"Rebels and A Remnant" - Micah 2

Jesus is asked in Matthew 22, a question and an answer we probably know well,

Teacher, what is the greatest commandment?

To which he responds, Jesus replied, Love the Lord your God with all your heart,

with all your soul, and with all your mind.

Last week in Micah chapter 1, what we saw is that the Israelite people,

Micah 1 · chapter mention

Jewish people, have failed to keep the first commandment.

Their love for God had turned into a duty, right? Their love for God had turned

into something that they do.

So they remember, if you remember from last week, they still offered sacrifices.

They still gave tithes. They still went to the temple.

You could say it this way. They still went to church every Sunday.

They still put some money in the offering plate. Maybe they went on the occasional mission trip.

Maybe they suffered through a youth camp, whatever it is. Maybe they did VBS

and that was their penance for the year.

They did some things for the Lord.

The problem was they lived their lives in such a way that they would worship

false gods and they had idols and they would go to remember the high places

and worship the gods of the Babylonians of the Assyrians.

And so they have failed to keep the first commandment. Well,

what happens when you fail to keep the first commandment?

When you fail to love God? Well, what happens when you fail to love God is you

fail to keep the second greatest commandment.

The second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself.

When we fail to love God, we fail to love his image bearers.

When we fail to love God, we fail to love the people that he's created the way

he's called us to, because essentially what happens is God becomes what we go

to to get what we want, and the people around us become the means by which we will get it.

And so we go to God and we have this transaction and we say,

listen, God, this is my end of the deal. This is what I'm going to give you.

And in return, I want you to give me this.

And then we go live our lives. And as we live our lives, we look at the people

around us and we go, well, these people are a way for me to get what I want

when God doesn't give it to me.

So I failed to love God. They're failing to love God.

And in turn, what we're going to see is that they begin to use the people that

God has placed around them, not to bless them, but to be a curse upon them,

to take things from them, to steal things from them, because ultimately that's what people are.

The God they worship, they want him to give them what they want.

And when he doesn't, they use the people around them to get what they want.

They essentially end up saying, listen, I have the money. I have the power.

God obviously loves me more than he loves you. And so I have the right to take

from you and use you however I would want to do that.

I don't know if you've ever been on the receiving end of someone who thinks

that way, but it's not a good time.

And the truth is, all of us have acted that way at some point or another where

we've looked at someone in our lives and just kind of said, you know,

this person could be really useful to me.

The first thought in my brain is not always, how can I bless this person?

The first thought in my brain is often, what does this person have that will bless me?

What do I have in this person? What can I get out of this person that's going

to bring me comfort, bring me some success?

So again, we said last week that the Israelites were like a spouse who would

buy you flowers over the weekend while seeking other suitors Monday through Friday.

And oftentimes we realize that there is a sin being made against the spouse

that's being cheated on, but there's also being a sin committed against the

person you're doing that with. And that's what's going on.

There's sin both ways here. So this is the scene we're dropped into in chapter two.

I'm going to look at three things this morning. their sins, their consequence,

and their hope. Their sins, their consequence, and their hope.

So if you have a Bible, turn over to Micah chapter 2. As you do that,

Micah 2 · chapter mention

let me remind you that while Micah is prophesying, while he's doing what he's

doing, you also have Isaiah doing what he's doing.

You have these other prophets that are speaking to these people.

And I find it a great encouragement because when I read that,

the first time I remember thinking, man, you've got Micah and Isaiah.

You've got two guys preaching to you, hearing the word of God,

and one of them is Isaiah.

That's a pretty big deal. And we would think that because of what's happening,

because of who these men are, because of what's going on, we would think,

man, these people are going to turn for sure.

You can't have preachers like this. You can't have people like this in your midst.

You would think that these people are surely going to turn and find their way

back to the Lord. And what we see is the exact opposite of that.

I say that as an encouragement, hopefully, to you to say you can be faithful

in every way possible, and it doesn't mean the people around you will act the

way that God calls them to act.

I say that namely to parents, that we can do everything right, even though we won't.

And it doesn't mean that everything will turn out the way we want it to.

I hope that's a quick encouragement.

All right, Micah chapter two. Let me just read most of this and then we'll get through it.

He says, woe to those who devise wickedness and work evil on their beds.

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

They covet fields and seize them and houses and take them away.

They oppress a man in his house, a man in his inheritance.

Therefore, says the Lord, behold, against this family I am devising disaster,

from which you cannot remove your necks, and you shall not walk haughtily,

for it will be a time of disaster.

In that day they shall take up a taut song against you and moan bitterly,

and say, we are utterly ruined. He changes the portion of my people,

how he removes it from me, and gives it to an apostate, he allots our fields.

Therefore, you will have none to cast the line by lot in the assembly of the Lord.

Do not preach, they preach. One should not preach of such things.

Disgrace will not overtake us.

Should this be said, O house of Jacob, has the Lord grown impatient? Are these his deeds?

Do not my words do good to him who walks uprightly.

But lately my people have risen up as an enemy. You strip the rich road from

those who pass by trustingly coming home from war The women of my people you

drive out from their delightful houses Their young children you take away my

splendor forever Arise and go,

for this is no place to rest Because of the uncleanliness that destroys with a grievous destruction,

If a man should go about in utter wind and lies Saying I will preach to you

of wine and strong drink He would be a preacher for this people I don't know.

So the first thing I want to see is just, hey, what are the sins of these people?

What does God specifically say is going on? I think he does this in three ways.

Number one, he looks at their heart.

Number two, he looks at their hand. And number three, he looks at their mind.

He looks at their heart. He looks at their hands and he looks at their mind.

Number one, he looks at their heart. Verses one and two says that they're plotting

on their beds, that they sit awake at night and they think about the people

in their lives and they go, what can I take from that person?

What can I steal from that person? How can I take advantage of that person?

In other words, what God wants us to know is that this isn't simply a crime

of opportunity. They're not just walking down the street.

Something's happening in front of them and they're going, oh,

well, that's a moment of indiscretion.

Saying, no, these people in power are sitting on their beds at night and they're

dreaming up ways to take things and to oppress people in and around them.

Essentially, how can what these people have become what I have?

Which leads to thoughts like, well, why should these poor people have stuff anyway?

Why should they have stuff that I don't have? I'm smarter than them.

If I had those resources, I would use them better than they would use them.

If I had that property, if I had that money, if I had that stuff,

I would do better with it than they would do it because I'm just better than they are.

You think, how could anybody ever think that way? And the truth is this happens all the time.

And if we're honest with ourselves, we might think that way sometimes,

even though we might not act on it, which is good.

But there's certainly times in my life that I've looked at what someone else has, right?

Looked at their business or their kids or their stuff or their money or their

church and thought, you know, if I had those things, I could do so much better than they're doing.

If God would have blessed me with those things, he would be amazed at what kind

of things I could accomplish with them.

If Elon Musk would just give me one rocket, right? Like I'll figure it out.

Something cool is going to happen.

It's again, to look at our situation and to look at someone else's situation

and go, God, you were wrong.

That's the real sin here. The real sin of breaking the fourth commandment that

thou shalt not covet is that you look at someone else's stuff and you really

go, not only should I have that, but God, you should have never given them that.

You should have never blessed them with that. You should have blessed me with that.

You should have given me those things. And because you didn't,

I'm going to go take them for myself. That's what we see the people plotting in their beds.

I think it's just a general principle. It's important note here that God's not

really concerned with how much you have.

God does not care how much money you have. There's plenty of rich guys in the Bible.

Job was a rich guy that became a poor guy that God made even richer.

Abraham was a very wealthy man. Moses was a very wealthy man.

David and Solomon, incredibly wealthy men.

That's not the issue. The issue is not what you have. He does take some exceptions

to how you got what you have, how you have come across the wealth or the property

or the stuff that you have. He is concerned with that.

Not one time in this letter does God say, you have too much stuff.

You have too much money. You have too much land, too many houses.

Your temples are too big. He isn't concerned with that.

He is concerned with their hearts and how they go about receiving these things.

Instead of working hard and trusting the Lord and receiving from him whatever

God would want to give them and being content with what they have,

they look at God and they go, it's never enough. You haven't given me enough.

You haven't blessed me enough. And I'm going to use these people,

these image bearers around me to get what I want out of them.

Their hearts are wicked and they choose coveting.

Number two, their hands. They choose stealing over earning.

If you jump to verses eight and nine, verses eight and nine give us this picture

of what's actually going on here.

God speaking to them through Micah says, lately my people have risen up as an enemy.

They stripped the rich road from those who passed by trustingly with no thought

of war. That's a tough Hebrew translation.

Really what it's saying here is they strip the rich robe from those who pass

by trustingly, who've come home from war or who've been dealing with war.

In other words, these people that God's talking to sit at home,

they steal from people around them.

And then when the soldiers come home from war with the spoils from war that

they've rightfully been given by God, these people wait at the road for them

to come home and say, hey, I want that robe.

That thing that you fought for, the thing that you were sent out to do while

I was sitting here doing absolutely nothing.

Hey, I actually think I should have that too, because you wouldn't have a home

to come home to if I wasn't here to take care of it.

He says, the women of my people, you drive out from their delightful houses,

their young children, you take away my splendor forever.

Again, there's a lot going on here, but mainly what this is speaking of is the

women whose husbands have been killed in war, who are now widows and have no

ability to pay for or upkeep their houses,

these leaders would come in and say, hey, if you don't pay this much by X amount

of time, we're going to take your house from you because legally we can do that.

Even though in Deuteronomy God had specifically laid out ways and specifically

laid out reasons for that not to happen, these men did not care.

So again, they looked at war-torn soldiers.

They looked at evicted women and said, those things would be better off in our hands than in yours.

Ultimately, he finishes by saying that they're going to rob God's glory from

their children. What does that mean?

It means that the land that God had set out for his people,

this land of milk and honey, this promised land that these children should be

growing up in under the admonition and the glory of the Lord is about to be taken from them.

And it's going to be taken from these children because of the actions of the men in charge.

We said last week at the end that one of the worst things that goes on here

is there's children that are going to be led out in this exile as these Babylonians

come in and they kick the people out of the land.

They become foreigners. You can imagine if you were 7, 8, 9,

10, 11 years old and you lived through that, you're definitely asking the question, well, what did I do?

Why am I being kicked out? Why am I being punished?

And God says, well, because of the sins of these people.

So first their hearts, then their hands, now their heads.

He uses this example of their ears, their ears. Listen to these verses.

In verse six, he says, do not preach, thus they preach. In other words,

the people say to Micah, don't preach that way.

So Micah's preaching to them and they're preaching right back to him.

Don't even think about saying that.

What do they say to Micah? They say, Micah, no one should preach of such things.

Disgrace will not overtake us. You can hear it in their voice.

Micah, don't you know who we are?

Don't you know what we've come from? We're God's chosen people,

right? We've been set apart from the world.

There's no other nation like us. He delivered us out of Egypt.

He gave us the law at Mount Sinai.

He kept us in the desert. He delivered us into this promised land.

We're the people of Abraham and Moses and Joshua and David and Solomon.

There is no way that God's going to do what you're saying he's going to do.

Again, in the same way, someone might say, don't you know who I am?

I got baptized when I was five and I got saved when I was at church camp and

I've been given to the church for years and I was a charter member of this church

and I've been on mission trips and I've gone here and I've gone there.

There is no way that God will do those things that you're saying he's going to do.

Micah said, has the Lord grown impatient? Are these his deeds?

End of verse seven, do not my words do good to him who walks uprightly.

The words, isn't the Lord's word always good to hear if you desire to walk uprightly?

There's no one in Israel right now hearing the words of Micah that desires to

live rightly that isn't saying, amen.

We've got to stop treating the widows this way. We have got to stop treating

soldiers of war this way.

We have got to get rid of these people that plot on their beds to steal from

people. We need to change those things.

Thank God that Micah is preaching that way. But the majority of people are saying,

the problem's not with us.

The problem's with you. Micah, you're the problem.

And ultimately they're saying God's word is the problem.

That's their real issue with Micah. It's not Micah. It's that God's speaking

for the Lord and they have no ear for that.

They could care less what the Lord has to say. They've already made up their

minds that what they're doing is not that bad, that the way they're living their lives is good enough,

and that maybe they're not perfect, but they're better than the Babylonians,

they're better than the Assyrians, they're better than the Egyptians.

So how bad could we really be?

Again, we say this a lot in here. We fall into the same trap when we look at

the world around us, the countries around us, the states around us,

the people around us, and we find the worst of those people.

And we go, you know, I'm not saying I'm perfect, but at least I'm not that bad.

At least we're not that crazy. At least they haven't fallen into that sin.

And most oftentimes when we think that way, what we're really trying to do is

deflect the word of the Lord from our own lives.

And when God says, hey, you've got some coveting you need to take care of.

Hey, you've got some pride in your own life that maybe you need to tamp down a little bit.

Hey, you really need to take a look at your own life. The Lord hits us with

that. And we respond with, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Lord.

I'm in church every Sunday. Have you seen the transgender people.

Oh, no, no, no, Lord. I know, I know I'm not perfect and I haven't done one.

But have you seen all this stuff about getting marriage over here?

Like this is the real issue.

Now, are those real issues? Absolutely. They are. Are they great evils?

Absolutely. They are. But when the Lord comes to you and speaks to you, it's for you.

When the Lord comes to these people to speak to his people, his Israelites about

his law that they're breaking in the covenant that they're not keeping,

It's for them, not for the Babylonians or the Assyrians or the Chaldeans or the Egyptians.

He's not worried about them worshiping false gods. He's not worried about how

they're treating people.

That's how the evil world around them is supposed to treat people, but not God's people.

And they hear from Micah the words from God, and they say, listen,

I have no patience for that. I don't want to hear that.

Micah, you must be mistaken. You don't know who we are. Thank you.

Jesus in the gospels multiple times as he tells the truth out loud in parables

and his disciples are asking him how to understand these things,

especially when he does the parable of the seeds.

If you want to go look at something, he says this phrase, he who has ears to hear, let him hear.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear. In other words.

Jesus knows that your mind will tell your ears to hear the word that you want

to hear, that it takes an act of the Lord to give you ears to hear what you need to hear.

So they have sinned with their hearts. They lay on their beds and covet.

They've sinned with their hands.

They've taken that covetedness and they've stolen from people.

They've taken things from widows and they've stolen the glory from children.

And they sin with their minds as they choose to not listen to what it is God

would have to say to them.

It sounds an awful lot like what James tells us sin does in chapter one.

He says, when sin is conceived, right?

When desire is conceived, it brings forth to sin. And when sin is conceived, it brings forth death.

This is exactly how we see the Israelites go down as they sit on their beds and they have a desire.

That desire turns into sin when they go and steal.

And that sin leads to death when they refuse to listen and turn from their wicked

ways and turn back to the Lord.

And so what does death look like?

Well, the consequences are dire.

Verse three says, the Lord devises disaster against you.

The Hebrew word for disaster there is literally the same word used for evil.

In other words, you sit on your beds and you decide how you can commit evil against other people.

Now the Lord lays on his bed and considers, how can I bring some disaster against you?

Now, obviously the Lord's reason for bringing disaster is justified.

It is righteous. It is good.

Certainly when we sit around and do that, it is not, but I wanted to point verse

three out because it's, it's again, another picture of saying the Lord's still

in control of this whole situation.

Remember when, is Kareth in here? Good. All right. So when Kareth would leave,

you know, and she would leave me with the two boys, especially when they were little.

Now it's like, just go outside. I don't care what you do, but,

but they would be little and she would ask me to watch them and which inevitably

lead to just chaos. You know, like we've got cushions out.

There's a hole in the wall. I can fix it. It's whatever.

And, and I would go like, all right, boys, listen, I got to go to the bathroom

or I got to go do something real quick. I'll be back in 10 minutes.

For 10 minutes, just sit there. Do nothing.

Watch Bluey. I don't know. Probably not. Whatever.

I'm not going to say I don't like Bluey because all y'all not like me,

but I'm just saying we watch something.

Watch old Texas A&M highlights like good kids. I would leave for 10, 15 minutes.

When I would come back, of course, did they do any of those things?

No. They did exactly what I would do, right? It's more chaos.

All of a sudden the Cheerios are out and there's ramen out and there's food

out and the cushions are now not only out, they've been pulled off and the cushions

are off and they've built a fort out of who knows what.

And I think often we think of God that way where he leaves for a minute,

he goes and checks on Egypt.

He comes back to his people and he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

I thought I left you with instructions. What's going on here?

Why would you do these things?

That's not at all the picture that the Bible paints. The picture the Bible paints

is God has known that they were going to do this from the very moment that he

made a covenant with them.

Moses prophesied this exact thing happening in Deuteronomy.

The Lord is not caught off guard, and his response is not reactionary.

That's really important.

He doesn't show up to the scene and start pulling out belts and paddles to beat

people over the head with.

His response has been patient and kind and measured.

Miss that it is the Lord that devises this disaster.

Certainly it will be the Babylonians that are the physical representation of this.

It will be their rulers, their generals, their kings, their soldiers.

It's from their hands that the physical blows will come against the sinful people of God.

But that does not mean that God is not in control.

Verse 4 says that to an apostate, he gives our fields.

In other words, this is the people of God saying the Babylonians are going to

come in, this apostate pagan nation, and God isn't going to just let them take the fields.

It says he's going to give them our fields.

The saddest part about this whole scene is that God's chosen people were living in God's chosen land.

And for the Babylonians to come into that land and to take up shop, there is no change.

God's people have fallen so far away from him. There is very little difference

between them and the people around them.

Isaiah 47, 6 says, I was angry with my people. I prevained my heritage.

I gave them into your hand and you showed them no mercy.

Listen, God will turn his people over to the Babylonians to do some very specific

things related to their sins, but he has a purpose for those things.

Verse three says, one of the reasons he's going to do this is that they will

no longer walk pridefully or haughtily. That's a good word.

Should bring that word back. I thought about that. You're acting a little haughty over there.

They're acting pridefully. Ravinder of Proverbs 16, 18, pride goes before destruction,

a haughty spirit before a fall. the people of God had forgotten that they were

just that. They were his people.

When he brings them out in the Exodus, he doesn't say, hey, I let you go.

Now it's yours to live. It's just free reign.

You're welcome. Go live your life how you want to live. No, God says, you are mine now.

You're my possession. You belong to me.

And yet they have treated God as though he was the one that was blessed to have

them and not the other way around.

This is the same with us. First Corinthians chapter six, towards the end,

Paul says, you are not your own. You were bought with a price.

So glorify God in your flesh.

It's so important for us to remember that we belong to him.

We are not free to do whatever we want to do. That's not the freedom that Christ offers us.

The freedom that you and I have been given is freedom from sin and death.

The freedom that you and I have been given is freedom to do what God has called

us to do, to have a new heart and new eyes and new ears, not to go live however we want.

Had forgotten that they were gods. All right, let's close with this, their hope.

Verses 12 and 13. I know we've been going a little bit. I promise we're about done.

If nothing else, you can leave here and say, I read a whole chapter of the Bible

today. So if you didn't do anything, if you didn't get it in this week, I got you. All right.

12 and 13 says, I will surely assemble all of you, O Jacob.

I will gather the remnant of Israel. I will set them together like a sheep in

a fold like a flock and its pastor, a noisy multitude of them.

He opens the breach and goes up before them. They break through and pass the gate, going out by it.

The king passes on before them, the Lord at their head.

We've talked about their sins. We've talked about their consequence.

Now let's talk about their hope.

If you read your Bible from Genesis to this point, it would seem as though God's plan may fail.

Of course, we have the sin in the garden, but it seems like things turn around

when he calls Abraham out.

Then it seems things are getting a little shaky when they're enslaved in Egypt, but God brings them out.

It seems things would get a little shaky when they don't make it into the promised

land, but God ultimately brings them into the promised land. He gives them a king.

He gives them a nation, a prosperous nation.

He prevails them in all their battles. And yet we get to this place and we're

going, well, this seems like the end.

This seems like God gave it his best shot, and these people just are never going

to come around to actually following him, actually loving him with all their

heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Then comes verse 12. Let me just reiterate again, verse 12. I want you to see something.

We did this in Ephesians 2 a couple months ago. I think this will be helpful

for you. Verse 12, I want you to see who the acting party is.

Again, he's just spent a lot of time saying this is what you did.

You've been evil. You've coveted. You've stolen.

You've sinned. And now he says, well, what is God going to do?

Verse 12, I will surely assemble all of you. I will set them together.

I will gather the remnant of Israel.

Like he always does, this is what you're going to do, but this is what I'm going to do.

I'm going to gather a remnant for myself.

I'm going to gather a people from this sinful group of people,

and I'm going to keep them for myself. As you get thrown into Babylonian exile

and everything about your life seems like God will never prevail,

this plan has completely failed.

God says, yeah, if it was up to you, that's exactly what would happen,

but I will do something in light of that.

I will gather a remnant.

I will be like a shepherd. I will bring them into a pen.

They will be mine. They will be set aside for my purpose, for my pleasure,

to be blessed by my hands forever.

God will keep his remnant. The New Testament puts it this way,

Christ will build his church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

It doesn't matter how sinful a people is. God's grace is greater than their sin.

And he looks on his people and he says, I will save for myself a remnant.

And then he says, I will be like a shepherd.

I will open the breach. In other words, there's this wall that divides us.

The shepherd, whoever he is, will open the breach.

Says their king will pass before them, the Lord at their head.

So what does God give his people?

Hope. You have been sinful beyond your wildest dreams You have done things and

said things and acted in ways that you never thought you would And all of that

is added up to you don't even listen when your God speaks anymore.

Same hope you and me have. It's

just the difference between them and us is our hope we can put a name on.

They're looking for the shepherd. They're looking for the remnant keeper.

They're looking for the king to pass before them. They're looking for the Lord

to be at their head, and they don't know who that is.

They don't know when that'll be, but we know exactly who that is, the man Christ Jesus.

And what does Jesus teach when he comes to this place, to this earth,

to this sinful, evil world that we live in. He says, hey, the last are first now.

All the people that are being oppressed that Micah talks about,

hey, those people that are last, they're first now.

He says crazy things like blessed are the poor, blessed are the poor in spirit,

not blessed are those who have a lot.

Again, the issue is not what they have. The issue is their spirit.

How does he bring in the new order? How does he bring in this new covenant?

He says, I will take the last spot.

I will take the last spot. I'll take the lowest place.

I'll let them take the robe off of my back. I'll let them take me from my home.

I'll let them rob God's glory from me. I will let them beat me.

I will let them mock me. I will let them do all the things that they would like

to do to the most least of people that the earth can offer.

These sins that Israel is committing, Jesus says, I will allow them to do all

of those things to me so that those who have experienced such things can know

that in me, you can have life.

In me, you can have life more abundant, that your sins can be forgiven,

that you can come to the remnant keeper and he will not cast you out.

No matter what sins you've committed or what things you've done wrong or the

things in your life that make you shudder when you think about or some of the

evils that you've seen in the world, Jesus says, I have come.

Says it this way. We'll close here. He says, he committed no sin,

neither was there deceit found in his mouth.

When he was reviled, he did not revile in return. When he suffered,

he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.

He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

By his wounds, you have been healed. Listen, Jesus comes and is treated exactly

like the oppressed people are treated in Micah chapter 2.

Micah 2 · chapter mention

The difference between them and him is he was sinless and perfect,

and they crucified him for it.

But despite the evil in the world that you experience, both around you and in

your life, the Bible makes something clear for you that regardless of the amount

of sin that you have committed.

Regardless of the amount of sin that's been committed against you,

the amount of evil that's been committed against you, there is hope in the covenant-keeping,

remnant-keeping God of the Bible.

And that hope is found ultimately in the shepherd that he sends in his son,

Christ Jesus, to bring sinners to life.

Die to sin and live to righteousness. Let's pray.

Father, as always, thank you for today. Thank you for your word.

Thank you that you are a covenant-keeping God.

When we read stories like Micah, it can be easy to take little hope away from

them because the truth is we might see some of ourselves in these actions.

We might see things where we go, and I have thought that way.

I have done those things. I have seen that done.

Or maybe we've been on the receiving end of actions like that,

and it can be easy to find ourselves in a bit of hopelessness.

God, it's amazing how many people I've talked to today on job sites in the last

week that have a sense of hopelessness because of the evil that they saw on a screen.

So when we see evil like that, it's easy to be taken aback. It's easy for our hearts to be troubled.

God, I thank you that your word is honest with us in telling us that the world

is evil. There is evil in this world for now.

But your son has assured us, take heart, that he has overcome the world.

And I pray that if nothing else happens this morning, that's what we would take away.

That even in Micah, as the sins of your people are multiplying,

as you're going to bring disaster upon them, you give them hope.

You promise them that you will one day gather your people together That you

have sent a shepherd to bring your flock home,

That your shepherd speaks and your sheep hear his voice and they listen God,

I pray that every single one of us has had that experience,

If there's someone in here who doesn't know Jesus Christ as their shepherd I

pray that you would open their ears to hear him That you would give them a new

heart that loves him that you

would give them a new mind that desires to do what he asked them to do.

God, ultimately a new life in him. Let's pray, amen.