The City of David

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“But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, are only a small village among all the people of Judah. Yet a ruler of Israel, whose origins are in the distant past, will come from you on my behalf.”

— Micah 5:2 NLT
The Bible speaks of the future with absolute certainty. That is because God is eternal. He can see the future as accurately as we can see the past. It is all a continuum to God. It is all the same to Him. So when the Bible says a certain thing is going to happen, it is not like God is going out on a limb. It is not like a tabloid prediction. It is basically a revealing of history ahead of time by the God who sees the future as clearly as He sees the past.

Earlier this month, we looked at the life of David, “a man after God’s own heart,” who was chosen to play a key role in the ancestry of Jesus. You may remember that God sent the prophet Samuel to a small town in the land of Judah, about five miles southwest of Jerusalem, to anoint David as the king of Israel.

You probably remember the name of the town, too. (If not, you read it in the verse above.) If this devotion had dropped three months ago, on December 25, you probably would have been hearing its name quite a bit. “Now the Lord said to Samuel, ‘You have mourned long enough for Saul. I have rejected him as king of Israel, so fill your flask with olive oil and go to Bethlehem. Find a man named Jesse who lives there, for I have selected one of his sons to be my king’” (1 Samuel 16:1 NLT).

The town shows up again in the passage from Micah 5 above. This is a prophecy, written seven hundred years before Christ came to earth, that the Messiah—“ruler of Israel”—would be born in Bethlehem. The phrase “whose origins are in the distant past” refers to One who is eternal. Jesus is the only eternal ruler of Israel.

God gave Micah this prophecy. So why, seven hundred years later, did He choose earthly parents for His Son who were from Nazareth? The answer is that geography isn’t an obstacle for Him. In fact, nothing is an obstacle for Him. A greedy Roman ruler who wants to conduct a census so that he can better control tax revenue? God can work with that. An order for all Jewish people to return to the cities of their ancestors to register for the census? He can work with that, too. A small town so ill-equipped to handle the crowds that descended on it that a heavily pregnant woman was forced to give birth in a shelter for animals? He can work with that, too.

It’s not like God was at the mercy of those circumstances. He was orchestrating them, bringing them together in a perfect way.
That’s how Mary and Joseph came to be in a stable in Bethlehem when the time came for her to give birth. That’s how Jesus came to be born in Bethlehem. That’s how a prophecy made more than seven hundred years earlier came to be fulfilled.

God used unlikely sources and extraordinary circumstances to fulfill His prophecy. Jesus’ virgin birth serves as yet another reminder that nothing is beyond the Lord’s control and that all things work together according to His will. We can trust Him to do what is best, in every circumstance.

Question for reflection: How has God used extraordinary circumstances to accomplish something amazing in your life?