"What Does God Want From You?" - Micah 1:1

Micah 6.8 says, He has told you, O man, what is good and what does the Lord

require of you, but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with

your God. That is probably the verse in Micah that most people know.

Even if you don't know the reference, you've heard it.

Micah 6.8 has been quoted over and over again, especially the last few years

politically, to make whatever case they want to make.

But the truth is, the book of Micah does ask this question, what does God want from you?

What does God want from you? It's an interesting question. If you ask 20 people,

you'd probably get 20 different types of answers.

You might hear somebody say, well, he wants me to go to church,

or he wants me to give money, or he wants me to be nice, or he wants me to be

kind. He wants me to do this, that, or the other. What does God want from you?

Most oftentimes though, when we ask the question, what does God want from you?

What we end up giving is not ourselves, right? We just give things.

We give things. Again, pray more, read my Bible, go to church,

worship more, whatever that is.

When we say, what does God want from me? It's followed by an action.

I love this quote by E.M. Bounds. He says, the church is looking for better

methods and God is looking for better men.

In other words, the church is always looking for a way to do things better.

And God is always just looking for better men and women.

That at the core of who they are, the very person of who they are,

not just what they do, not just what they do with their hands or their feet

or their money or their time, not just the things on the outside,

that he wants people from the inside out to be better men and women,

the kind of men and women that God has called us to be.

And the question as we get into Micah is that question is, do you want to be

that kind of person? Because it's easy to not be, especially in East Texas.

It's easy to get involved in church.

Listen, if you don't like this church, go find one of the other 900 that you will like. Have that.

If you don't like this worship, go do that worship. If you don't like those

seats, go to those seats. If you don't like that location, go to that location.

I'm not necessarily knocking it. I'm just saying you got options.

Again, oftentimes when we think of what does God want, we just think of all

these things that we should be doing when in actuality and what Mike is going

to show us in these next 10 to 12 weeks is, he wants you is what God wants.

He wants every part of you. He wants every second. He wants every breath. He wants every dime.

He wants every single part of you.

And the situation that Micah walks into is one where, yes, it is the people of God.

They know who God is. And they're still doing a lot of the things that God asked

them to do. They're still sacrificing the way he asked them to sacrifice.

They're still doing Passover meals. They're still giving their tithes to the temple.

They're still singing the songs that they used to sing. They're still doing

a lot of the things that they used to do.

They're still circumcising their babies. They're still a part of that covenant.

The issue is they've also mixed in a whole lot of what I'm going to call pagan religion.

And what is pagan religion? Well, pagan religion is based on the idea that the

gods will take care of you as long as you keep them happy.

That's a pagan religion. Whatever religion you want to call it,

doesn't matter what it is, put whatever name you want to put on it.

A pagan religion is as long as I keep whoever my God is happy,

they'll keep me safe. They'll keep me clean. They'll do the right thing for me.

If I give God what he wants, they'll keep my family healthy,

my business healthy, my kids are going to prosper. They're going to do all the right things.

That's pagan religion. And this is the situation that Micah finds himself in.

You have people who are doing the things that the God of the Bible has asked

them to do, but they're treating the God of the Bible unlike who he is.

In other words, yes, Yes, I'm giving tithes and yes, I'm going to church and

yes, I'm doing what God asked me to do, but in my heart, I'm only doing those

things so that God will do for me.

They're treating God like a pagan God.

They're treating God like the Egyptians treated their God, the Assyrians or

the Philistines or any other foreign nation. And that's not who God is.

The difference is, pagan religion is, keep God happy and he'll keep bad things away from you.

Christianity is, bad things will happen to you. They will.

That's part of this life. Jesus makes it very clear.

Bad things will happen to you. The psalmist even knows this as he looks at the

world around him and he asks questions like, why do evil men prosper?

Why are these evil nations prospering? Why are these people in my life that

I know are cheating and stealing and doing all the things they're not supposed

to? Why are they prospering? Why am I not prospering?

The truth is because that's the life that you will live. That's the world that you live in.

Jesus even speaks of this where he says that there's wars, there's going to

be wars and rumors of wars and famines and earthquakes, right?

This is just part of the experience of living.

And in following Christ and doing what God calls us to do, it's not that he

says, I'm He said, even those things will be used in your life for your good.

You will still have them, but they will be used for your good and ultimately God's glory.

So again, keep this in mind. Paganism is keep God happy and he keeps you happy.

Christianity is bad things will happen, but God will use them for your good and his glory.

And so where we see again ourselves, where Micah is going to come into is he's

got this group of people, right?

The Israelites, they're in two nations now You got the northern and southern

kingdoms The northern kingdom is going to fall during the time of Micah

But he's got these two nations And they've taken what God has given them And

perverted it in such a way where they're saying Listen, we want to have God

We want all his benefits But we also want these other God's benefits too.

And I think one of the reasons it's so important, I love that we're going to

be in this book, is it is a lot of the same things that we see now.

Most people that I meet, when we start talking about Jesus, and of course they

find out I'm a pastor and they're like, all of a sudden they don't cuss anymore,

which is crazy how that works, right? Like, oh, you're a pastor.

Oh yeah, I only listen to Chris Tomlin. I don't know. I didn't even know there

was anybody else on the radio.

It's like, it's crazy. You have a middle finger sticker on the back of your

truck. He's like, I bought that used. It's been on there. I can't get that off.

Which, by the way, I could care less. But neither here nor there, we start talking.

It becomes obvious that when they say I'm a Christian, what it means is,

well, I'm in the business of bartering with God.

And they say things like, well, you know, I hadn't been going to church for

three or four months and I feel like my life's gone off track.

So I really need to get back in church so that God will fix everything in my life.

And you're going, man, that's not how this works.

That's not how this works.

My mom grew up in a church where if you didn't tithe at the church,

and then on your way home, you popped a tire, you got home and your refrigerator

was broken, they would tell you, hey, listen, that happened because you didn't do X.

If you would have tithed, the nail wouldn't have been there.

It's like the Lord sovereignly worked that nail in because you forgot your $5 this morning.

Both of these ways of thinking about God are wrong And I'll just be honest with

you, completely demonic That is how you treat God if he was like a pagan god.

This is how cults treat God. Every other religion in the world treats God this

way, whoever their God is.

Do these things. These things will go well for you.

So how do we avoid that as a church? How do we avoid falling into that trap?

Because it is such an easy one.

It is so easy to when we go, well, what does God want from his church?

And we're going to say, well, we need to do missions.

We need to be nice to people. We need to do evangelism and give a little money

here and there. And then we got it. We nailed it.

Just a reminder, this is not by better methods, but by becoming more like the

men and women God has called us to be.

So again, my hope is in these next 10 to 12 weeks is that we would commit ourselves

to better understanding who this God is and how he has called us to interact with him.

Because God has not changed. The same God that Micah is going to speak for is

the exact same God that stands before you today.

All right. So again, a little different this morning. We're only going to do

really one verse in Micah.

I just want to set the foundation of where we're going to be,

kind of go over who are the kings and who are the major players here.

So the good news is it gives you a whole week to read Micah six times every

day and have it memorized next week. So I know you're going to go home and do that.

But for real, I do encourage you to go home, read through Micah at least once,

get a feel for what's going on.

If you're a literature nerd, I don't know if we have any English nerds in here,

you're going to love Micah.

It's basically a lot of Hebrew poetry.

It intensifies as you go. He says the same thing three different times,

and every time he says it, it intensifies.

And so if you like literature, that's great. If you don't like literature,

it's still the word of God.

You need to go read it, okay? So go read it.

So here's Micah's situation. His ministry was most likely 20 to 30 years.

So he says in verse one, the word of the Lord that came to Micah of Moresheth in the days of Jotham,

Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem.

John, can you leave that up there for me?

So we've got the word of the Lord came to Micah of Moresheth in the days of

Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. So we know when these kings reigned,

roughly, and we know that he came in at some point in the middle of Jotham's reign.

He was there for all of Ahaz's reign, and he was there for some of Hezekiah's reign.

So his ministry reigned somewhere from 25 to 35, 40 years.

I read some places that it was 50 years. I have a hard time getting there.

But regardless, these are the kings that he was around.

And as he comes in to be a prophet, again, Israel is divided into two,

we'll call it factions or nations.

You've got Israel, which is 10 tribes. You've got Judah, which is one tribe.

And this is where Micah finds himself.

The northern kingdom, Israel is going to fall in 722 BC.

The Assyrians invade and scatter the 10 tribes kept there.

Fun fact here, ultimately the Assyrians bring back these foreigners.

They end up intermingling with some of the Jews that are left over,

and those people become known as the Samaritans.

So when you read the Good Samaritan, now you have a way of putting that in perspective

and why the Jews did not like Samaritans.

Most importantly for this morning, I want us to look at these three kings.

The three kings that Micah is going to encounter during his time as a prophet of God.

The first king is Jotham. We're not going to talk a whole lot about Jotham, but just know this.

It says in the Bible that Jotham loved the Lord, that he wanted to do what God

wanted him to do, that he in and of himself was a good man, but that he allowed

things to happen that shouldn't have happened.

The greatest threat to many Christians is their desire for everyone to like

them. It's the greatest threat you have.

Jotham knew what was the right thing to do. He even desired in his heart to

do the right thing, and he himself did the right thing.

It says that he worshiped the Lord, that he did what God had asked him to do.

The problem is he didn't speak against anything God asked him to speak against.

So in his own world and where he was at, he worshiped the Lord.

But he also never spoke against these false pagan religions,

these false ways of dealing with God.

He let them keep these false idols, and he let them keep these false way of

doing things, even though God had given him the kingship over his people and

he had the authority to change that, he said, listen, I think we should do it this way.

But if you wanna do it that way, well, you know, who am I to say?

Jotham is like so many people today that in their own world,

in their own life, they desire to follow the Lord.

But when it comes to being courageous outside of their own heart and own mind,

everything fades away from their own courage.

And they can't speak to others. They can't speak to those around them and say, no, man, that is wrong.

That's wrong. That's evil. That's a terrible thing to do. That's who Jotham was.

And I remember one of my seminary profs telling us, listen, one of the worst

things that someone can say about you when you die is all they can do is say,

you know what? He was a good dude. He was just a good dude.

That's all they can say about you is you were a nice guy, right?

What did you accomplish for the Lord? What did you do?

Know that if you want to live for the Lord, if you want to do what God is calling

us to do, if you want to live the life that God has asked you to,

you will have some enemies. You will.

You will have some people that don't like you.

You will have some people that say of you, man, that guy's a legalistic jerk.

Like, why would he ever think that way? He told me that I can't go where I want

to go or do what I want to do.

He told me that I can't be a Christian and act how I want to act.

He told me that God doesn't love the fact that I'm doing this specific sin or

doing this specific habit.

Listen, that's just part of the job description, guys. That people will look

at you at some point and say, no, I don't like what you're doing.

And that's who Jotham was. He just allowed people to do whatever they wanted

to do, even though he was a good guy.

Now, what happens when a good guy who has the ability to stop something doesn't do it?

What happens is an evil guy looks at that and goes, yeah, I can take advantage of that situation.

So Jotham dies and we get King Ahaz. King Ahaz is one of the most evil kings

that Judah will ever have.

For 16 years, Ahaz rules over a national, moral, and economical disaster.

Let me read 2 Kings 16.

This is how it begins.

In the 17th year of Pekah, the son of Remalah, Ahaz, the son of Jotham,

king of Judah, began to reign.

Ahaz was 20 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned 16 years of Jerusalem.

And he did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord his God,

as his father David had done. but he walked in the way of the kings of Israel.

He even burned his own son as an offering, according to the despicable practices

of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel.

He sacrificed and made offerings in the high places and on the hills and under every tree.

He goes on to tell us that he makes alliances with foreign nations just so that

he doesn't have to fight a battle, even though God has asked him to do that.

He goes on that he absolutely demolishes Israel's or Judah's economy because

he gives away all this money to these other kings so that they won't come and take stuff from him.

Ahaz rules over one of the worst periods in Judah's history,

and he's right on the heels of a good guy.

Think of all the things that even now we just read. You've got false idols.

So one of the idols that King Ahaz is going to worship here is the idol Moloch.

And Moloch required in the Old Testament, when you read about this God,

incredibly evil thing, live child sacrifices into the fire, right?

Because that's how you appease your God. That's how pagan religions work.

He wants a live baby to be thrown into the fire so that you can appease him.

And if you want him to give you what you want, well, then what does Ahaz do?

The king of Judah, the king of God's people, he takes his own son and he tosses him in the fire.

Listen, he may have tithed, he may have prayed days before he did that,

but the truth is Ahaz is hedging his bets.

He's got some faith in the Lord God. He's got some faith in Moloch.

He's got some faith here and some faith there.

He's just trying to do whatever he can to make his life as easy as he can make it.

Again, what's that have to do with us? What does that have to do with us?

That's not the place we find ourselves in currently, right? We don't look around

and see those kinds of things.

And I would say, I think we see more of them than we think we do.

Last year alone, there was over 1 million abortions in America.

And what is that? If not, I will give my baby to death so that I can live how I want to live.

I realize it's a complicated issue. I realize there's all kinds of different ways to look at that.

But in the end, what is going on is there is a life that is being sacrificed

over so that somebody can live however they want to live.

They may not be sacrificing it to a God named Moloch, but they are sacrificing

it to a God so that that God will give them the ability to do whatever they want.

And a kid would just get in the way of their life and how they want to live it.

You hear things all the time like, listen, it doesn't really matter who you

worship or how you worship as long as you're just really sincere.

Again, men are so nice and they're really do love the Lord, and they really are great.

It's like, yeah, but they worship a false God. Yeah, I mean,

I'm just not willing to say that. I'm just not willing to admit that.

It's like, no, that's exactly what's going on. And don't get it twisted.

It doesn't matter what you think. The God you worship will shape everything about you.

So there's this terrible reign of King Ahaz.

Nothing good comes out of it. There's no positive takeaways in 2 Kings.

There's nothing in there that makes us think like, oh, this thing's going to turn around.

What hope does that leave us with for Judah? What hope could there ever be for

Judah once you've gone down this path, once you've committed yourself over to

these evil, demonic things?

Well, the hope is that God is faithful to his people.

The hope is that it doesn't matter how broken the situation is or how we look

at something and think, man, that is just beyond saving.

The hope is that God is faithful, that he is patient, that he is long-suffering, that he is kind.

And in the midst of this incredible evil, God raises up our third king,

King Hezekiah. King Hezekiah.

2 Kings 18 says this of King Hezekiah.

And the third year of Hosea, king of Allah, king of Israel.

Right. So when you read these, just so you know, they're trying to give you

a history of both Israel and Judah.

And so they reference dates based on who was the king in Israel,

who was the king in Judah at this time. That's what's going on here at the beginning of 18.

Says, king of Israel, Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, king of Judah began to reign.

He was 25 years old when he began to reign and he reigned 29 years in Jerusalem.

His mother's name was Abai, the daughter of Zechariah.

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

So what does that look like? What does doing right in the eyes of the Lord look like?

Verse four, it says, he removed the high places and broke the pillars and cut down the Asherah.

And he broke into pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made.

For until those days, the people of Israel had made offerings to it.

He trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel, so that there was none like him among

all the kings of Judah After him,

nor among those who were before him For he held fast to the Lord,

he did not depart from following him But kept the commandments the Lord commanded Moses,

And the Lord was with him, wherever he went, he prospered He rebelled against

the king of Assyria He didn't make deals with the king of Assyria He rebelled

against the king of Assyria and would not serve him.

And he struck down the Philistines as far as Gaza and its territory from the

watchtower to fortified city.

Thing that you should think when you think of King Hezekiah is he didn't become

the good king he is by watching a good king.

There was nothing about his example that he saw that would give him a clue as

to how he should do something, how he should live his life, how he should be

the king of Israel, the king of Judah.

But yet it says that there was no better king before him or after him. Well, what about David?

What about King Solomon? What about these great men? I mean,

they reference David, almost every king.

And yet here it says that there was none like him among all the kings of Judah

after him, nor among those who were before him.

This is the greatest king Judah has ever had.

Hezekiah is Jotham with a backbone. He doesn't care if people think he's nice.

Now he wants to be nice, right? I'm assuming he's a kind person,

right? God's law asks us to love one another.

It asks us to treat people fairly. And I'm sure that Hezekiah does that.

But I would also imagine if there's a big group of people who have based their

life around worshiping a false God and Hezekiah shows up with a sledgehammer

and starts breaking apart idols,

there's going to be some people to look at him and go, hey, that wasn't very nice.

That's not very kind My father worshipped that idol My kids worshipped that

idol We worship that idol every day That is the idol that is central to our

lives We love that false god And Hezekiah says I do not care that you love that false god,

You could also say that Hezekiah Loves them enough To do what God has asked him to do,

He knows of Jotham He knows how he acted He knows he was a good man that failed

to act He knows his dad, Ahaz.

He knows what he was like. He knows how evil he is. And yet Hezekiah looks at

both of those men and says, neither of these will work.

The good guy with no courage only opens the door for an evil man with no courage.

Hezekiah's first concern is not people, but God.

And I would say to us this morning, what does God ask of us?

That's the first thing he asks of you, is to consider God before you consider anything else.

When you open your mouth, the way you love your wife and your kids and your

husband, the way you treat people at work, all of those things.

Consider what has God asked of me? What has God said? Not what's going to make these people like me?

Yeah, I want them to know I'm a Christian, but I want to be a cool Christian.

I kind of want to be one of those lame Christians that actually follows the

Bible. I want them to know that I'm cool with all this other stuff.

It's funny, we were talking to the kids during Student Bible Study today about

what they consider corny.

I won't say it out loud because I don't want to call out some parents,

okay? But every kid growing up has this idea of what Christianity is.

We had veggie tales.

Dude, I was telling the kids this morning, when I was eight,

I just assumed that I could treat God the exact same way that I could treat

Larry the Cucumber, like they were one and the same.

And he was my buddy and he was my friend. And if I didn't want to do something,

if I felt uncomfortable with something, then God would look at me and be like,

hey, buddy, it's okay, right? Let's sing a silly song and everything's going to be okay.

The problem with that is that Christianity produces nothing.

It made me feel really good because I could get in my car or I could go to church

or I could do whatever I wanted to do.

And in my own heart and in my own mind, I could feel really good about me and

God. And I could feel really good that God loved me, that he had forgiven me.

And I just didn't really have to worry about what was around me.

And again, the problem with that is God's called me to more than that.

He's actually called us to make an impact in the world around us.

And when I started thinking that way, I'm going, well, that doesn't sound very much like Larry.

Larry's cool with everybody. Everybody loves Larry the Cucumber.

And now all of a sudden I'm getting into the word and I'm seeing what God's

actually called me to do.

And he's calling me to do some things that are going to make people look at

me and go, hey, man, you're not very nice Why would you say that?

How can you believe that?

Why would you think that way? Why would you act that way?

Muslims can't go to heaven? What gives you the authority to say that?

What do you mean Mormons worship a false Jesus because they think he's Satan's

brother? What gives you the right to say that?

It's way easier to not get into those conversations.

It's way easier, as one of the youth kids said this morning,

it's way easier just to say, hey man, Jesus loves you. And they go,

hey man, Jesus loves you too. And we just high five and walk away.

That's exactly what Jotham would have done. I don't think anyone in this room

is really in danger of becoming Ahaz, having the heart that Ahaz has.

Now it's possible, but I don't see that in the room. But I do think there's

a lot of us that are prone to be Jothams because that's how we've been trained

to think about Christianity.

Just be nice. I've heard it said before, that's the 11th commandment. Just be nice.

Thou shalt be nice. As long as you're nice, nothing else matters.

But the truth is God calls us to be more than that.

Hezekiah shows us he doesn't just internalize his Christianity.

He doesn't internalize his faith in God.

God gives him influence and he does not hesitate to do exactly what God has called him to do.

Now, none of us are kings of Israel or Judah, but every single one of us has

influence in some way, shape, or form.

Now, I'm certainly not telling you to go into your job tomorrow and just take

a sledgehammer to things that you don't like that probably would not go well

for you. Again, you're not the king.

Even if you're the boss, I have a feeling that's an HR meeting waiting to happen.

What I would say is tomorrow you can go and not be ashamed of anything that God has told you to say.

You can go and not ever be ashamed of what God says is true,

whether it's a morality issue, it's a way to live your life issue,

it's a heart, whatever it is, never to be ashamed of what God has told you.

Because that's what we're going to see with these kings.

That's what we're going to see with Micah, is that God has told them what is right.

He has told them what is good. It's not that the people don't know,

it's that they choose not to.

And these kings and Micah and all these other prophets, what they do is come

to people and say, you know what God has said.

You know what God has asked of you and you choose not to do that.

So Micah has quite a life. He grows up under a king that is a good guy, but has no backbone.

The meat of his life is spent under his father, who's an absolute moral disaster.

And then he gets to see a spiritual revival under Hezekiah.

He's really seen every way of doing what a king could do.

Close, let me just give you three quick takeaways. Again, a little different

this morning. We'll be in the meat of Micah next week.

Just three things, just three kind of things that came to my mind when I was

reading this. Number one, God can bring a great revival from terrible circumstances.

He can do that. He is able to do that. When everything seemed lost, God raises up Hezekiah.

You can imagine if you happen to be a faithful follower of the Lord God,

and you lived under Ahaz's reign, you got to think, man, you know what's worse? His son's next.

His son's next. How could this get any better? It's probably going to get worse.

And yet God is faithful. Now, ultimately the people end up rebelling.

Ultimately Judah gets exiled as well.

But in this situation, God raises up King Hezekiah to do what his father would

never have done, to do what Jotham never would have done.

And I would just say as an application, there are times where we can think that

something is just too big, that there's a problem too hard, that there's nothing

that's ever going to get solved. I hear people say this all the time about sin.

You'll talk about a sin, you'll talk about something and people will respond

with, you know, that's just who I am.

I've just always struggled with that. My dad struggled with that.

My mom struggle with that. It's in my family. There's just who we are.

I've prayed about it. I've asked God about it, but that's just never going to

change. That's just who we are.

That is, again, looking at God and saying, I just don't think you're capable

of doing what you said you could do.

Whether you've reached a wall in your spiritual life, again,

if there's a besetting sin that you just can't seem to shake,

maybe there's a family member that you wish so dearly would turn to the Lord

and you look at their life and go, there's just no way. There's just no way.

Never forget that God is able to do more than you could ever ask or think.

That doesn't mean he will. That doesn't mean if you come to church and give

your money and do all the things he asks you to do, that God will do exactly what you want him to do.

It just means you always have hope that God can do whatever he wants to do.

This is one of the lessons that we see even in the resurrection of Christ.

Christ is nailed to a tree, his body beaten, betrayed. The soldier stabs him

in the spear, water and blood pour out.

And everyone that's ever followed him watches that and goes,

well, I just wasted three and a half years of my life.

And all these people know that I'm one of his disciples.

Peter denies Jesus three times,

once to a slave girl, as if she had any ability to do anything to him.

And what happens? Christ's resurrection does not mean that he secures for them an easy life.

They don't follow Christ because he secures for them an easy life.

They follow Christ because he is who he says he is and he is worthy of your worship.

Promises is that one day he will make all things right.

He will make all things right. Every single injustice will be made right.

Every single thing that has ever happened in the history of mankind that was

wrong, that was evil, that was even 1% off, God will make right.

But he does not promise that to you and me on this side of heaven.

And I am astounded by how many Christians live in the absolute bitterness of,

it's not fair. You're right. It's not.

It's not fair. It's not fair that certain things have happened to you. It's not.

It's not fair that certain things have happened to you, that people have treated

you certain ways, that things didn't work out the way you wanted them to.

And God never promised you that it would be fair. So I would just encourage

you again, God can do whatever he wants to do, whatever he wants to do it,

but that is not why you worship him.

Hezekiah didn't worship God so that he would fix Judah.

He worshiped God because God is God, because he deserves our worship,

because he loves his people, because he has rescued his people.

Ultimately, we worship God because God is God.

But again, my prayer is that you don't live life waiting for God to fix everything

for you, because it may get worse.

Is that the encouragement you wanted to hear this morning? Hey,

is your life in a bad spot? It may get worse. It might.

Every single person will have certain things they have to go through that are incredibly hard.

How oftentimes when somebody's going through something hard,

you know what people hit them with? Could be worse.

Could be worse. I remember when I was young, you may have experienced this and

like, I didn't want to eat the dinner that my mom made.

And she'd hit me with a, you know, kids in Africa that are starving would love to eat that.

I get her point and she was right. But as Christians, we don't respond with, it could be worse.

We simply respond with, hey, God is good.

I promise God is good. He will be with you. He will walk with you through whatever

it is you're going through.

He will never leave you nor forsake you. He will never leave you alone to deal

with whatever life throws at you.

And ultimately, he is in charge of everything that life throws at you.

So first takeaway, God is able to do whatever he wants, whatever he wants.

We have hope anytime in any situation.

Number two, God can raise a great man from terrible circumstances.

You can say great man or a woman. I'm not narrowing this down,

but God can raise a great man or a woman from terrible circumstances.

Again, this is just the story of Hezekiah. Once again, I've told you kind of

my upbringing. Some of you know my parents. They're great.

And I hung out with them all day yesterday.

They're still great. I hate to break it to you. My parents are great.

I love spending time with them.

I was raised in an incredible home with incredible people, but I realized that

that's not the experience of a lot of people.

I've told you this before, but in student ministry, the hardest part for me

and Kareth was the sheer number of kids,

that we came in contact with that did not either have one of a mom or a dad

or who had a mom or a dad and their life at home was terrible.

Even some of the parents that came to church that looked happily married,

you get to know their kids and you find out what's going on at home and you

go, man, how in the world do you even survive in that situation?

Consider Hezekiah, who watched his father cast his only brother into the fire,

who watched his father lead an entire nation into false worship and ruin,

and yet God is able to raise up a man like Hezekiah out of those circumstances.

That is simply to say, where you come from does not define who you are unless

you refuse to receive God's grace.

I said it before five minutes ago. I'll say it again.

It's astounding the number of people who I talk to who say, well,

if you knew my dad, if you knew my mom, if you knew what house I grew up in,

I have no doubt that if I knew everything about you, I would better understand where you are.

But me, better understanding where you are does not change who you are.

But God can change who you are.

You do not have to be your circumstances. You do not have to become where you

grew up or what your dad was like or what your mom was like.

You are not resigned to those things when you worship the King of kings and the Lord of lords.

He can do and change and make you into whatever he wants.

Hezekiah becomes one of the greatest kings in the Bible.

Abraham's family was a bunch of idolaters, if you read in Jeremiah.

The apostle Paul emerges from a man breathing murder against God's church.

When people encounter the God of this book, there is nothing that God cannot change in you.

I would say also, if you think you've got it figured out and you've nailed everything

down and your theology is just perfect, you've dotted every I and crossed every

T, you don't have any mysteries left, right?

You've been on mission trips, you've been in church, you know exactly what you

think, exactly how you should think, exactly how everything should go.

Let me just challenge you to say, no, you don't and no, you aren't.

Bigger than however big you think he is. And the very second that you think,

I've got this thing figured out, you're wrong.

You're wrong, immediately wrong.

I'm not saying certain truths ever change. I'm not saying the core truths of

Christianity will ever change.

What I'm saying is God is always bigger than you think he is.

And he can always change you in ways that you think you may not even need to be changed.

Last thing, God uses normal people for great things.

It's interesting when you read Micah, Micah 1-1, there's really nothing extraordinary about him.

Usually when we see a prophet introduced, we learn about his family.

We learn where he's from and where he's from is usually some sort of prominent place.

All we know about Micah is that he's from Moresheth. That's it.

Where is Moresheth? I can promise you, if you try and look it up,

it will be tough to find. You got to scroll on Google images for a minute.

It's about 30 or 40 miles south of Jerusalem. but it's a nothing town.

We don't know anything really about it in the Bible. We don't know anything

about his family. We don't know anything about who Micah is or where he comes from.

All we know in Micah 1.1 is it says, the word of the Lord came to Micah.

What qualifies Micah to be a prophet of God?

The word of the Lord came to Micah. There's a massive difference between me

and Micah and you and Micah and every single other person, almost, than Micah.

Micah is a prophet of God.

God speaks to him. And when Micah speaks, that is God's final word.

You, but no one in here is a prophet. If anyone stands up in here and says,

I have a word from the Lord, I would ask you to politely yet firmly to sit down. No, you don't.

Now, if you stand up and want to read from God's word, completely different.

If you remember at the beginning of Hebrews, it seems like three years ago,

but the beginning of Hebrews, it begins by telling us how God speaks.

It says, long ago at many times in a different ways, God spoke through prophets.

Now he has spoken to us through his son. That's the final word.

But that should be an encouragement to us is that when somebody might say to

you, well, what gives you the right to tell me how to live?

Your response is simply the word of the Lord tells you how to live. I'm just a mouthpiece.

I have nothing to tell you other than what God has told me to tell you.

And again, so often we get lost

in trying to explain God away or trying to make everything make sense.

Listen, I can't make everything make sense in this book.

I promise you that. There was a time in my life where I thought that was possible.

And I realized that that time in my life was when I was an idiot, right?

I thought that I could read this book.

And the more I read, the more I studied, the more theology I read,

that I would just at one point get to a place in my life where any question

that someone asked me about the Bible, I'd be able to say, I know the answer.

This is exactly how it works. I can answer every question you have.

I can't do that. Hopefully I can answer a lot of them. Hopefully I can offer insight.

Hopefully the Lord has blessed me with the ability to do that.

However, my job is not necessarily to make every single thing make sense in here.

My job is simply to proclaim what is in this book.

And if someone were to say to me or to you, well, what authority do you have

to speak on something like abortion.

Marriage, something like pornography, something like how people live their lives,

something like parenting, my simple answer would be like, oh, I don't have any.

I have no authority.

I have no authority over anyone in this room. I don't have the ability to tell

you anything with any authority in your own life.

But God has every right to tell you how to live your life.

He has every right to tell every single human on this planet how to live their

life, what to do, where to go, how to act.

So when you have those moments where you feel like, I feel incredibly inadequate

to do what God has called me to do.

You say, man, I love hearing stories about Hezekiah. That guy sounds great.

He sounds like he's courageous and bold and going out and doing exactly what

God asked me to do, but I could never do that.

Just be reminded that Hezekiah and Micah have what you have.

They have the word of the Lord. They knew what God had asked them to do.

So again, let me finish where we started. What does God want from you?

What does God want from you?

I hope as we go through this that we'll realize that the answer to that question

is not simply doing something different, praying a little more,

reading a little more, giving a little more, but what He wants from you is all of your life.

Every single second, again, every single breath, every single scent, he wants all of it.

He doesn't want 10%. He doesn't want a little bit here and there.

No, he wants all of your life. He wants all of your life submitted under his

kingship because he loves you.

Why does God send Micah to his people?

We'll see, to pronounce incredible judgments on them, to tell his people,

listen, you will be conquered. You will be scattered.

You will be taken over by a foreign nation. Why does a God who says that he

loves them do that kind of thing?

Because he knows I will bring you back.

Again, we don't worship God like pagans worship God. We don't worship God so

that he'll do everything that we want him to do.

We worship God because God is God.

And He has promised us not to give us what we want. He has promised us to give us Himself.

If you want to know who God is, He offers that to you. Let's pray.

Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for your Word and what it offers us.

I pray that as we get into the book of Micah that we are reminded that you are

not looking for us to simply find better methods and means of doing things,

but God, you are looking for better men and women.

For people that are so wholly devoted to you, so completely enamored with the

grace and mercy that we've been shown in the person of your son,

Jesus Christ, that we will do anything and go anywhere that you have asked us to.

And God, for most of us, that won't mean going to a foreign country.

That won't mean doing something like being a king or a queen.

It will be as simple as loving our families and loving our neighbors the way

that you have called us to.

Loving the people that even come into this church the way that you have called

us to, which means that we are kind and gracious, but we do not shy away from what you have told us.

That we speak your words clearly, that we stand on your words clearly,

that we're never scared to say what you have asked us to say or to stand where

you have asked us to stand.

And I pray that we would not be people like Jotham who just want to be nice and good.

Certainly we want to be kind, but God, that ultimately we want to be devoted to you.

God, that when we look out at the world around us and we see much the world that Ahaz created,

that we would be reminded that you sent Hezekiah, his own son,

to undo so many of the wrongs that Ahaz created.

God, that we would have that same mindset amongst ourselves,

that we would never look at a situation, or we would never look at someone and

say, man, there is just no way that God could ever do anything for that situation,

that person, that family.

We would know that you are able to do whatever it is you want to do.

You will save whom you will save. You will have mercy on whom you will have mercy.

And God, we have no idea nor right to say who that is or who that isn't.

That our job is to speak the gospel plainly to proclaim it as the power of salvation to all people.

God, would you give us the courage to do that? Amen.