Christmas Leads to Repentance

I did not realize how appropriate that song was that Webb planned for this morning until just now.

Webb's done a really great job, I think, helping really bring our services into a place of cohesion around the scripture passage that we study on Sunday morning.

And the passage before us this morning is one that give and take away, blessed be your name, really epitomizes.

Because that song describes, on the one hand, if God says, I'm going to give you good and plenty, I can give praise to him.

On the other hand, if God takes away, I can still praise him.

It's appropriate.

It's appropriate lead-in to what I want you to imagine.

I want you to use your imagination with me and imagine a nation.

A nation that is enjoying peace, prosperity, and freedom.

A place where, by appearances anyway, it appears as though everything is going well and everyone is experiencing the benefits of that peace and that prosperity and that freedom.

Imagine a country thriving under its leadership.

Maybe not the best of leaders, but leaders who at least promote the prosperity and the freedom existing within their borders, and leaders who think it's best to promote worship, even if the worship of false gods is your kind of thing.

Then as prosperity prospers, it brings with it a lust for power.

And those with wealth and authority and position begin to exert greater and greater control, seeking to take advantage of the poor and the underprivileged.

And imagine, imagine that you have lived through some of that prosperity, that peace, and that freedom, and even that religious wickedness.

But all along, you sort of had this niggling thought in you that this can't last long.

All along you felt as though you were one of the few holdouts in your world, one of the few holding on to a slice of reality, knowing that things weren't as good as it appeared.

For years you knew that the peace and the prosperity were only temporary, and God would surely respond to the wickedness sooner rather than later.

And worst of all, you knew that when God did respond, it wouldn't be pretty.

No, I'm not referring to the United States of America.

This was the life of the 8th century BC prophet named Micah.

We don't know much about Micah.

We know that he lived on the western border of the nation of Judah in the hill country that was called the Shephala, near the border of the Philistine territory.

We know that he lived in the same general time as the prophet Isaiah.

But he was different than Isaiah.

We might call Isaiah a court prophet.

He ministered in the capital city of Jerusalem, but Micah remained in the countryside, in the smaller communities.

But he nevertheless addressed the life and the dealings of nobility, of those who were rich and privileged, those with power.

He seems to be quite familiar with these things.

But the picture that Micah presents to us in his book in the Old Testament is bleak.

The power of privilege had reached out beyond the royal city to impact everyone in the southern nation of Judah.

Now Micah's time in history was unique.

He lived during the reigns of three different kings of Judah.

Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah.

We see those in verse 1 of his book.

Micah tells us in verse 1 of his book that he received a word from the Lord.

And apparently that word from the Lord came at some point, either instantly or gradually through the reigns of those three kings.

Somehow, in some way, it applies to all of that time period.

So to enable us to understand that time period, I'd like you to take your Bible, if you have one with you, turn to the Old Testament book of 2 Chronicles.

Not Micah yet.

2nd Chronicles.

So if you can go about a third or a fourth of the way into your Bible and you can find those first and seconds that are all confusing, it's the last one.

1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, and 1 and 2 Chronicles.

So go to 2 Chronicles chapter 27.

2 Chronicles 27 · chapter mention

Now these are these are the history books of ancient Israel.

And 2 Chronicles is the last one, and we are going to the location that is near the end of the book.

So if you just apply a little bit of logic, you can understand that what we are about to look at is near the end of the recorded history of the nation of Judah.

2 Chronicles chapter 27, we find the first of those three kings named Jotham.

2 Chronicles 27 · chapter mention

The record tells us Jotham was twenty five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem.

His mother's name was Jerusalem, the daughter of Zadok, and he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, according to all that his father Uzziah had done, except that he did not enter the temple of the Lord, but the people still followed corrupt practices.

So there you get a little bit of a picture that Jotham was somebody who followed God's ways, but he did not lead all of his people in God's ways.

He didn't even go to the temple to worship himself.

So if the king's not going to the temple, do you think the people are going to go to the temple?

No.

Sort of this half-hearted obedience.

Now look over at chapter 28, where we see Ahaz, the next king.

Ahaz was twenty years old, or getting younger.

He was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem, and he did not do what was right in the eyes of Yahweh as his father David had done.

But he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel to the north.

He even made metal images for the Baals.

Making metal images was not enough, says he made offerings in the valley of the son of Hinnem, and he burned his sons as an offering.

Verse 4, he sacrificed and made offerings on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree.

Therefore, Yahweh his God gave him into the hand of the king of Syria, who defeated him and took captive a great number of his people and brought them to Damascus.

He was also given into the hand of the king of Israel, their cousins and brothers who struck him with great force, for Pekah, the son of Remaliah, killed one hundred and twenty thousand people from Judah in one day.

We go from bad to worse.

Now, if you look over at chapter twenty nine, we get a little bit of a picture of the third king, Hezekiah.

Hezekiah began to reign when he was twenty-five years old, and he reigned 29 years in Jerusalem.

Verse 2, he did what was right in the eyes of Yahweh, according to all that David his father had done.

And it goes on to describe how he began to repair the temple.

He began to restore Jerusalem, he began to restore worship at the temple of God, even going so far as to take down all of the places of worship for false idols.

Hezekiah was a good guy.

Hezekiah was a good king.

But Hezekiah also had his downfalls, if you look over it.

Chapter 32.

You will see in verse 24 that Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death, and he prayed to the Lord, and he answered him and gave him a sign.

But Hezekiah did not make a return according to the benefit done to him, for his heart was proud.

Therefore wrath came upon him and Judah and Jerusalem.

But then Hezekiah himself humbled himself for the pride of his heart, both he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the wrath of God did not come upon them in his days.

So we have this sort of roller coaster sort of picture in this time period of the prophet Micah.

Yeah, there's an okay king who, yeah, he thinks he thinks God is a good God, but he's not all into it enough to take his people to the temple.

Then we have a really low part where we have Ahaz coming and just being wicked all over the place.

Then Hezekiah brings us up to another high point, but even Hezekiah has his faults.

What we do see is that during this time period, the leadership of Judah was quite stable.

Jotham reigned 16 years.

Ahaz reigned 16 years.

Hezekiah 29 years.

That is six decades of relative prosperity.

Unfortunately, while Hezekiah was a bit of a bright spot during this time period, for the most part, the leaders of the people of Judah were weak men who were easily influenced by the wealthy and the powerful.

And as a result, they were more likely to trust in people than they were to trust in God.

But if you would dig a little bit further underneath the surface, things weren't as good as they seemed.

Even during Hezekiah's godly rule, the Assyrians came marching down from Nineveh, besieging the cities of the Shephala, Micah's home territory, intent on arriving at Jerusalem to surround the capital city and to take it.

Micah wrote of all of these events.

And he wrote about them in three stages.

The first section is chapters one and two.

The second section is chapters three through five.

And the last section is chapters six and seven.

So I'd like you to turn there now with me, if you would, please, as we look through this book.

I want to do a survey of this book so that we can see the importance of what is happening here.

Each of these three sections in Micah's book is highlighted by a single command.

Hear.

We might say, listen up, people.

Hear.

Chapter 1 of Micah, verse 2, hear, you peoples, all of you.

It's very general.

Whoever is listening, take the plugs out of your ears and start listening.

Then we see in chapter 3 that it's a little more specific.

Chapter 3, verse 1, I said, Hear, you heads of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel.

Then in chapter 6, we go back again to more general statement, hear what the Lord says.

So what is it that is so important that this country prophet would call upon people three times to hear what God had to say?

And for our perspectives, why is that important to the Christmas season?

To answer these questions, we're going to survey each section, beginning with chapters one and two.

So if you are taking notes, in chapters one and two we see that Micah tells us that God promised discipline and deliverance.

God promised discipline and deliverance for the nation of Judah.

Use your imagination again.

Picture a courtroom scene.

A courtroom scene where the defendant is the nation of Judah.

And the prosecutor and key witness is God.

God is coming from a position as prosecutor that cannot be argued against.

He's coming from a position of absolute holiness.

No one's going to argue with a holy God coming out of his holy temple to speak against his people.

Now, normally, if God is coming out of his temple to meet his people, we might celebrate that.

Sometimes we even pray that God would be present with us, don't we?

That's seen as a good thing, as a positive thing, something to celebrate.

But this arrival of God is not something to be celebrated.

Note how Micah tells us that God does come out of his temple.

Verse 2, sorry, verse 3.

For behold, Yahweh is coming out of his place, and he will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth, and the mountains will melt under him, and the valleys will split open like wax before the fire, like waters poured down a steep place.

Micah pictures the awesome and almighty God coming out of his temple as though he were some kind of giant that uses the mountaintops for his stepping stones.

And everything is going to melt at his presence.

I don't know about you, but that can't be good.

Why would God do that?

Look at verse 5.

All this is for the transgression of Jacob and for the sins of the house of Israel.

It's at that point that you gulp and say, uh-oh.

Here's the thing about sin.

We tend not to notice it in ourselves.

Isn't that true?

That's why Jesus said, you know, take the log out of your own eye before you go taking the splinter out of somebody else.

We tend not to notice our own sin.

It's so much easier to notice someone else's impatience rather than our own, isn't it?

It's so much easier to notice the pride in another person instead of our own pride.

It's so much easier to notice when someone else is gossiping versus when we gossip.

You know how easy it is to point fingers at other churches and not address our own issues?

That's God's accusation against his own people.

He said, You think everything's great and fancy and you're enjoying life, but if you get under the surface a little bit, it's evil.

It's wicked.

At this point in history, the northern nation of Israel was about to be ransacked by the Assyrian armies.

And those ten tribes would be carried off into captivity, never to be heard from again.

But the Jews in the south and in Judah thought everything was good.

But they couldn't see their own sin.

Their prosperity and their pride blinded them to their own sin.

And beloved, we are always in danger of being that foolish.

If we're not careful, these same things could be said of us.

Beginning in verse eight, Micah starts to mourn.

For this I will lament and wail.

I will go stripped and naked, I will make lamentation like the jackals and mourning like the ostriches.

For Judah's wound is incurable.

He mourns because the destruction that's going to start in the north meant that God's judgment was on the doorstep of his own neighborhood.

If you go on and start reading in verse 10 and 11 and 12, it says, Her wound is incurable, it has come to Judah, it has reached the gates of my people.

It's come to Jerusalem, in Gath, in Beth Lephrah, in Shafir, in Za'anan, in Beth Etzel, in Maroth, in Akish, in Moresheth Gath.

Morisheth Gath is Micah's hometown.

He says, The armies are coming to my doorstep.

This is the devastating image of war, of armies entering the borders of Israel and destroying the outlying defenses on their way to the capital city.

God does not stand idly by as people sin.

Even those who are called by his own name.

He will respond swiftly and in some cases terribly.

God told Micah that a conqueror was coming to his hometown and that the Assyrian war machine would destroy everything in its path.

People ought to shave their heads in mourning, God said, because of the exile that was ahead of them.

And we have to stop and wonder, what would make God react in that kind of terrible way?

Why would God destroy everything and send people off into exile?

Why would He bring such terror?

Well, let's count the ways.

Chapter 2, verse 1.

They devise wickedness and they work evil on their beds.

When the morning dawns, they perform it because it is in the power of their hand.

They lay awake at night dreaming and contemplating and planning the evil that they can produce.

Because they can.

They are evil and oppressive because they can be.

Verse 2, they covet fields and they seize them.

They steal from those who are weaker.

Get down to verse 6 of chapter 2, and we see that they don't even want Micah or Isaiah or any other prophet or priest to say anything negative.

No preaching about sin, no preaching about God's judgment.

Don't make us uncomfortable, Micah.

It gets worse.

In verse 9, they take what they want from others and they drive helpless women and children from their homes.

And the kind of preacher they truly desire, Micah reports, is the drunk kind, verse 11.

Judgment, discipline, and even exile is on the heart, mind, and lips of Micah, and he can see what everybody else seems to be missing.

But as we often see in the pages of Scripture, in the midst of God's wrath, there is hope for deliverance.

Chapter 2, verse 12.

God says, I will surely assemble you, O Jacob.

I will gather the remnant of Israel, I will set them together like sheep in a fold, like flock in its pasture.

Verse 13, he who opens the breach goes up before them, they break through and pass the gate, going out by it.

Their king passes on before them, Yahweh at their head.

This is a perfect picture of a perfect king leading his people, and that king is God Himself.

God said, I am putting wrath and justice and destruction before you, but I am promising that I myself will come and will walk before you.

Exile was certain because of the depravity of people, but God promised a reason to hope.

He would assemble his remnant by gathering them together.

He would bring them as sheep into a sheepfold and give them a proper, holy king.

That brings us to the second major section of this book, chapters three, four, and five, where we see that God promised hope after hardship.

God promised hope after hardship.

Chapter 3, verses 1 and 2 shows us the intended recipients of this declaration, along with the problem.

The recipients are the heads of Jacob and the rulers of the house of Israel.

We don't know when exactly this prophecy was given, so we don't know if this is directed at Jotham or Ahaz or Hezekiah, or if it's just general to all three of them.

What we do know is that it addresses the leadership of this nation.

They are generally bad people practicing evil things in the midst of prosperity.

But how bad are they?

How evil are they?

Well, apparently they have no idea what justice is.

Is it not for you to know justice?

They they hate goodness and they love evil.

That's mixed up.

Literally.

They are so wretched in their love of evil that they treat common people like a piece of meat to be cooked.

Verses 2 and 3 of chapter 3.

Micah knows that there will soon be a time when those wicked, evil leaders will even cry out to God and God won't listen because of their evil.

Verse 4, they will cry to the Yahweh, but he will not answer them.

He will hide his face from them at that time.

Why?

Because they have made their deeds evil.

It's pretty bad when God won't listen to you.

There are even two kinds of prophets in the land.

One kind declared that life couldn't be better for God's people.

They declared prosperity and peace everywhere, all the while ignoring the sinfulness and the depravity of society.

And then there were prophets like Isaiah and Micah, who walked by God's Spirit and declared sin to be sin.

Micah does just that in verse nine.

Hear this, you heads of the house of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel, who detest justice and make crooked all that is straight, who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with iniquity.

Its heads give judgment for a bribe, its priests teach for a price, its prophets practice divination for money.

Yet they lean on Yahweh and say, Is not Yahweh in our midst?

No disaster shall come upon us?

Therefore, because of you, because of you Zion shall be ploughed as a field, Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins, and the mountain of the house a wooded height.

Shockingly, Micah says, their own holy royal city would suffer the same fate as the capital city from the north, Samaria.

Its walls would be knocked down, its stones be strewn about as a rocky pile of ruins.

It's quite an announcement to a prosperous nation, don't you think?

The status of life was about to dramatically change.

I've wrestled with how to try to picture this in our modern times.

And I don't know that I've come up with any good option, but let me just try to give you what I've thought of.

If you could somehow combine the terror, the fear, and the destruction of Pearl Harbor with 9-11, with Katrina and Harvey and Irma, along with the Great Recession and every stock market crash, you might begin then to get a sense of what Micah is feeling.

Horror.

Except it doesn't begin in some far-off place like New York City or New Orleans or Texas or California or Hawaii.

It begins here.

And it runs through the heart of your home all the way to your nation's capital, all because God is full of wrath at the hypocrisy of your sin, and you happen to be caught up in the swath of God's judgment.

All of a sudden, in chapter 4, the subject changes.

No longer is there talk of sin and perversion of justice and God storming out of his temple, walking on mountaintops to throw down judgment on his people.

Instead, the context changes to the latter days.

A sign to us that Micah is now speaking about the last days upon this earth when God will complete his purpose.

In those days, Micah prophesies, things will not be as they were then.

Instead, the place that God is going to be will become the pinnacle of creation.

God will dwell in Zion, in Jerusalem.

And that will become the pinnacle of creation.

We don't know if Micah is speaking geographically or metaphorically here.

That is, we don't know if God will actually elevate the mountain upon which Jerusalem sits, or if it's a figure of speech to demonstrate that Jerusalem is going to be the most important place on earth because of God's presence there.

But what Micah does tell us is that it will be a time of unequaled spiritual growth and worship.

Times are coming in the future where there will be unmatched peace and unmatched prosperity, unlike anything the world has ever seen since the Garden of Eden.

That's the time, God says, when He Himself will gather His people and rule over them.

The rule of kings will once again come to Jerusalem in a way that has never before been known.

Then we see three quick statements beginning with the word now in verse nine.

Again in verse eleven and verse one of chapter five.

And these statements begin to combine the paths of judgment with the path of hope, bringing them together.

Chapter 4, verse 9.

Now why do you cry aloud?

Is there no king in you?

Has your counselor perished?

That pain seized you like a woman in labor?

Rise and groan, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in labor, for now you shall go out from the city and dwell in the open country.

You shall go to Babylon.

There's the judgment.

But notice the next the hope.

There you shall be rescued.

There Yahweh will redeem you.

Verse 11 is the second now.

Now many nations are assembled against you.

Saying, Let her be defiled.

But then there's hope in verse 12.

They do not know the thoughts of Yahweh, they do not understand his plan.

Chapter 1, verse, or chapter 5, verse 1.

Now muster your troops, O daughter of troops.

Siege is laid against us with a rod they strike the judge of Israel on the street, on the cheek.

The foreign assaults would be as humiliating as they were devastating.

Brought upon them by the hand of God, no less.

But after that time of hardship, of exile, of destruction, of pain, of anxiety, God Himself promised hope.

He says, but stop a minute, but you.

O Bethlehem Ephraim.

You who are too little to even be considered among the clans of Judah.

From you shall come forth for me, one who is to be ruler in Israel, one whose coming forth from ancient times.

This one whose origins are from ancient days will bring rest to Judah, safety and security and prosperity, as he shepherds his people by God's strength.

In fact, that king himself would be their peace.

Chapter 6 then begins the final section of this book with the third cry, the third command to hear what the Lord says.

And here we see God's promise of restoration with repentance.

God promised restoration with repentance.

Again, God calls on the people to come to the courtroom.

They aren't upholding justice, but God will.

Hear, you mountains, the indictment of Yahweh, and you enduring foundations of the earth, for Yahweh has an indictment against his people, and he will contend with Israel.

O my people, what have I done to you?

How have I wearied you?

Answer me.

For I brought you up from the land of Egypt, I redeemed you from the house of slavery, I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.

O my people, remember what Balak, king of Moab, devised, and what Balaam, the son of Beor, answered him, and what happened from Shatim to Gilgal, that you may know the righteous acts of the Lord.

I didn't do anything to you but lead you in righteousness.

And look where you've gone.

No created thing can stand before the Almighty God in his holy judgment.

There's no excuse for sin.

There's no explaining your way around, over, under, or through your sin.

There's nothing one can do before a holy God full of wrath against sin.

That's why Micah then asks in verse 6, with what shall I come before the Lord?

And bow myself before God on high?

He begins to think through what's possible.

Shall I come before him with burnt offerings?

With calves a year old, in other words, that's an expensive offering.

Would the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand of rivers of olive oil?

Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

Do you sense the pain in Micah's voice?

He is standing, as it were, like Isaiah before the holiness of God against sin.

And he's trying to figure out what I can do?

Foreign armies are going to tramp through his hometown, but he knows that's not the end.

Because another army is going to come, all because of the sin of his people, even his own sin.

And that realization fills Micah with sorrow and grief.

What can be done to please the king of heaven?

The answer?

Nothing.

Let that said, let that settle in.

Nothing can be done.

Micah cannot do anything.

Even the most expensive of gifts, the most expensive of offerings cannot satisfy God's wrath.

Even if Micah were to offer his most precious possession, his firstborn child, as Abraham did, even that wouldn't appease the judge of all the earth.

That is how heinous our sin is before a holy God.

No, only one thing can please God.

To do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly before your God.

Now, if we just take that verse that's been made into a little chorus, a little ditty that we sing sometimes, if we just take that verse and lift it out of Micah and just isolate it by itself, that becomes a pretty nifty social gospel.

Hey, all we have to do is be good and kind to the poor and the homeless and the needy, and God will look kindly on us.

But we must never ever take Scripture out of its context because when we put this into context, we see this is not about a social gospel.

This is all about repentance.

These people had no care for following God's standards of justice.

They did not care about being obedient to God and having a heart that was kind and generous and that walked humbly.

Micah says that sinful people must begin to think God's way, to see God as he truly is, which then translates into action.

Living God's way with the understanding that he is sovereign and I obey him.

That is repentance.

Naturally, many balk at the idea of repentance today.

And it's nothing new.

They balked at it in Micah's day, too.

And what's interesting is that God does not acquit proud, unrepentant people.

Chapter 6, verse 10.

God is speaking.

Can I forget any longer the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked and the scant measure that is accursed?

Shall I acquit the man with wicked scales and with a bag of deceitful weights?

Your rich men are full of violence, your inhabitants speak lies, their tongue is deceitful.

Therefore I will strike you with a grievous blow, making you desolate because of your sins.

You shall eat but not be satisfied.

That's terrible.

Really?

There shall be hunger within you.

You shall put away but not preserve, you shall preserve and what you preserve I will give to the sword.

You will sow, but not reap.

You will tread olives but not anoint yourselves with oil.

You shall tread grapes but not drink wine.

God does not acquit unrepentant people.

At this Micah is undone.

Chapter seven.

Woe is me.

For I have become as when the summer fruit has been gathered, as when the grapes have been gleaned, there is no cluster to eat, no first ripe fig that my soul desires.

The godly has perished from the earth, there's none upright, they all lie in wait for blood, each hunts the other with a net.

Their hands are on what is evil to do it well.

Verse 4 the best of them is like a briar, the most upright of them like a thorn hedge.

His world was going to fall apart, and there was nothing Micah could do about it.

He could and did speak God's word.

He kept on serving as a prophet.

He trusted that God would be sovereignly just, but as he imagined the destruction of his world, Micah was shattered.

Now that could lead to bitterness and resentment.

But for Micah it led the prophet to humility.

Verse 7.

But as for me, I will look to Yahweh.

I will wait for the God of my salvation.

My God will hear me.

Here's a picture of a man who knew his world was about to be turned upside down, but determined to humble himself before God and trust him through the disaster.

And in his humility is repentance.

Verse 9.

I will bear the indignation of Yahweh because I have sinned against him.

There's acknowledgement of his sin.

There's confession of it.

And there's anticipation of discipline until he pleads my cause and executes judgment for me, and then he will bring me out to the light and I will look upon his vindication.

There's anticipation of forgiveness, of restoration.

Micah acknowledged his own sin before God.

He said, God, you've opened me up and you have shown me the sin in my own heart that is just a picture of what's going on in my nation.

And he's repentant.

He humbles himself before the Lord.

On the one hand, I have to apologize to you because this is a dreadful book.

We don't want to come to church and be filled with dreadfulness.

But it's good for us to hear.

It's painful.

It's sad.

It's destructive.

All because of sin.

But if God's people would respond the way Micah responded, God would visit his people with grace.

Look at verse 11.

A day for the building of your walls.

In that day the boundary shall be far extended.

Micah understands that once God's judgment is satisfied, once his justice has been carried out, the day would come when God would restore his people, even enlarging the place of their people.

The amazing thing about Micah is that he remained hopeful in spite of certain devastation.

Why would Micah have such hope in the midst of this dark revelation?

There can be only one answer.

Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance?

He does not retain his anger forever because he delights in steadfast love.

He will again have compassion on us.

He will tread our iniquities underfoot.

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

You will show faithfulness to Jacob and steadfast love to Abraham as you have sworn to our fathers from the days of old.

When God's people humble themselves in repentance, he pardons their iniquity.

He passes over their transgression.

His anger against sin is satisfied, and he casts sin into the depths of the sea where it can no longer be found.

All of this is based, Micah says, on God's character, on his faithfulness to his promise.

And here's the really neat part.

Micah combines two truths.

One, God will judge sin to the hilt.

Not ruthlessly, but justly.

And the second truth is this He promised He would come and forgive sin.

He would come Himself.

He, the ancient of days, whose coming forth is from of old, He would come from the kingly tribe of David, from tiny, insignificant Bethlehem, and he would be the perfect king, not Jotham, not Ahaz, not even Hezekiah, but perfect.

Not merely humanly perfect, exercising justice and kindness, but he would be divinely perfect, full of holiness and perfection, because his origins are beyond this world.

And he would come exercising grace and forgiveness.

Of course, the New Testament rounds out that picture for us.

He did come.

He was born in Bethlehem, and he is the King of heaven.

But as God promised, he came as Emmanuel.

He was born in the likeness of his creation, and he took our sins upon himself, becoming sin for us.

And as God the Father stood, as it were, upon the mountaintops full of wrath against my sin, Jesus satisfied that holy and just wrath of the Father by becoming humbly obedient, even to the point of death for me, even death on a cross.

God wiped out Judah for their sins.

But Jesus bore the wrath for my sin.

Whenever we come face to face with our sin, there's only one proper response: repentance.

When we come face to face with Christmas every twelve months, there should be only one response: repentance.

Because Christmas leads us to repentance.

What Micah proclaimed as future hope for Israel suddenly became present in Jesus.

What Micah saw as hoped for fulfilled prophecy was actually fulfilled in Bethlehem.

Micah looked to that hope and was filled with humble repentance at the thought, but we look back at that fulfillment and see that God designed the birth of his son to bring us to repentance.

So as you consider the fulfillment of God's promise, will you respond by hypocritically proclaiming with Micah's people, I'm fine, I have no sin.

Or will you humble yourself in repentant awe by coming to the one born in Bethlehem?

Let's pray.

Our great and awesome and holy God, what a vision of you.

Isaiah saw you high and lifted up.

Holy, holy, holy.

And Micah saw that holiness carried out.

But oh what grace is found in the Son born for us.

Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression?

Who is a God like you that does not retain his anger forever, but delights in steadfast love?

We ask of you that you will have compassion on us, that you will tread our iniquities underfoot and cast all of our sins into the depths of the sea, so that we might see Jesus.

Amen.