will live securely. That may sound like it’s going back to safe and cozy images of sheep being fed and watered and protected. But look at the reason for the security of the Shepherd’s sheep. “They shall live secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth.” Jesus’ people are secure because His power will extend across the planet. If Jesus is our Shepherd, then we are part of His plan to conquer the world for His kingdom. There’s our security.

         God’s promise to shepherd you is more than the comfort of green pastures and still waters. It is a promise to become your leader and commander for life. Even in Psalm 23 we move past gentle pastures to be guided “on paths of righteousness,” leading up to and through “the valley of the shadow of death.” He sets a table for us in the presence of our enemies. Our Shepherd is leading us on a march to fight for His kingdom.

         Accepting Christ as your Shepherd means accepting His direction for your life. When He has found you and brought you into the flock, the story is not over. It is just be­ginning. It is now time to discover how to live by His order, by His direction. To be the Lord’s sheep is to be a recruit at boot camp. We have a whole discipline to learn and put into practice.

         The Israelites looked out of their city and saw Assyrians mounting a siege. They looked for a Shepherd who could lead them against those opponents. You and I live in a world still besieged by God’s opponents. Like it was at the time of Jesus’ birth, there are madmen who kill children. There are cruel people who enslave women to their own desires. There are evil rulers who exploit their people and mass weapons to make war on other people. We still need a Shepherd to bring us together and guide us through all these battles and many more.

         But as Micah reminds us, our Shepherd does not command and fight like other rulers. He comes out of “little” Bethlehem. And He leads and fights through little people. Tolkien taught us that in his stories. In the new hobbit film, Gandalf says, “Saruman believes it is only with great power that evil is defeated. That’s not what I’ve found. It’s the little things. Simple acts by ordinary people.”

         To take up the fight with Jesus as our Shepherd King is to enter a discipline, an order of learning to do the simple, little things that stand against the evil powers of this world. Help a child who is afraid and speak out against the forces which put children in danger. Give a homeless person a temporary place to sleep and support measures that provide permanent housing. Show love to someone who is mentally ill and vote for systems to care for and treat those who struggle with such illness.

         It’s all part of our Shepherd’s battle to share the good news about Jesus with boys and girls here in our neighborhood and in India. He’s our king when we forgive someone who has hurt us and when we put the needs of others before our own. We are living in His kingdom when we come together and sing His praise and hear what He has to say to guide our lives.

         We celebrate the “church year” here at Valley Covenant to remember that we belong to the Great Shepherd. Our lives are directed by a different order from the world’s. We’re not all about work schedules and school calendars. We observe an order around the life of Jesus. Each year we move through His birth, His life, His suffering and death, and then His resurrection from the dead. Then we continue into a season recalling how He sent the Holy Spirit. Through the Spirit, our Shepherd still leads us. Waiting awhile into Advent to sing Christmas carols is a way to say our lives are not run by retailers saying it’s time to celebrate. It is a commitment to our Shepherd’s order and direction.

         A couple weeks ago we watched our children enact the Christmas story up on this platform. A couple of our shepherds got into their role. At one point they were supposed to bring the little ones playing sheep forward. We all smiled or chuckled as those small shepherds gripped their staffs and earnestly waved the “sheep” on, herding them toward their places. Let that remind us of how earnestly our Savior wants to lead us, to bring us together into the places He has for us all.

         I landed in Boy’s Chorus in seventh grade. It didn’t want to be there. But my counselor said I had to have a music class. I didn’t play an instrument so I couldn’t be in the band or the orchestra. Thus I found myself in a roomful of other junior high boys, most of whom did not want to be there anymore than I did. The result was pretty wild.

         The first day we filed into the music room and began to joke, pass notes, throw spit wads, put gum on each other’s seats, and anything else we could think of. This was definitely not the cream of the crop at our school. Most of the real delinquents were there, including a kid who had been held back a couple times and had a beard. He sat in the back row reading a dirty book.

         Into the chaos walked Mrs. Anderson, a ramrod straight Jewish lady with a Swedish name. She established immediately that she was in charge and began to put us in order. Each boy was summoned to the piano to sing for her the notes she played. She then assigned us each a part: soprano, alto, tenor, bass. She moved us around, shuffled us into four distinct groups. Then she faced the new order she had created, and shepherded us into being a chorus.

         We were all more or less scared of that woman. She brooked no nonsense. She took the delinquent’s dirty book away and he became her star bass. She sent spit wad shooters to the principal. One or two of the worst disappeared from class. No one passed notes. We all kept our eyes on her, because she demanded it. And an amazing thing happened.

         After a few weeks, the sounds we made became tolerable. We learned to find our parts in all the notes. We learned to listen to the other parts. And we followed the direction of her hands, her face and her whole body. Not even noticing, we moved be­yond simple songs in English to Latin, and French, and even Bach in German. We sang in the school Christmas concert. We sang in a city-wide school music festival. We got in a bus and rode to a festival of choirs from all over. A lot of us began to enjoy it. We sounded pretty good. We even began to appreciate Mrs. Anderson and the fact that she had a bit of a wild side herself. Her old Ford Falcon had a bumper sticker that read “Mahler Grooves!”

         A bunch of junior high boys became a choir because Mrs. Anderson shepherded us and brought order to what we were. That is exactly what God promises to do for us when we welcome Jesus Christ to be our Shepherd. He takes all the raw and rough material of you and me and orders and directs it into something new and wonderful. He creates harmony where there was none before. He gives us each a place and a part in His kingdom, a part right along­side the choir of angels who sing His praise.

         Let Christ the Lord shepherd you. Let Him keep His promise to rule and direct your life. The result will be better than you can imagine. Give yourself up to following His way. Make His kingdom the first order of your life. And you will discover the truth that is in Micah’s clos­ing words about the promised Shepherd, “And he will be their peace.”

         Amen.

         Valley Covenant Church
         Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
         Copyright © 2012 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj