HIS GOINGS FORTH

HIS GOINGS FORTH

“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
Though you are little among the thousands of Judah, Yet out of you shall come forth to Me
The One to be Ruler in Israel,
Whose goings forth are from of old,
from everlasting.
Micah 5:2

What an incredible prophesy about the coming of our Lord. Micah prophesied the specific town, Bethlehem, and the specific region, Ephratah, where Our Savior would be born. He also spoke about the mysterious eternal nature of Jesus, the Word who became flesh. Micah spoke of “His goings forth” which some of our church fathers applied to the eternal generation of the Son of God. Mathew Henry expressed this eternal miracle as he described Christ as the rays of God’s Glory from eternity.

“It is he that is to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting, from the days of eternity, as the word is. Here we have, His existence from eternity, as God: his goings forth, or emanations, as the going forth of the beams from the sun, were, or have been, of old, from everlasting, which is so signal a description of Christ’s eternal generation, or his going forth as the Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, that this prophecy must belong only to him, and could never be verified of any other. From everlasting to everlasting thou are God, and can be applied to no other than to him who was able to say, Before Abraham was, I am. Dr. Pocock observes that the going forth is used (Deut. viii. 3) for a word which proceeds out of the mouth, and is therefore very fitly used to signify the eternal generation of him who is called the Word of God, that was in the beginning with God, John 1.”

Wow! Great is the mystery of God. The eternal Word, the Father’s idea and expression of Himself born in Bethlehem. The Creator enters into His creation.
The Son of God, who has existed from eternity, born to a jewish teenager from Nazareth. God’s power cloaked in the weakness of infancy, Immanuel has come. Two generations, the Son of God begotten from eternity without a mother, the son of man, born of a virgin without a human father. This is the greatest of all mysteries, concealed in the Father’s heart until the fullness of time, revealed by the Spirit in the person of His Son birthing the greatest celebration of all time. MERRY CHRISTMAS.