What matters to you? Have you considered this question? What matters to you? What is vital in your life, and why is it important? Some answer this question this way: “life, good health, family, a good home, and a good source of income” are important. Another might say what was important was four things: “love, joy, peace, and a purpose greater than themselves." Finally, a third may say, “a purpose in life, mental health, physical health, relationships, meaningful work, and finances” matter. Do any of these answers resonate with you as you try to answer the question, “What matters to you?”
Our answer may depend on our age. I was speaking with someone who shared that their grandson’s elementary school had each student walk across the stage with a poster board showing their answer to the question, “When I grow up I want to be _________.” Child after child crossed the stage with their answer. Several had the words "policeman," "fireman," "doctor," or "lawyer." When their grandson walked across the stage, his card read, “kind.” “When I grow up, I want to be kind.” Parents stood and applauded this child. That child had a different understanding of what mattered, and people recognized the significance of this child’s response.
We certainly need police officers, firefighters, doctors, lawyers, and a host of other professions. But we sorely need people who have the desire to be kind, loving, peaceful, compassionate, and a host of other virtues. How do we adjust our perspectives on what matters? For us, our answer is simple. The Scriptures, the Bible, continually offer us a different understanding of what matters. The Bible does so because it is about God, and God is vastly different from us. While we are made in the image of God, we are not God. While we may be able to express kindness, love, peace, and compassion at times, it often requires conscious effort. We must nurture those virtues and make them matter so that we can act accordingly. On the other hand, God acts in accordance with His nature, which is kind, loving, peaceful, and compassionate. God does not need to think about acting in those ways; it comes naturally to Him. God has always been trying to nurture us to adopt His ways.
We read today from the Old Testament prophet Micah. Much of the Book of Micah is about the prophet expressing God’s desire that His people act more like Him. In the Book of Micah, we find that God saw the leadership of the Hebrew people had become corrupt. Micah wrote, “1 Woe to those who plan iniquity, to those who plot evil on their beds! At morning’s light, they carry it out because it is in their power to do it. 2 They covet fields and seize them, and houses, and take them. They defraud people of their homes, they rob them of their inheritance” (Micah 2:1-2). Micah went a little further and said, “11 Her leaders judge for a bribe, her priests teach for a price, and her prophets tell fortunes for money” (Micah 3:13). The leaders were not kind, loving, or compassionate. The leaders were using their power to seize the people's possessions. The Micah, the prophet, wrote, “Listen, you leaders of Jacob, you rulers of Israel. Should you not embrace justice, 2 you who hate good and love evil” (Micah 3:1-2a).
Micah said a day will come when the Lord gathers the lame; assemble the exiles and those in grief. He will make the lame his remnant” (Micah 4:6-7a). Micah was revealing God’s plan to bring His nature into the human realm. Moreover, God would be particular about where this change would begin and what its nature would be. Micah wrote, “2 [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. 4 He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth. 5 And he will be our peace” (Micah 5:2, 4-5a).
Micah was revealing God’s plan to bring about a new revelation of His nature, a nature of righteousness and peace. The place where it would all begin was in Bethlehem, in the lands of Judah. Revealing the location of the start of God’s plan was something that mattered to God? Why would the location matter? A key reason was that this prophecy was part of several that all related to an anointed one coming from God, but of the family line of David.
David was from Bethlehem. We might recall that God sent the prophet Samuel to Bethlehem to anoint a new king of Israel because Saul, the king at that time, had failed to follow God’s instructions. When Samuel arrived at the house to which God sent him, to the home of a man named Jesse, Samuel called for Jesse to present all his sons to Samuel. Jesse called all his sons, except David. David was the youngest and smallest of his sons. David’s father, Jesse, did not think David was worthy to stand before the prophet Samuel. His other sons were much stronger and bigger than David, so Jesse rejected David. One by one, God rejected David’s brothers, saying of each, “7 Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). A ruler coming from Bethlehem to reverse the corruption of current Israel must have the heart of God. Samuel demanded that Jesse produce all his sons. Jesse then called for David, the one rejected, and at God’s direction, Samuel anointed David the new king of Israel.
Isaiah, another prophet, foresaw the coming of a new ruler in the line of David. Isaiah wrote, “1 A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. 2 The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—3 and he will delight in the fear of the Lord” (Isaiah 11:1-3). Sadly, Isaiah also foresaw that this new ruler would suffer. Isaiah wrote, “1 Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? 2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. 3 He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces, he was despised, and we held him in low esteem” (Isaiah 53:1-3).
Seven hundred years after the prophesies of Micah and Isaiah, God acted. We learn how God unfolded this plan in the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew wrote, “After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem 2 and asked, 'Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” 3 When King Herod heard this, he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. 5 “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written: 6 ‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel’” (Matthew 2:1-6). The news had been given. The promised ruler had arrived. He was born in Bethlehem. Micah’s prophecy had been fulfilled.
Yet, the king, the religious leader, and the people all shared one reaction. They were disturbed. They were thrown into confusion, terror, and turmoil. Why didn’t the news that God had acted bring about rejoicing? Because the coming of a Godly ruler would put an end to what mattered to them. What mattered? Power, money, and pride mattered, and so this newborn king “had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him, he was despised and rejected by mankind” (Isaiah 53:2b-3a).
So, King Herod sent the Magi on their way to find the newborn king, saying he wanted to worship the baby, but that was not his intention at all. “16 When Herod [later] realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi” (Matthew 2:16). And so, from the outset of life, this new ruler was indeed, “a man of suffering, and familiar with pain” (Isaiah 53:3b). Power, money, and pride mattered to Herod and thus by extension to the religious leaders and the people. Worshipping the newborn king did not matter.
A few years after the birth of the newborn ruler and the subsequent murders of innocent boys in and around Bethlehem, King Herod's body became riddled with disease. Herod knew his days would soon end, and he knew no one would mourn his death. And so, Herod ordered 800 prominent men from across Israel to be gathered in Jerusalem. Herod also ordered that upon his death, all 800 men should be executed so that there would be weeping and mourning across Israel upon the occasion of Herod’s death. Herod wanted one last act of power to mark his life and death. Herod died, and with him the order to execute the 800 men. There would be no executions and no mourning at Herod’s death. Herod no longer mattered.
With Herod’s death, we can focus the remainder of our time today on this newborn ruler. What did the ancient voices tell us about him? First, of course, he was born, born in Bethlehem. Second, like David, he was despised and rejected by mankind. We saw that. Third, we saw the kingdom's corruption at that time through Herod. We heard what this new Godly appointed ruler would be like through the words of Isaiah, “2 The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—3 and he will delight in the fear of the Lord” (Isaiah 11:2-3). This newborn ruler would be everything Herod was not. Micah’s words had also been fulfilled: justice would be embraced (Micah 3:1b). Moreover, “4 He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth. 5 And he will be our peace” (Micah 5:4-5a). God had set out a great reversal of what mattered to Him by bringing forth a new ruler and ending the life of a corrupt one.
What mattered to God? What matters is to be led by the Spirit of God, to possess Wisdom from above, knowledge and fear of God, joy in knowing the Lord, to be under the majesty of God’s Name, and to give peace. This would be the life that would spring forth from this newborn ruler. This newborn ruler was, of course, Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah. A New Testament writer would later say this, “1 In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. 3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word” (Hebrews 1:1-3a).
Oh, I should mention that the New Testament writer of Hebrews finished that last version this way, “After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven” (Hebrews 1:3b). “Purification for sins.” Isaiah had foretold this truth when he said of the newborn ruler, “4 Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed…For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors” (Isaiah 53:4-5, 12b). These words tell us a more complete story of what matters to God.
What matters, we said, was to be led by the Spirit of God, to possess Wisdom from above, knowledge and fear of God, joy in knowing the Lord, to be under the majesty of God’s Name, and to give peace. To that statement, we can now add that it matters to God that you and I be purified of sin and the suffering sin causes. But God knew we could not make such purification on our own. So, God had His Son do it for us in His death. The Son would bring forth yet another great reversal, bringing us from death into life.
And so, we end with our opening question, “What matters to you?” Whatever matters to you the most will guide your existence, comprised of your life here on earth now and your eternal destiny. Will you be guided by the things of humanity, such as power, money, pride, health, and good looks? Or will you be guided by a newborn ruler, born in Bethlehem, who came to bring us the Spirit of God, Wisdom from above, knowledge and fear of the Lord, peace, and, yes, salvation for all eternity?
If you had to walk up front right now carrying a posterboard, what word would you use to fill in the blank, “When I grow up, I want to be ________.” Might that word be “rich or powerful or happy”? Or would that word be “saved or forgiven”? To which one will people applaud, and to which one will God applaud? I encourage you today to choose the newborn baby of Bethlehem and hear the applause of God. Amen and Amen.