Micah: Judgment and Restoration

Reading today comes from Micah 1:1-7, and then it'll be chapter 7:14-20. 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. Here, you peoples, all of you, pay attention, O earth, on all that is in it, and let the Lord God be a witness against you, the Lord from His holy temple. For behold, the Lord is coming out of His place and 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 1:1–7

All this is for the transgression of Jacob and for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the transgressions of Jacob? Is it not Samaria? And what is the high place of Judah? Is it not Jerusalem?

Therefore, I will make Samaria a heap in the open country, a place for planting vineyards. I will pour down her stones into the valley and uncover her foundations. All her carved images shall be beaten to pieces. All her wages shall be burned with fire, and all her idols I will lay waste. For from the fee of a prostitute, she gathered them, and to the fee of a prostitute, they shall return.

Then we'll try to move on to Micah 7:14 to the end. Shepherd Your people with Your staff, the flock of Your inheritance, who dwell alone in the forest in the midst of a garden land. Let them graze in Bashan and Gilead as in the days of old. As in the days when You came out of the land of Egypt, I will show them marvellous things. The nations shall see and be ashamed of all their might.

Micah 7:14

They shall lay their hands on their mouths. Their ears shall be deaf. They shall lick the dust like a serpent. Like the crawling things of the earth, they shall come trembling out of their strongholds. They shall turn and dread to the Lord our God, and they shall be in fear of You.

Who is a God like You pardoning iniquity and passing over transgressions for the remnants 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. For those of you who have not been here in past weeks, we've been looking at a series from the minor prophets. When I've had the opportunity to preach here, we've covered Hosea, Joel, Amos and then Ben took studies in Jonah and then last week we looked at Obadiah and this morning an overview of the prophet Micah. Again it'll be helpful if you've got your phone app, Bible in your phone app, just to follow that because I'm going to refer to some various portions of Micah this morning. Brothers and sisters in Christ, the theologian Emil Brunner has suggested that it's just three generations from Christianity to paganism, three generations.

Or if you like, three steps. The father worships and serves God, and he also lives by the morals of the Bible. The son rejects the father's faith in God, but still lives by the same moral standards as his dad. The grandson rejects both his father's faith and also his grandfather's morality. Now it seems to me friends that to a large extent that's true for Australian society.

I can remember when I was a lad and when I was a young man, the majority of Australians still regarded themselves as Christians, and they were at least on the church role of some denomination or other. It was very rare in my teenage days to meet somebody who would say I'm not a Christian, and they would readily tell you I'm an Anglican, I'm a Catholic, I'm a Presbyterian or a Methodist or whatever. During my adult years, I've watched a generation that's dropped its links to Christianity, but by and large, still wanted to live by the 10 commandments. But in these last few decades, we've seen people drop both faith and morals. Living in a society where Sunday trade is now normal.

I can remember when I first moved to Tasmania for my first congregation there, you couldn't get petrol anywhere except for one service station that was rostered for the Sunday. Same sex marriage is now legal. Abortions are at horrific levels all around Australia. And when it comes to gender and sexuality issues, it's a huge mess. Three generations and we're now in a society that is aggressively atheistic and where all behaviour is up for debate.

I wanna point out that Micah, one of the 12 minor prophets from the nation of Judah, lived in a similar period. The religion of the Bible had generally been abandoned long ago, but so had the morality of the Bible. Well, okay, it was a little different in Micah's day and age. There was precious little atheism. Instead, there was the worship of false gods of the surrounding nations.

But those tin pot gods, they didn't bother too much about morality anyway. When I read Micah congregation, and I suggest you make it a bit of a project for yourself to read it maybe sometime today. Give it to you as a homework assignment. You'll notice that Micah has a lot to say about morality, or maybe I should say the lack of morality. In fact, let's call it what it really is.

The way Micah talks about it, we read it in chapter 1:5, sin and transgression or sin and rebellion. Later on in that same chapter, chapter 1:13, again, sin and rebellion. And we don't see that only in the book of Micah either, do we? We've seen that over and over with the other minor prophets. All the biblical prophets were extremely sensitive to sin.

This morning, it's one of the reasons I wanted to do that little exercise with the kids, just to highlight for them again, the reality of sin. The prophets in the Bible, they don't beat around the bush about it. They said it as they saw it. Listen for example to Micah's contemporary, the prophet Isaiah, the colleague of Micah's if you like. Listen how he begins his book.

Our sinful nation, a people loaded with guilt, a brood of evildoers, children given to corruption. So why congregation is there this focus on sin in so many of the prophets? Some of the prophets almost seem obsessed with it. Of course, it's partly because of the society that we're addressing. They were not speaking to a society that worshipped God and lived by His law.

They were not even speaking to a society that had stopped worshipping God, but still lived by His moral laws. No, they were addressing a culture that had abandoned God, and had also abandoned His law. Look how he pictured this, if you've your Bibles open, have a look at chapter 2. Micah says there about the people of his day, the beginning of chapter 2, woe to those who plan iniquity, to those who plot evil on their beds, those who dream up wickedness and prepare evil schemes. Of course, it's not just a case of Micah being so perceptive, because ultimately, this is no mere human insight.

This is God given perspective on things. He speaks of it later in chapter 3:8, that sensitivity comes through the working of God's Spirit. He says, but as for me, I am filled with the power and with the Spirit of the Lord, and with justice and might, why? To declare to Jacob his transgression, and to Israel his sin. Often as we read the Old Testament prophets, their writings congregation at first glance at times doesn't seem all that relevant for us today.

So much of it is couched in terms of their particular historical context. And so it's hard for us to get a handle on it. But when you begin to unpack it, and when you do that with Micah and some of his sin issues, it's surprisingly up to date. He pictures an immoral culture with these twin issues, breakdown of religion replaced with pagan idolatry, and the behavioural problem that's associated with the rejection of God's law. And so many of the issues that Micah deals with are issues that we're facing in our culture here in Australia in our day and age.

Let me give you some examples. Today we're facing in our society the breakdown of family life, and we see it so often in the newspaper. Just like when my daughter and her family lives in Kurana Downs, as a man murdered his wife and dumped her body in the river. We had that instance not so long ago where a man shot his own father dead. Then we have these words in Micah, for a son dishonours his father, a daughter rises up against her mother, a daughter-in-law against a mother-in-law, and a man's enemies are the members of his own household.

Hey. He could be speaking about Australia, couldn't he? Where domestic violence is now reaching plague proportions. In our society, in our culture today, we have the rip off merchants who prey on vulnerable people. I remember once a lady in our church, a painter painted the widow's house and charged her exorbitant rates for it.

Well, I think of the builder who ran up huge debts with his tradies and then declared himself bankrupt. They could go and whistle for their money. And then listen to what Micah says. He had issues with the rip off merchants of his day. Am I still to forget a wicked house of Israel, your ill gotten treasures, the short ephah, the measure, which is a curse?

Shall I acquit a man with dishonest scales, with a bag of false weights? Micah has a long list of sins that have their parallels in our society today. Theft and fraud, bad leaders who accept bribes, and there's bloodshed all over the place. Chapter 3:1, Micah talks about people who hate good and love evil. In other words, the law of God has been turned upside down.

Not surprising then that in that first reading that Phil took from chapter 1, that Micah tells people that God is coming down to deal with it. A rather telling expression, isn't it? Look, the Lord is coming down from His dwelling place. He comes down and treads the high places of the earth. It's a metaphor for God acting in judgement against His people.

Or maybe we could think of it this way, you know, mum's looking out the kitchen window, and she's seeing her kids on the back lawn being naughty, and she warns them from the kitchen window. And then she says, if you don't listen, she says to them, if they don't listen, do I have to come down and deal with you? That's precisely what God's doing. When it comes to sin, God comes down to deal with it, and sometimes He does that quite literally, friends. I need to remind you about Sodom and Gomorrah.

God came physically, spoke to Abraham, and then went through, and we had the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Micah is highlighting how seriously God takes sin, even if the false prophets of those days didn't. And that's another parallel to our society today, false prophets. Today we have preachers, and I'll mention one of them by name, Joel Osteen, who refuses to talk about sin. Some years ago, I mentioned in a different context, Joel Osteen, and I was taken to task by the elders of the church later, said that's not very good of you tackling God's servant, Joel Osteen.

Said, hey, I'm a pastor, and I have a job of declaring those who come to you as sheep in wolves in sheep's clothing. Paul had no hesitation to mention some of the false teachers of his day by name. I find it somewhat amusing actually to notice how Micah ridicules false prophets in chapter 2, because Micah already in his day had the forerunners of the modern televangelists. Micah had his health, wealth, and prosperity preachers to deal with. Chapter 2:11, these words, if a liar and deceiver comes and says, I will prophesy for you plenty of wine and beer, he would be just the preacher for this people.

In contrast, the true preachers and prophets warn that God is going to come down and He's gonna deal with sin. And so sadly, congregation, the upshot is that Micah in this book, this prophecy, is signing the death certificates of two nations. If you were here last Sunday, you would have seen that in Obadiah, he was signing the death certificate of the nation of Edom. Here Micah does the same for both Israel and Judah. Now keep in mind that God's people at this time are divided into two nations.

You've got the 10 northern tribes, Israel, their capital, Samaria, and then the two southern tribes, Judah, and the capital is Jerusalem. And both are being assigned by Micah to the scrap heap of history. He writes their death certificates. Why? Because the wages of sin is death.

And so we get a lot of funeral language in Micah. Didn't read it all, but chapter 1 ends with these words, shave your heads in mourning. Ancient people did that at funerals. Or chapter 1:8, where we again have the language of mourning. Because of this, I will weep and wail.

I will go about barefoot and naked. I'll howl like a jackal and mourn like ostriches. And the reason for all that funeral lamentation is because of the fate of those two cities, cities that represent the nation. Samaria's fate is spelled out in chapter 1:6. We read it earlier in the service.

Therefore, I'll make Samaria a heap of ruins. And Jerusalem, Judah's fate is spelled out in the same terms in chapter 3:12. Zion will be plowed like a field, and Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble. You see how Micah, friends, is showing us this morning that the church must not pussyfoot around when it comes to sin. It must courageously and boldly declare, as Paul did to the Romans, that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and that the wages of sin is death.

But because there was no repentance in Israel, Samaria did become a rubble heap. Very soon after this, it was captured by the Assyrians and its people taken into captivity. Okay. For Judah, there was a brief reprieve because under Hezekiah, there was a revival. Jeremiah actually tells us that the king and the people listened to Micah and turned to the Lord.

But later, it too was captured by the Babylonians who took its people into exile. Well, if you're beginning to think that the book of Micah is all doom and gloom, you'd be terribly, terribly wrong. For starters, Micah's whole objective in mentioning these things is to bring about change. And the changes I just mentioned, we read about it in the book of Jeremiah did happen. There's a more important reason why this is not just a book about doom and gloom.

More importantly, this book of Micah is a book about the Lord Jesus Christ. Some of you may remember last week my struggles to show where Jesus is in the book of Obadiah, but here in Micah, He's wonderfully obvious. To start is it contains one of the clearest ever prophecies about His coming and His birth. In fact, it spells out that the place where He would be born would be Bethlehem. That famous verse in chapter 5:2.

But you Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you were small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for Me one who will be a ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times. You know, I find it fascinating the role that that verse played in the New Testament, in the Gospel of Matthew. Do you remember when it was quoted? Remember the occasion? Some visitors came to Jerusalem.

Who were they? Wise men. They wanted to know where the newborn King of the Jews was gonna be born, and they asked the questions of the Jewish scholars and they had an answer. They quoted Micah 5:2. The king of the Jews is gonna be born in Bethlehem.

Micah 5:2

But it's interesting that while they quoted that, it left them untouched. They made no attempts to join the wise men in their search for the newborn King. They quote the Bible without any interest in the one about whom the Bible is all about. So why am I mentioning that in this book, it's not difficult to find Jesus? Because Micah is not only about sin and judgement.

Micah is also a book, praise God, about grace and about restoration. Micah, like the rest of the Bible, is a bad news, good news book. It knocks us over the head, if you like, with the bad news, but in order then to lift us up and exalt us with the good news, it shows us our problem so that we might appreciate all the more God's wonderful, loving answer to us. And that's my problem, with modern preachers who avoid talking about sin. They tell us it's not honouring to God to talk about sin, keep things positive.

A man that took over one of the churches that I'd served, one of the first things he did was he got rid out of the worship service, the prayer of confession, our ministry of reconciliation. It's too negative. We need to keep things positive. But unless we know our problem clearly, we're not gonna appreciate God's solution. And then Jesus becomes as He is for many preachers and television evangelists, just a therapist to help us live our better life now, and not the Saviour who rescues us from the judgement to come because of sin, especially against the background of sin and judgement that Micah pictures for us some beautiful imagery congregation of the coming Messiah. Introduces us to God's gracious messianic kingdom of peace in Jesus.

Chapter 4, chapter 4, we have that wonderful picture of that place, that shalom, that wholeness. Let me read to you some verses from chapter 4 from verse 2. The law will go out from Zion. The word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He will judge between many peoples and will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide.

Then these marvellous words, they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation nor will they train for war anymore. Every man will sit under his own vine and under his own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid, for the Lord Almighty has spoken. And just in case you have any doubts about how that will happen, Micah spells it out. Says that all this peace and blessedness of God's kingdom comes through that one who is born in Bethlehem.

Because in chapter 5:2, after mentioning Bethlehem, Micah elaborates, he gives us an ever so brief description of that Messiah's work. He says, He will stand and shepherd His flock in the strength of the Lord in the majesty of the name of the Lord His God, and they will live securely. For then His greatness will reach to the ends of the earth, and He will be their peace. But the point is that you can't take that message of grace and restoration seriously unless you also take seriously what God's word has to say about sin and judgement. God's gospel good news only makes sense against the background of the bad news about sin and judgement.

Okay. So today we read the book of Micah, and we understand Micah wants to point us to Jesus, but is that the way it worked for the original readers, or is John Westendorf just reading Jesus into this? What did it mean for those early inhabitants of Samaria and Jerusalem in Micah's day? Well, I guess, I'd wanna say this morning, they too needed to hear the good news about Jesus. They needed to be reminded that the seed of the woman who was promised already way back in Genesis 3:15, that He was coming, that He would be born in Bethlehem in the city of David.

Genesis 3:15

Those people in Micah's days needed Jesus just as much as we need Him today, and they were saved by looking forward to Him. We're saved by looking back to Him and His finished work. Let me point out that Micah is relevant in another way. In the context of the coming Messiah, Micah predicts the restoration of the remnant of Zion. In fact, he mentions five times a remnant.

Listen to how he puts it in chapter 5. The remnant of Jacob will be in the midst of many people like dew from the Lord, like showers on the grass, which do not wait for man or linger for mankind. The remnant of Jacob will be among the nations in the midst of many peoples, like a lion among the beasts of the forest, like a young lion among a flock of sheep, which mauls and mangles as it goes and no one to rescue. That's a picture of the gospel he's painting for us. God is gonna restore the nation, so there will be a people from whom Christ will be born.

The restoration of the remnant, vital, absolutely vital in the preparation for the coming of Jesus. Now I can just imagine you saying, yes, but didn't you just say, John, that Micah is signing the death certificate of both Israel and Judah? And I wanna say, yes, that's exactly what he did. But I want to remind you this morning that God is in the resurrection business, isn't He? And He can make a nation again out of a remnant.

And that's what God did precisely in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. In fact, I like the way Micah talks about this in chapter 4. He uses the language of pregnancy and labour pains. He says, writhe in agony, oh daughter of Zion, like a woman in labour, for now you must lead the city to camp in the open field. You will go to Babylon, and there you will be rescued.

There the Lord will redeem you out of the hand of your enemy. Do you see what Micah's doing? He's picturing these exiles as a pregnant woman. It's as if that remnant people that God is gonna restore have the Christ child in their womb. And in due course, He will come, and He will shepherd His people.

Not surprising then that Micah has some beautiful pictures of grace. And I wanna conclude this morning with two of them, two things that really only make sense when we also take sin and judgement seriously. First one, I wanna highlight, again, if you've got your Bible app open, have a look at chapter 7:19. It's a marvellous picture of God's forgiveness. We did read it this morning, God's grace and the way He deals with sin.

Yes, God takes sin seriously, but He doesn't just overlook it. We know He dealt with it in the cross of Jesus Christ, His Son. And look now at the wonderful way Micah pictures that in chapter 7:18-19. Who is a God like You, who pardons sin and forgives transgression of the remnant of His inheritance? He does that on the basis of the finished work of Jesus.

You do not stay angry forever, but delight to show mercy. You will again have compassion on us. You will tread our sins underfoot. Isn't that beautiful? God treading our sins underfoot.

God stomping them into the ground, if you like. I was saying, remember our brothers used to say, you spill some and just drop some and kick it around till it disappears. It's as if God does that with our sin. And then the next phrase, He hurls all our iniquities into the depths of the sea, not just in the shallows, but in the very depths. And as Billy Graham once reminded his audience, he said, when God cast our sins into the depths of the sea, He put up a sign saying no fishing.

In other words, you better believe it, that you are forgiven. It's the wonderful good news that comes in answer to the bad news about sin and judgement. But you know, that has implications for God's people. It means you and I and the people back then have to stop trying to win God's favour by our efforts. And so at the end of chapter 6, Micah takes us right back to Enoch, and he calls us to walk humbly with our God.

Beautiful verses. With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come to Him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams and 10,000 rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

All our efforts, He's shown you, O man, what is good and what does the Lord require of you. And then what do we get friends? We get those beautiful words, that lovely answer for a culture that has abandoned God and abandoned His moral law. Micah says to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. That's the way you and I need to go into this new week.

Let me lead us in prayer. Heavenly Father, Your word can so often be so brutally honest when it comes to dealing with our sin and confronting us. Times Lord, where we really feel we're being belted over the head as it were. We thank You Father that Your harshness about sin is to show Your gentleness, Your love, Your patience, Your forgiveness in the good news about Jesus. We thank You for that wonderful way in which Micah has portrayed that for us in those final words that we've just thought about.

So we want to ask, Father, that You would fill us with Your Holy Spirit to help us to look to Jesus as we go into this new week. And in the power of Your Holy Spirit to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with You, our God. We pray that through Jesus Christ, our Lord, in whose name we say together, amen.