Route 66: Micah - Who Forgives Like Our God?

Chapter 3, the book of Micah I'm going to read tonight.

Well, consider this book, but I want to read to start with chapter 3, verse 9, down through chapter 4, verse 8.

It's a little bit of an unusual reading, but again, remember there's no chapter divisions in the original book of Mike, it's just all one book.

So in our Bibles, chapter 3, verse 9, through chapter 4, verse 8.

And I should say, for those that might be visiting, we're going through a series on each book of the Bible, one book each week.

So Hosea, joel, amos, obadiah, jonah, and then this week is Micah.

I didn't just randomly decide to preach on myself, so don't Micah.

Micah 3:9

Chapter 3, verses 9, through chapter 4, verse 8.

Listen to this, leaders of the house of Jacob, you rulers of the house of Israel, who abhor justice and pervert everything that's right, who build Zion with bloodshed and Jerusalem with injustice.

Her leaders issue rulings for a bribe, her priests teach for payment and her prophets practice divination for silver.

Yet they lean on the Lord, saying isn't the Lord among us?

No disaster will overtake us.

Therefore, because of you, zion will be plowed like a field, jerusalem will become a heap of ruins and the temple's mountain will be a high thicket In the last days.

The mountain of the Lord's house will be established at the top of the mountains and will be raised above the hills.

Peoples will stream to it and many nations will come and say let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob.

He will teach us about his ways so we may walk in his paths, for instruction will go out of Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

He will settle disputes among many peoples and provide arbitration for strong nations that are far away.

They will beat their swords into plows and their spears into pruning knives.

Nation will not take up the sword against nation and they will never again train for war.

But each person will sit under his grapevine and under his fig tree, with no one to frighten him, for the mouth of the Lord of armies has spoken.

Though all the peoples walk in the name of their own gods, we will walk in the name of the Lord, our God, forever and ever.

On that day this is the Lord's declaration I will assemble the lame and gather the scattered.

Those I have injured, I will make the lame into a remnant.

Those I have injured I will make the lame into a remnant, those far removed into a strong nation.

That the Lord will reign over them in Mount Zion from this time on and forever.

And you, watchtower for the flock, fortified hill of daughter Zion, the former rule will come to you.

Sovereignty will come to daughter Jerusalem.

Let's pray again, lord.

We are praying for the Burgards tonight and we want to share in the grief of those who experienced such grief.

As members one of another, we pray that you would give them a supernatural aid, that the spirit of comfort who dwells in them would be a spirit who is especially active in bringing scriptures to their mind and hearts and using the words of family and friends and others, and particularly your words, to give them a stillness and a restfulness, a trust, an acceptance of all that you do as the good and gracious God.

Lord, we pray, as we consider this book now, that we'd remember that indeed there is no one like you In Jesus' name.

Amen.

I want to start with a Hebrew lesson.

Don't worry, it won't be long.

The name Micah means who is like the Lord.

So the M-I, that's the Hebrew way of saying who, and the C in our English language is a Hebrew letter that's compared to like or as, and then the A-H.

If you think about A-H, it's kind of a shortened form of J-A-H.

Yah, which you might kind of remember and think about that name as Yahweh.

So who is like the Lord?

That's what the name means, and it's right there when you break apart the name.

So I didn't obviously choose my own name.

My parents chose my name, and often today, when we give people names, it's really about how it sounds.

It sounds kind of beautiful or pleasant, and I think that was true for them, that they liked the sound of it, but they were believers and they also liked that meaning.

Who is like the Lord?

Now, in the Bible, often when someone gets a name, it says something about what's going to happen later in life, sometimes for good, sometimes not for good.

We can't claim that in every case today.

We might have hopes and prayers, but I always have hoped that that would be in God's kindness and evidence of my life, that people would look at me and say who is like the Lord.

So personal testimony over.

Let me ask a question, though, and this is the question I want us to really get our hands on tonight who is like the Lord If we're Bible readers, the Lord.

If we're Bible readers, if we're in any way God-fearers, we know the answer is well, no one's like the Lord.

The Lord's unique.

Why is no one like the Lord?

How is it that no one is like the Lord?

If I said to you well, tell me why no one's like the Lord.

If I said to you, well, tell me why no one's like the Lord, what would you say?

Our minds okay.

So someone said sin.

So there's definitely a clear that was from even this morning's message.

Right In Isaiah there's an element of this exalted God, human sinfulness.

I think we often, when we think of that question of what's God's uniqueness or greatness, we think of that question of what's God's uniqueness or greatness.

We think about he's powerful in a way that no one else is.

He knows everything in a way no one else knows.

He's present in time and space in a way that no one else is.

And all those things are true.

And in the book of Isaiah there'll be some times, actually in Isaiah where the prophet will ask a similar question who's like the Lord?

And he'll give sometimes answers like that Look at the created world.

Who could create anything like that?

But we're in the book of Micah.

What's Micah's focus?

How does Micah answer that question of why is it that no one else is like the Lord?

What I read tonight that we listened to from these two chapters we won't read the whole book, we'll hit some different verses.

It's kind of a snapshot of the book of Micah in that there's judgment and there's hope.

That's often in the prophets, judgment and hope echoing back and forth.

And you think about the book of Micah.

You can almost divide it up into three sections.

And I want to try to show you this.

Look at chapter one of Micah, so flip back a couple of pages.

It introduces him, micah the Moreshite.

And then look at verse number two.

Listen all you peoples.

Micah is going to be prophesying to the people of God.

But listen all you peoples.

Micah 1, 2.

Now if you go over to chapter three, verse one.

Now if you go over to chapter 3, verse 1.

Then I said now listen, you leaders of Jacob.

So listen, chapter 1, chapter 2.

Now chapter 3, listen.

And then it goes on.

Go over to chapter 6.

, chapter 6.

Go over to chapter six, chapter six.

Now listen to what the Lord is saying.

And then it goes on In each of these three panels in the book of Micah listen, listen, listen.

There's judgment and hope, judgment and hope, judgment and hope.

So you see that working out right here in the book.

There's also this is getting a little more narrow now there's also in the hope, some element of shepherding.

So look at chapter 2, verse number 12.

I will collect the remnant of Israel.

I will bring them together like sheep in a pen.

Now go over to chapter 4, verse 8.

4, verse 8, and you watch, tower for the flock, fortified hill.

Then chapter 5, verse 4, he will stand and shepherd them in the strength of the Lord, his God.

And then go all the way over to chapter 7, verse 14.

Shepherd your people with your staff, the flock that is your possession, verse 14.

Judgment, hope, judgment, hope, judgment, hope.

Now there's I'm simplifying it a little bit but and then in each of the hope sections, he's a shepherd, he's a shepherd, he's a shepherd.

So who is like the Lord?

If we're seeing that structure, we might initially start to think okay, who is like the Lord in his judgment?

Nobody can judge like the Lord, true.

Who is like the Lord in the way that he gives hope?

Nobody can give hope like the Lord can give hope and he gives hope, especially as a shepherd.

So true, those things are true, but we're going to.

So I want to hit those two themes, judgment and hope.

But then we're going to try to push forward into an even more specific way to think about how the Lord is unique, according to Micah.

So, first judgment, then hope.

There are different aspects of God's judgment, and one aspect is that God's judgment is certain.

Go to chapter one again, verse number one the word of the Lord that came to Micah.

We're accustomed to hearing that phrase as we've been going through the prophets and we let it just kind of trip off our tongue sometimes.

But this is the word of the Lord.

This wasn't Micah's idea, this wasn't something he made up.

This is what God gave him.

One commentator writes our shoes should be off our feet as we hear his word.

As we hear his word, it's certain.

And it's so certain that he can use even foreign nations who don't want to follow him to do his judging.

So chapter 1, verse 6 and 7, I will make Samaria, that's the northern kingdom of Israel, a heap of ruins in the countryside.

Verse 7, all her carved images will be smashed to pieces.

Who's going to do the smashing.

Well, it's going to be Syria in the near term, babylon in the more distant future.

So God's certain judgment incorporates other nations.

So God's certain judgment incorporates other nations.

We also see its certainty in chapter one in the way Micah walks through different cities and locations and pronounces judgment on each one.

You can see that if you look at verses eight down through verse 16, roughly I won't read all those verses but if you look through them you'll see a place mentioned and then some form of judgment conveyed.

But it's actually interesting.

This is one of those times when it is a little more challenging in our English to hear through what's coming in the original, because this whole series it's kind of a series of pun judgments.

I said what do you mean?

Micah tells the name of the city and then the way that he expresses the judgment is some kind of play off of the name of that city in the original language.

Like well, that sounds silly.

This is supposed to be a serious thing.

Well, the way we think about puns is kind of a silliness.

But in this time period it could be used in very serious circumstances.

So let me give you a couple examples.

Verse number 10, tell it not in gath.

Okay, what's the big deal?

In Hebrew, the word for tell sounds like the word for gath.

Okay, what's the big deal?

In Hebrew, the word for tell sounds like the word for gath.

Let's give you another example, verse number 11,.

The inhabitants of Zanon do not come out.

Do not come out, zonin and come out sound similar in Hebrew.

And I won't go through all of these.

Some of them are puns, some of them are sound devices.

But it'd be kind of like this If I said listen all you residents of Queens, that crown is going to topple right off your head.

Listen, all you inhabitants of Levittown, you're going to be levitating in fear when the Lord comes to judge you.

Listen, all you folks of Suffolk, you're going to suffer for all that you've done and like that's so silly.

Why would you do that?

Because it's memorable.

It's certain.

The Lord's not making a joke.

He is reminding them.

You're not going to forget this.

Judgment is coming.

Judgment is also impartial in this sense.

It happens to all kinds of people, great and small, and particularly the book of Micah highlights even important people like rulers and prophets and priests as those that don't escape God's judgment.

So if you look over at chapter three, you can turn over to chapter three.

Just an example of this Verse number one of chapter three, I said now listen, leaders of Jacob, you rulers of the house of Israel so it'd be especially kings, but other political leaders, aren't you supposed to know what is just?

You hate good and love evil.

You tear off people's skin and strip their flesh from their bones.

You eat the flesh of my people.

After you strip their skin from them and break their bones, you chop them up like flesh for the cooking pot, like meat in a cauldron.

Very graphic language in a cauldron.

Very graphic language.

Not that every king was a cannibal, but the way they devoured the people and took advantage of them.

Micah is going to speak of taking bribes, taking property.

Think of someone like Ahab in the Old Testament.

He sees a vineyard and he wants it and they don't want to sell it to him and his wife says you're the king, you know you can manipulate the situation and he gets people.

You're the king, you can manipulate the situation and he gets people to lie about the owner of the vineyard.

So he stoned the desk.

He can then take the property.

We're not talking about here, about this ravenous kings.

We're not talking about whether the minimum wage was $11 an hour or $10 an hour.

There's something a lot more graphic going on here with the attacks these leaders made on the people.

But it wasn't just the kings, it was the prophets also Chapter 2, verse 11.

If a man comes and utters empty lies, often the prophets are the ones speaking.

I will preach to you again.

This is kind of prophet activity here.

I will preach to you about wine and beer.

He would be just the preacher for these people.

In other words, you're looking for someone who's going to give you all the good things that you want to hear.

You're looking for someone that can I don't know if entertain is not the right word but a prophet who can come and just make it all a party, because the prophets from God often talk about judgment.

Right, we just saw that in chapter one.

The prophets that aren't from God often say don't worry, everything's going to be okay.

If you look down a little bit verses five and six this is what the Lord says concerning the prophets who lead my people astray, who proclaim peace when they have food to sink their teeth into, but declare war against the one who puts nothing in their mouths.

Therefore, it will be night for you without visions, it will be dark for you without divination.

And then he goes on and goes on.

Look down at verse number 11.

The summary here her leaders issue rulings for a bribe, her priests teach for payment and her prophets practice divination for silver.

Yet they lean on the Lord, saying isn't the Lord among us, no disaster will overtake us.

And it's wrong.

And there's a common ground of greed.

That's here.

You see that there in the passage.

There's in the book of Judges a story about another person named Mike, a different person, but he's an idolater, and he hires a Levite to be his own personal priest, and it's not even for that much money.

But the Levite is happy to get a comfortable living and just go get paid, not to really serve the Lord but just to kind of live in comfort, so that the greed here is not always accumulating more and more and more.

It can be, as Kevin Cooney loves, that t-shirt that says comfort wants you dead.

There's an element of that here, with people that are not concerned for giving a message from God but just for making their life a lot easier.

Judgment's very personal.

Turn over to chapter six, verse number three my people, what have I done to you or how have I wearied you?

Testify against me.

Verse number six what should I bring before the Lord when I come to bow before God on high?

Should I come before him with burnt offerings, with year old calves and then probably the most well of you to act justly, to love faithfulness and to walk humbly with your God?

Very hard for me to get that out in the CSB.

My parents kind of put that verse on me when I was young and I've got the King James just drilled in my mind of that verse and so it's hard to get on the CSB for that.

But it's hard to get on the CSB for that.

But it's personal.

The Lord who reigns is not just looking for righteous deeds in the abstract.

My people, what have I done to you?

I'm not looking for thousands of sacrifices.

I want you to walk humbly with me.

So that means that the humble relationship that's breached by the people.

There's a corresponding judgment that comes.

It's a very personal judgment and yet there is so much hope in this book of Micah also.

So there's some aspects of judgment.

But what about these aspects of hope?

Chapter 3, verse 8, go back there.

We're going back and forth a bit.

If there's going to be real hope, there has to be a truthful foundation for it.

This is verse number 8 of chapter 3.

As for me, micah, speaking, I am filled with power, by the Spirit of the Lord, with justice and courage to proclaim to Jacob his rebellion, to Israel his sin.

So the starting point of hope is to get real about what's going on, not to offer a false hope like the prophets who were there.

I have a friend back in Louisville who is significantly autistic and that's not crucial to the story, but it makes his commentaries much more endearing.

And one thing he does not like is false teaching.

And we'll have these conversations when I live in Louisville more often, but regularly, where he'll say now Micah, now Micah, tell me about this.

What would you do, micah, if you were in a church and the preacher said oh, dear children, god loves all of you.

You don't have to worry, no matter what you do, everything's going to be okay.

What would you do, mike?

What would you do?

He said well, brad, that doesn't sound like it's very he goes.

That would be false Teach.

You should get out of there.

So this guy was there, but he was right.

That is.

They don't use that tone of voice, otherwise it'd be easier to get rid of.

But he's right.

They tend to say everything's going to be okay, no matter what, no matter what repentance, no matter what, and there's no real frank discussion of sin.

The prophetic hope here begins with there's real rebellion, but that's going to lead to make the hope all the more sweet and precious.

And the hope that Micah gives is not centered on their ability to correct themselves or make up the difference.

It's centered on God and what he accomplishes.

So let's go back to chapter two, verse number 12.

I will indeed gather all of you, jacob, I will collect the remnant of Israel, I will bring them together like sheep in a pen, like flock in a pasture.

Verse 13,.

One who breaks open the way will advance before them.

I, I, I the one breaking open the way.

This is God doing this work, the way this is God doing this work.

Turn over to chapter six, another fascinating example of this.

Often the prophets go through history of what happened in Israel's life.

They'll do that to remind them of sin, but they'll also do that to remind them of how God has brought them hope in the past with his sovereign power.

Chapter six, verse number five, after the prophets talked about he rescued from Egypt, micah says my people remember what King Balak of Moab proposed.

This was a hundred years before another king outside of Israel.

This was a hundred years before another king outside of Israel tried to hire a prophet, balaam, to come and pronounce a curse on Israel.

He's trying to manipulate the spirits.

So he gets a hold of Balaam and says, like I'm going to pay you, I got it.

These Israelite people, they need to get some kind of voodoo curse.

So come give them a curse.

And Balaam goes.

Now, if you know the story of Balaam, it's not completely clear from the Old Testament but he seems to be kind of prophesying against his will.

And then the New Testament and other places makes it clear Balaam was a bad guy.

He led the people into sin.

He wasn't a true prophet of God in the wholesome sense.

So Balaam's not a good guy.

But Micah says not here.

Remember, balaam was a bad guy, don't be like Balaam.

He says remember what King Balak of Moab proposed.

Remember what Balaam, son of Beor, answered him and what happened from the Acacia Grove to Gilgal, so that you may acknowledge the Lord's righteous acts.

Well, okay, so what did happen and what made it a righteous act of the Lord with all this sin.

Listen to one of the things that Balaam says.

Balaam opens his mouth after he's been hired to prophesy against Israel, and he says this from Numbers 23, 20 and 21.

I have indeed received a command to bless, since he has blessed.

Speaking of God, I cannot change it.

He considers no disaster for Jacob, he sees no trouble for Israel.

The Lord, their God, is with them and there is rejoicing over the king among them and the king that hired.

Balaam gets ticked off and he said what are you doing?

You're supposed to be cursing these people and Balaam's like I, I, I, I.

And now Micah says remember even that wicked king and the prophet that was maybe kind of a prophet for hire and at least later turned a wrong course.

Even he couldn't go against God's people when it was God's purpose to bless them.

So the hope is that God's going to do amazing things, despite what attacks and assaults that people face.

I'll leave that aside.

Another comment, but leave it for now.

God's hope is not just for that people, israel.

It's an expanding hope, it's a universal hope.

Go over to chapter four.

So we saw some of this already and Micah overlaps with Isaiah, don't know that they were best friends.

We're not aware of that, but they have a similar timeframe and a similar message and even similar words, which also shows this is the spirit of God behind this.

It's not their imagination, but verse number one of chapter four in the last days, the mountain of the Lord's house will be established at the top of the mountains and be raised above the hills.

Now listen, peoples will stream to it and many nations will come and say let us go to the mountain of the Lord, the house of Jacob.

He will teach us his ways so that we may walk in his paths.

Many nations.

So lest we think God's work in the Old Testament is merely limited to Israel, no, even there there's this plan and purpose of God to bless the nations that it's not just one place or one nation or one small temple.

It's going to expand to be a kingdom that encompasses heaven and earth.

Great judgment, great hope.

So let's come back to that question who is like the Lord?

No one is like the Lord in his judgment.

Yes, no one's like the Lord in the way that he provides hope and a tenderness to the hope that he'll gather his own like a shepherd.

But let's turn to chapter seven, because Micah answers his own question.

If you read the book this week, you already knew how it ended, but maybe you don't.

Micah, chapter seven, verse 18.

Who is a God like you?

So Micah asks about his own name.

He doesn't say his own name right here, but he's asking the question the book reveals.

The prophecy came to Micah.

Now, at the end, micah asks the question who is a God like you?

And then what's Micah's focus?

Forgiving iniquity and passing over rebellion for the remnant of his inheritance.

He does not hold onto his anger forever because he delights in faithful love.

He will again have compassion on us.

He will vanquish our iniquities.

You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.

You will show loyalty to Jacob and faithful love to Abraham.

No one forgives like God forgives.

That's Micah's answer.

Like God forgives that's Micah's answer.

It's not a story of raw power or intellect or knowledge true as those things are.

It's that God has this quality of forgiveness that's backed up by his loyal love.

That is unmatched.

But you need the judgment and the hope.

And it still raises the question that Micah doesn't give great detailed answer to.

But wait a minute.

If God is bringing judgment rightly and all kinds of people deserve judgment where's the forgiveness come from?

It comes from Jesus Christ, who tabernacled among us.

It comes from Jesus Christ who lived perfectly and walked the righteous mountain of Zion and was crucified on a cross and took God's judgment so that we might receive real and lasting hope.

So if you're tonight thinking well, that's kind of a letdown answer like no one forgives, like God.

I mean, yeah, god's supposed to forgive.

No, it's amazing that God forgives.

If you think well, yeah, someone once, you know, swerved in front of me, but I forgave him in my heart.

No, no, god forgives in a much greater way than that.

There's eternal debt here, there's personal sin and grief, but God forgives.

I've loved loyally before From eternity to eternity.

God has his own.

That's a faithful love that's incomparable.

It's the same thing when Moses says show me your glory, and do you remember God's answer?

He does tell Moses, I bring consequences to the third and fourth generation, but he begins by saying I'm compassionate and gracious and maintaining love to a thousand generations.

It's the same thing we saw in Jonah, where we get to the end of the book and Jonah says I knew this was going to happen.

I knew you were gracious and forgiving, and Jonah doesn't have very good attitude about it, but he knows what's true about God that God forgives.

There's a word that's used here and it's a Hebrew word and we don't do a lot of Hebrew, but this is a word that's important and we're going to actually come to it next Sunday morning, so I'll give you a little cliffhanger here, but it's this word that's translated sometimes love, or faithful love, or loyal love.

That helps to reveal the quality of God which generates such intense loyalty and such intense sovereign achievement of salvation that brings full forgiveness.

So we celebrate the fact and we can hear more about it next Sunday morning from the Psalms, where that repeats over and over again as a refrain His faithful love endures forever.

Who is like the Lord?

No one, because no one forgives like our God.

Let's pray, lord.

We are astounded that you would extend forgiveness, not because we deserve it or there's some obligation, but because this mysterious and marvelous fountain of grace that you are to make a way for forgiveness to happen, to make a way for reconciliation, to bring us into the fold of Jesus Christ, that our shepherd loves us to the end, loves us, even with iniquity and sin.

Lord hear our cries of hallelujah and our amazement.

That would not be ever something we want to take lightly or think little of, but to have as the theme of our hearts and the magnitude of our prayers.

No matter what happens in life, our God forgives us, no matter what disappointments we have from others.

We're forgiven and loved by the Lord, no matter what sin we might contribute.

We come to you, we turn, we confess, and there is forgiveness with you that you we confess, and there is forgiveness with you that you might be feared, but there is forgiveness.

How we praise you, oh Lord, god, that there is no one like you In Jesus' name, amen.