Predicting the future, 125 years in advance...

At the church where I serve, we are in the middle of our Christmas sermon series, entitled Echoes of Christmas. During this series, we are going to look at three different events from history that served as echoes that reverberated and impacted the very first Christmas. During this series, we are going to discover how these echoes of Christmas continue to reverberate and impact our lives today. And as we go through this series, our hope and our prayer is that God would move, by the power of the Holy Spirit, so that we would wrap our heads, hearts, and hands around these echoes of Christmas and the impact that they have had on Christmases throughout history, so that we would live lives that reflect these echoes of Christmas to those around us every day of every year.

This week I would like for us to spend our time looking at another echo of Christmas. We find this echo in a section of a letter in the Old Testament of the Bible called the book of Micah. And it is in this section of this letter that we are reminded of another echo of Christmas that has reverberated throughout history. However, before we jump into this section of the book of Micah, we first need to understand a few things about Micah and the context in which we will jump into this section of this letter.

The book of Micah was written by a man named Micah, who was a prophet who served as a messenger of God who proclaimed God’s message to the Jewish people of the southern Kingdom of Judea from 740-690 B.C. During this time, the Jewish people of the Southern Kingdom were led by three different kings, who were Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. Jotham was a good king but did little to call the Jewish people back to God. As we discovered last week, King Ahaz was perhaps the worst king to ever lead the Jewish people of the Southern Kingdom.  The third King, King Hezekiah was committed to the Lord and zealous to call the Jewish people to return to the Lord.

Throughout the book of Micah, we see the prophet proclaim the Lord’s message condemning the wealthy, the local rulers, and false prophets, who were oppressing the common people of the Southern Kingdom. Micah proclaimed the Lord’s message condemning the wickedness of the rich who were cheating the poor. Micah proclaimed the Lord’s message condemning the wickedness of the rulers over the poor. Micah proclaimed the Lord’s message condemning the wickedness of the false prophets who were leading the Jewish people astray and who were taking bribes.

And 35 years after the prophet Isaiah had proclaimed the Lord’s message to wicked King Ahaz, which we looked at last week, in 701 B.C. the Jewish capital of Jerusalem found themselves surrounded by the invading Assyrian Empire. Just as the prophet Isaiah had proclaimed to the Jewish people 35 years earlier, while King Ahaz and the Jewish people of the southern kingdom of Judea placed their confident trust in the nation of Assyria instead of the Lord, that trust would be misplaced.

And that misplaced trust in Assyria would have devastating consequences for the southern kingdom of Judea. From 732 B.C. to 701 B.C., the Assyrian Empire would be a menace to the Jewish people, culminating with the Assyrian army preparing to conquer the capital city of the Jewish people. And it is in this context that the Lord sent Micah to proclaim the Lord’s message to the Jewish people of the Southern Kingdom. So let’s look at that message together, beginning in Micah 4:9-10:

"Now, why do you cry out loudly? Is there no king among you, Or has your counselor perished, That agony has gripped you like a woman in childbirth? ¹⁰ "Writhe and labor to give birth, Daughter of Zion, Like a woman in childbirth; For now you will go out of the city, Dwell in the field, And go to Babylon. There you will be rescued; There the LORD will redeem you From the hand of your enemies.

Here we see Micah is paint a word picture of a woman in labor to expose what led to the distress and anguish that the Jewish people were experiencing as the army of the Assyrian Empire surrounded the city. Micah basically proclaimed “Why are you crying out in despair? After all, you have a king and you have counselors who can give you guidance and put your trust in?”

You see, similar to last week when the prophet Isaiah confronted King Ahaz for placing his confident trust in the Assyrian Empire instead of the Lord, here Micah is confronting the Jewish people of his day for placing their trust in human plans and power instead of the Lord. Micah then predicted and proclaimed that there would be a day in the future when the Jewish people would be conquered and led captive to Babylon.  Their selfishness and rebellion that led them to place their trust in their own plans and power instead of the Lord would lead to them being conquered and led into captivity.

What is so fascinating is that Micah made this prediction and proclamation in 701 B.C., when the Assyrian Empire, not the Babylonian Empire, was the dominant military and political power in the world. However, 125 years before the events in history would actually occur, Micah proclaimed that the Assyrian Empire would be conquered by the Babylonian Empire, which would then invade the Jewish nation and, in 586 B.C., conquer the nation and lead them into captivity.

In addition, Micah proclaimed that there would be a day in the future, after their captivity, that the Jewish people would be given the opportunity to return to their home. And in 538 B.C., 50 years after being conquered and led captive by the Babylonian Empire, the Persian Emperor Cyrus, after conquering the Babylonian Empire, allowed the Jewish people to return home in fulfillment of this prediction by Micah. However, as Micah continued to proclaim the Lord’s message to the Jewish people, we see Micah make another amazing prediction and proclamation.

Tomorrow we will look at that prediction and proclamation together...