Sheepish
Jesus is our promised shepherd (Micah 5:1-4, John 10:1-18). 700 years before Jesus was born, Israel/Judah was in a mess, with a succession of bad kings (one who offered his own child in an occult sacrifice) and facing threat from other nations. Taxes were high, morality was low. Judgement was coming. But a prophet called Micah, while speaking of judgement, looked beyond that to the coming of a shepherd king who would not only rule Israel, but the whole world - Jesus, who Micah prophesied would be born in Bethlehem.
Micah prophesied, ‘He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God (Mic 5:4).
Hundreds of years later, the One who was born in Bethlehem would announce that He was indeed the ‘Good Shepherd’ who lays down His life for the sheep. When Jesus used the word that is translated ‘good’, the actual word means ‘beautiful’. (It’s the same word used in Luke 21:5 when the disciples described the temple of Jerusalem as being adorned with ‘beautiful stones’). Our Jesus is the beautiful Shepherd King!
The Psalmist echoes this wonderful truth: ‘One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple (Ps 27:4).
What we think about God determines how we live. I’ve been challenged by the truth that it’s not what we think about God during the good times that matters - how do we see Him when life is tough? (The book of Job amplifies this truth).
As today’s notes state, we humans are rather like sheep - and sheep aren’t that bright! They tend to wander and get themselves into all kinds of scrapes. But, in wonderful contrast, Jesus is -
- The beautiful shepherd/King, who reigns rightly.
- The intimate carer - the shepherd who knows His sheep, and, as Micah describes Him, is tender, gentle, gathers and carries His sheep.
- Empathetic - Micah pictures Jesus ministering ‘in the strength of the Lord’. Jesus was not God in the skin of a human being, but rather fully man, needing the power of the Holy Spirit in exactly the same way that we do. He knows what it means to be human, with the challenges and temptations we face.
- Eternal - Micah says of Jesus, that He is ‘ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times’.
If you have false views of God that are harsh, indifferent, uncaring, or eager to judge, may they be broken, and may this advent season be a time when we ‘gaze upon the beauty of the Lord’.