The Promised Messiah: Ruler from Bethlehem

Scripture Meditation: Micah 5:1-5; Matthew 2:1-12; Luke 2:8-20

The seed of a woman. The offspring of Abraham. The scepter of Judah. Of the house of David. A root. A branch. A stump. Born of a virgin. A prophet. A priest. A king. The Lamb of God. A shepherd. Son of God. Son of Man. It’s been thousands of years of waiting since that initial promise all the way back in the garden of Eden. Years of waiting and wondering. Is this the One? When will He come? But instead of His coming, we have more promises, more hints about Him. All of these hints together creating a portrait of the One God would send. Each hint reveals a little bit more about who He will be and what He has come to do. Today’s hint comes from the Book of Micah near the end of the Old Testament Scriptures where we learn that this One who is to come will come from the town of Bethlehem. “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days.”  (Micah 5:2) God is zeroing in on an exact location that He would bring forth His Messiah - the One who would come to rule in Israel, the One whose coming was planned from before the foundations of the world.

After this prophetic word in Micah there would be another 400+ years of waiting. The Old Testament Scriptures end with the Book of Malachi saying “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes...” and then there was nothing. For 400 years there were no new prophecies. No new promises. Only waiting, watching and wondering.  Much like the day in which we live! We live in the same place as those faithful watchers lived. No new revelations. No new promises. Just looking to the Word of God and trusting in His Word and in His faithfulness to carry out His promises.

We wait as they waited. Looking for and believing in the coming of the Promised Messiah. We wait with eager and joyful anticipation because our Bibles don’t end with Malachi. Their 400 years of silence is but a single blank page in our Scriptures. As we turn that page we read the story of Jesus, the Christ, born in Bethlehem, the city of David. We read His genealogy. We read of His miraculous birth. We read of His life, His death, His resurrection. We read His claims about who He is. And we understand that all those prophesies, all those hints that spanned thousands of years, were fully realized in this Jesus, God’s Messiah. And because Jesus came that first time after years and years of waiting, we have a bold confidence that He will come the second time. For the Word of the Lord has spoken. And what God speaks is so!