THE SON OF DAVID Amos 1:1-2;9:11-15; Micah 4:1-5; 5:2-5a;7:18-20
“PROPHETIC PUZZLE PIECES”
Last week we were treated to a thought-provoking and encouraging message by Jamie, entitled, “Hope For Realists” based on King David's prophetic psalms, 22 and 16. In her conclusion she noted that 'Advent isn't a celebration in the usual sense of the word. Advent is a season of waiting and yearn-ing, with a heightened sense of the gap between what is and what we long for. Advent reminds us that we live in the tension between reality and promise, absence and presence, death and resurrection.'
(Jamie Maciejewski)
In such seasons of longing, we're vulnerable to the voices of false hope among and within us. That was expressed in a post I saw recently online. It said: “Some times I just want someone to hug me and say, 'I know it's hard. You're going to be okay. Here is some chocolate and six million dollars.'”
Not only is that extremely unlikely but it's placing hope in the things of this world. Someone else posted on Facebook the following expression of regret and lost hope: “I hate to cancel. I know we made plans to get together tonight but that was two hours ago. I was younger then and full of hope.”
Nicky Gumbel of Alpha fame, writes in his booklet, 'Why Christmas?': “The reality of the holidays is often less than what we imagined or hoped. As one little girl wrote to her granny, 'Thank you for the nice gloves. They were something I wanted – but not very much!' (Nicky Gumbel)
False hope, though, is a serious matter. While some are relishing..., others feel like they're going under. Depression and suicide rates peak around the holidays every year. The plight of false hope, of course, is nothing new. It plagued God's people during the days of the prophets too. By the time prophets like Amos and Micah were on the scene, the Davidic earthly dynasty was in fast decline. As a result the people longed for the good old days... Threatened by aggressive neighbors, the rulers put their hope in alliances and in the false hope that as long as the temple stood in Jerusalem they were impervious to every threat and could live in pursuit of their own prosperity and privilege.
Amos refers to them as “the fallen house of David” (Amos 9:11). The prophets collectively proclaim condemnation and judgment over Israel for this sad state of affairs because false hope has led to a perpetual state of complacency, injustice towards the poor and blatent idolatry. As Amos declares: “This is what the Lord says to the family of Israel: 'Come back to me and live! Don't worship at the pagan altars at Bethel..., for the people of Bethel will be reduced to nothing.' You twist justice to make it a bitter pill for the oppressed. You trample the poor.... Come back to the Lord and live! Perhaps even yet the Lord God of Heaven's Armies will have mercy on the remnant of his people.”
(Amos 5:4-7, 15)
There are some among us who see some striking parallels between the fallen house of David and America today. The mindset towards immigrants and the homeless mirrors that of ancient Israel, as do the way we have modernized idol worship, be that of our materialism, nationalism, or the mass consumption of the world's resources at the expense of others. We, like the ancient Israelits, also tend to gloss over the prophetic warnings to get to the good stuff. But in order to appreciate the oracles of hope found among the prophets, its important to understand the context in which they were written.
We love the messianic passages but it's noteworthy that both Amos and Micah are best known in our secular culture for the verses that challenge social complacency. “Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to your strummed music. And then comes Amos' best known verse: Rather let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5:23-24)
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And Micah's most quoted verse echoes that. “What can we bring to the Lord? The Lord has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)
So first comes a word of redirection to counter the influence of false hope at work in the soul and lives of God's people. And then, and only then, comes whispers of true hope, of a longing for God to come through in the end and fulfill the promises made to God's peoples over the centuries. These whispers come in bits and pieces. They come sandwiched between warnings of judgment. They wind up being the foundation of a hope realized in the New Testament as these bits are quoted right and left by Jesus and the authors of the gospels. They are in a sense, pieces of a prophetic puzzle.
Question: does anyone here like to put together jigsaw puzzles? My favorite three ladies..., are avid puzzlers. Nicola, in particular, is just such a puzzling person. I saw a T-shirt recently that I think would fit her to a Tee. It read: 'I don't always puzzle. Sometimes I eat and sleep and once I even left the kitchen table'. That would be our Nicola! As for me, I don't mean to brag, but once, I put a huge jigsaw puzzle together in one day – and the box said 2-4 years! I know, right?!
Once, when I was growing up, I overheard my mom tell a houseguest: “He's been working on that jigsaw puzzle for months now. I just don't have the heart to tell him it's a box of Lucky Charms.”
Some of us are just natural puzzlers; others of us are simply puzzling. You know who you are!
The passages we read this morning from Amos & Micah represent some of the many prophetic puzzle pieces in question. Amos' puzzle pieces appear only at the very end of his book. “'In that day I will restore the fallen house of David. From the ruins I will rebuild it... I will bring back the exiles from distant lands. They'll never again be uprooted from the land I've given them,' says the Lord.”
(Amos 9:11, 14-15)
Amos' puzzle piece provides a glimpse of redemption, that what lays in ruins will be restored, and more so, it will be better as it includes a promise of a promised land that can never be taken away. History has shown, there is no such place on this planet so secure, but there is a promised land that lies ahead for those who are the descendants of David, in which the ruins of their lives are redeemed.
Micah adds a couple more pieces. “In the last days, the mountain of the Lord's house will be the most important place on earth and people from all over the world will stream there to worship. The Lord will mediate between peoples and nations as they hammer their swords into plows & their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will no longer fight against nation. Everyone will live in peace.”
(Micah 4:1, 3-4)
This puzzle piece reveals that one day all nations will come to worship the Lord and that the Lord himself will be the source of peace between individuals and the nations. How will the Lord accomplish this? In answer to that, Micah provides another clue, another piece in the puzzle.
“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times. He will shepherd his flock...and his greatness will cover the earth, and he will be our peace.”
(Micah 5:2, 4-5a)
How will God bring peace to the earth? He will do so through a shepherd ruler, whose origins are from ancient times, reminscent of one of God's titles in the Old Testament, the ancient of Days.
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What's more Micah boldly prophecies the city of this ruler's birth, Bethlehem, the city of David's birth, linking the two together. That's a pretty significant piece. It's like the corner piece!
Micah closes his book with one more. This peace that this shepherd ruler embodies, as he is our peace, is achieved by his “hurling all our iniquities into the depths of the sea!” (Micah 7:19)
But there are so many other pieces, just among the minor prophets alone. Matthew will later refer to a piece provided by the prophet Hosea: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” (Hosea 11:1) Matthew notes that piece fitting into the puzzle when Jesus, Mary and Joseph escaped Herod, fleeing to Egypt, only to return upon Herod's death. Who's son is he?
From Malachi the picture forms of someone who will set the stage for this holy son: “I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple... He will be like a refiner's fire or a launder's soap.” (Malachi 3:1-2)
Both Luke and Matthew quote this text in reference to John the Baptist, but it also affirms Jesus ministry in and around the temple, and as John himself said of him, he will refine and baptize in fire!
Malachi concludes with this: “But for you who fear my name, the Sun of righteousness will rise with healing in his wings. You will go free, leaping with joy like newborn calves.” (Mal 4:2)
It's a glimpse not only of Jesus' healing ministry but of his resurrection! And then there's Zechariah who focuses on the passion of this holy Son. He refers to a branch of David's family who “will remove the sins of the world in a single day”, (Zechariah 3:8-9), having been betrayed for thirty pieces of silver, which will be “thrown to the potter in the Temple of the Lord” (11:13), (just as Matthew will later report is exactly what Judas did the night Jesus was arrested), and this branch will arrive in Jerusalem in triumph,“riding on a donkey's colt”,(9:9),“a king to bring peace to the nations, and who will free your prisoners from death..., so that you prisoners may have hope. (9:10-12)
And there it is – the true source of hope being offered in these prophetic puzzle pieces. Each one fills out the picture just a little bit more. No prophet provides more pieces than the major prophet, Isaiah, who among other things identifies this branch as one anointed in the Holy Spirit, which in Hebrew translates, as the Messiah. The Minor prophet confirms this with his famous Pentecost pro-phecy: “In those days I will pour out my Spirit upon all people...” (Joel 2:28), just as Jesus promised. Mathematician Peter Stoner assessed the probablity of a single man fulfilling 48 of these Old Testa-ment prophecies would be that of one in ten -followed by 157 zeros! Fact is, there are well over 200 such prophecies! I've only recounted the border puzzle pieces, and only those of the minor prophets.
It brings to mind a certain father and his daughter, Shelby. She kept pestering him while he was reading the newspaper. She wanted to know what the United States looked like. It turns out there was a colored map of the U.S. On the back of a magazine. Cutting it into little pieces he gave it to her and told her to take it to her room and piece it together. To his surprise no sooner had she departed then she was back in the living room, humming loudly. He asked her how she finished it so quickly, to which she said, “Well, on the other side of the map was a picture of Jesus. When I got all of Jesus sorted out, our country fell into place as well.” Sounds about right!
It's like the woman who received a jigsaw puzzle for her birthday. Not realizing the treasure in her hands, she groaned, “Oh no! Some assembly required!” Through the prophets, God provides clues and glimpses, like pieces in a cosmic pigzaw puzzle, inviting us to put it together. They embody true hope. Collectively they're a call to become players in the prophetic call for justice & faithfulness.
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Each piece points us to the One who comes to set us free from the slavery to sin, false hope and despondency, as heirs that we are, to the legacy of the branch of David, he who “tramples our sins under his feet and throws them into the depths of the ocean!” (Micah 7:19)
As Amos prophecied, “The time will come...!” when all the earth will gather to worship him, having “hammered our swords into plowshares, our spears into garden tools.” For those who lang-uish in seasons of discouragement and despair, “he will be our peace.” (Amos 9:13; Micah 4:4; 5:5)