Seven hundred years before . . .

In his Christmas day sermon, Jordan said, “Where Christ came from was He already was. He didn’t have to be created. In the womb of Mary, God created a body in which He placed the life of His Son. He was, ‘God sent forth His Son out of heaven, made of a woman, in the fullness of the time.’ At the exact moment—this is a preplanned event. Not something that just caught God by surprise; He got up one morning and decided to do it. It was a specifically specified time and, by the way, a specifically specified place for the event to take place.”

Micah 5:1-2 says, “Now gather thyself in troops, O daughter of troops: he hath laid siege against us: they shall smite the judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek. But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.”

Jordan says, “Micah lived 700 years before the birth of Christ. That’s seven centuries, longer than our country’s been in existence. Micah prophesies to the nation Israel about her facing enemies coming in and invading their land, economic collapse and political upheaval and political corruption. You talk about a Middle East problem! The Middle East has been in turmoil for millenniums. This is not something that just began.

“You go 2,500 years ago in Micah’s day and the same kind of conflict going on in the Middle East today was going on then! And the goal of all the Gentile nations around Israel was to destroy Israel. In the face of that Micah prophesies to his people.

“Bethlehem was a small little insignificant town. In fact, there were two Bethlehems in Israel at that time and that’s why he says Bethlehem Ephratah. That’s like saying the name of the city and the county in which He resides. And what he picked out was the itty-bitty one. The only claim to fame this town ever had was that a little shepherd boy named David was born there and that little shepherd boy, you remember, became king.

“It says, ‘yet out of thee shall he come forth.’ You see in Galatians when Paul said, ‘God send forth His Son,’ that’s a reference back to this verse where Micah says, ‘Out of thee, Bethlehem, shall come forth.’ God sends forth His Son in the fullness of the time to be made of a woman, and when He’s made of the woman, His appearance is going to be in the city of Bethlehem.

“When it says, ‘whose goings forth have been from of old,’ you see how ‘goings’ is plural? He had more than one going. Now if you’re old you’re ancient. That’s talking about how long you been around. That’s a reference to time. Everlasting is not time because time doesn’t last forever. You can go back to a place where time began. In the beginning of what? Time and creation. In the beginning of that continuum in which we live—time and space.

“But this one that’s going to come forth in time, comes out of eternity. This isn’t a human person; this is God stepping out of eternity into time in the clothing of our humanity. You see, that makes Him kind of unique. It makes Him a little different. The Lord Jesus Christ demonstrated His deity, that He was who He said He was, by fulfilling that verse.

“Seven hundred years after Micah, the wise men come to Jerusalem ‘seeking him born king of the Jews.’ They know the time! How did a bunch of Gentiles over in the east know? They had some books that told them the time when He was going to be born. God had identified a time and apostate Israel, who had no care for their Bible, laid it aside, and yet some other people had taken it up and knew WHEN to be looking.

“They saw His star. They saw exactly what Jacob told Israel to be looking for in Genesis 49. Just what Balaam, in Numbers 23, said would happen. Just exactly the timeline that Daniel told Israel it will be. Where would you go to look for the king of Israel? Well, Jerusalem’s the ‘city of the great king,’ so they go there.

“When they get there, by the way, in Matthew 2, He’s not a babe in the manger. No wise men came to the nativity scene. In Luke, you go to the nativity and you see the shepherds and they’re biding in the field in that night and they go and worship the babe and then they find Mary and Joseph and the babe lying in the manger and they worship Him.

“But when you come to Matthew 2, when these wise men get to the place where He’s at, He’s not in the manger in Bethlehem; He’s living in Nazareth in a house! And He’s not a baby in the sense of a newborn infant; He’s as much as two years old in Matthew 2 because when Herod wants to go find Him and they give him the slip, he says go out and have every male baby two years and younger killed. Why? He’d looked for the timing when the star appeared because he wanted to know how old the baby was.

“In Matthew 2, the gospel of the kingdom, you don’t go to the nativity, you come to a picture or prologue of the king and He’s in the house! And He’s called a young child over and over in Matthew 2. No longer the infant baby but the little toddler now, and yet He’s still God in our humanity.

“Matthew 2 goes on, ‘[2] Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.
[3] When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.
[4] And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born.
[5] And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet,
[6] And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.’

“Herod went out and got all the rabbinical scholars, brought them in and said, ‘Where’s the Messiah going to be born?’ And they said to Him, ‘That’s easy! In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet, thou Bethlehem in the land of Juda are not least of among the princes of Judah.’
Now that’s just like a bunch of religious tomfoolery right there. Look at what it says: ‘And thou Bethlehem in the land of Juda are not least of among the princes of Juda.’ Micah said you are ‘the least.’ These guys, they don’t want their king to be born in a little insignificant po-dunk place out yonder. They said, ‘You’re not!’ They actually changed God’s Word.

“You better watch preachers. You better watch religious scholars because they’ll take God’s Word and twist it to make themselves look like the winner. That’s why you better look at the verses yourself. Don’t let somebody take the thing out of its context, stick it on a wall, or stick it in a book, and then impose another meaning to it. That’s what these birds did. You have to be careful letting people mess around with your Bible.

“Now why did he get the town right? Because 700 years before, Micah had said it’s going to be Bethlehem. Think about what’s happening here. Here’s a bunch of rabbinical scholars who have no interest in Jesus Christ at all. When He shows up they’re going to hate Him and cry, ‘Crucify Him! Away with Him! We will not have this man reign over us.’ And yet here they are, unsuspecting, unknowing, being the No. 1 witness to the fact He is who He says He is.”

(To be continued tomorrow)