Micah 1:3-4
3 Look! The Lord is coming from his dwelling-place;
he comes down and treads on the heights of the earth.
4 The mountains melt beneath him and the valleys split apart,
like wax before the fire, like water rushing down a slope.
Yesterday, we thought about the extraordinary privilege that is it to have the Almighty God speak to us. Today we see something even more extraordinary. The God who created and sustains all things doesn’t just speak to us from a distance – he actually comes down to earth.
As New Testament believers, when we think of God coming to earth we probably think first about the coming of Jesus – born as a baby in a Palestinian stable 2000 years ago. If that’s the way we expect God to show up on earth, verses 3 & 4 come as something of a shock! Here, when the Lord comes he is not a helpless human baby, arriving quietly without much fuss in a small, out of the way town. Here we see that when God comes down, mountains melt like candles and valleys are ripped apart with the force of a major earthquake. When God comes like this, you can’t ignore it. You can’t sing a carol, write a Christmas card and then go back to life as normal. According to Micah, the coming of the Lord is an earth-shaking, life-changing event. And it is.
The birth of Jesus as a human child is not less life-changing, just because the mountains stayed standing on that night, 2000 years ago. Let’s not let the apparent ordinariness of the first Christmas fool us into thinking that God coming into the world is no big deal. His first coming was the most earth-shattering, life-changing event in human history. But it wasn’t the end of the story. He came once, quietly, as a baby, but he will come again with all the noise and splendour and might and glory of heaven. If we’re still alive when that day comes, we’ll all be shouting Micah’s words from verse 3: “Look! The Lord is coming!” No-one will miss it. No-one will be carrying on with their day as if nothing important was happening. Mountains melting doesn’t even begin to describe what that day will be like. When Jesus returns, when the Lord comes to earth for the second and final time, the whole creation will be wound up and remade. That’s where history is heading. Second by second, hour by hour, day by day we are getting closer to the moment when God will come to earth again, to judge and to rescue, to destroy and to recreate. That would be an absolutely terrifying prospect, if we didn’t have a safe place to stand when it happens. Only because Jesus came as our Saviour will we be safe when he comes again as our judge.
So, as we begin a book filled with warnings of that coming judgement, let’s thank Jesus that he came first as a baby, to be our saviour, so that we could face his second coming without fear. And if you’ve never asked Jesus to be your saviour, I urge you to take Micah’s warnings seriously, and do so before it’s too late.
