Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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So let's turn to Micah chapters one
and two. You may be seated as
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I read this passage Mica One and
two. I want to begin by reading
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the words that we just sung in
psalmy Teen B. This is verse twenty
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seven in the Psalm. You Save
the humble and the meek, but shame
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haughty eyes of the pride you,
Lord, will keep my lamp a flame.
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God turns my darkness into light.
Of this promise, that God will
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put down those who are prideful and
lift up those who are in him,
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who are held according to his promises
and according to His grace, is the
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foundation of what we have in the
book of Micah, and we will see
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that in different ways. I'm sadly, though, God's promises to David,
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his promise to keep this covenant,
to keep put a son on his throne
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that would reign eternally, seems to
be becoming undone in some ways because of
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the evil of those kings, because
of the evils of Israel and Judah.
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The book of Micah is prosecuting this
covenantal case, as is reflecting on the
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sins of Israel and the judgment that
is coming upon them. So let's hear
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now the words of the Prophet Micah
and give our attention to it, for
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it is the word of the Lord, the word of the Lord that came
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to Micah, of Moor Chef,
in the days of Jotham, a has
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and has a Kiah, kings of
Judah, which he saw concerning summaria and
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Jerusalem. Here, you people's,
all of you, pay attention, Oh
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earth and all that is in it, and let the Lord God be a
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witness against you, the Lord from
his Holy Temple, for behold, the
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Lord is coming out of his place
and he will come down and tread upon
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the high places of the Earth,
and the mountains will melt under him and
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the valleys will split open like wax
before the fire, like waters poured down
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a steep place. All this is
for the transgression of Jacob and for the
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sins of the House of Israel.
What is the transgression and of Jacob?
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Is it not Samaria? And what
is the high place of Judah? Is
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it not Jerusalem? Therefore, I
will make Sumaria a heap in the open
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country, a place for planting vineyards, and I will pour down her stones
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into the Valley and uncover her foundations, all her carved images shall be beaten
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into pieces, all her wages shall
be burned with fire, and all her
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idols I will lay waste, for
from the fee of a prostitute she gathered
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them, and to the fee of
a prostitute they shall return. For this
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I will lament and wail. I
will go stripped and naked. I will
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make lamentation like the jackals and mourning
like the ostriches, for her wound is
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incurable and it is come to Judah. It is reached to the gate of
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my people, to Jerusalem. Tell
it not in gath weep, not at
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all. In Beth La, UPRA
roll yourselves in the dust. Pass on
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your way, inhabitants of Sheffir,
in nakedness and shame. The inhabitants of
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a Anon, do not come out. The lamentation of Beth Azel shall take
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away from you its standing place.
For the inhabitants of Marath wait anxiously for
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good, because disaster has come down
from the Lord to the gate of Jerusalem.
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Harness the steeds to the chariot's inhabitants
of LAKISH. It was the beginning
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of the it was the beginning of
Sin to the daughter of Zion, for
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in you were found for the transgressions
of Israel. Therefore, you shall give
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parting gifts to more cheff gaffe.
The houses of oxib shall be a deceitful
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thing to the kings of Israel.
I will again bring a conqueror. To
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you, inhabitants of marshaw. The
glory of Israel shall come to Audilon.
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Make yourselves bald and cut off your
hair for the children of your delight.
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Make yourselves as bald as the Eagle, for they shall go from you into
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into exile. Woe to those who
devise wickedness and work evil on their beds.
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When the morning dawns, they perform
it because it is in the power
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of their hand. They covet fields
and sees them, and houses and take
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them away. They oppress a man
and his house, a man and his
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inheritance. Therefore, thus says the
Lord behold against this family. I am
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devising disaster from which you cannot remove
your necks, and you shall not walk
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haughtily, for it will be a
time of disaster. In that day,
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they shall take up a taunt song
against you and Moan bitterly and say we
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are utterly ruined. He charges the
portion of my people, or he changes
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the portion of my people. How
he removes it from me to an apostate.
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He allots our fields. Therefore,
you will have none to cast the
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line, to cast the line by
lot in the assembly of the Lord.
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Do not preach. Thus they preach. One should not preach of such things.
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Degrad disgrace will not overtake us.
Should this be said, Oh House
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of Jacob, has the lawn grown
impatient? Are these his deeds? Do
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not my words do good to him? Who UPLOT, who walks uprightly?
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But lately my people have risen up
as an enemy. You Strip the rich
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robe from those who pass by trustingly
with no thought of war. The women
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of my people you drive out from
their delightful houses, from their young children.
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You take away my splendor from ever
forever. Arise and go, for
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this is no place to rest because
of uncleantness, uncleanness that destroys with a
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grievous destruction. If a man should
go about and under an utter wind and
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lies saying, I will preach to
you of wine and strong drink, he
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would be the preacher for this people. I will surely assemble all of you,
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Oh Jacob, I will gather you
or gather the remnant of Israel.
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I will set them together. Lie
Sheep in a fold, like a flock
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in its pasture, a noisy multitude
of men. He who opens the breach
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goes up before them. They break
through and pass the gate, going out
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by it. Their king passes on
before them, the Lord at their heady
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God bless his word to us.
I want to begin tonight by introducing you
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to Mica, I'm to this prophet
of the Lord, and I'll do that
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by way of his own introduction,
just to keep things simple. In Verse
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One, Mica tells us that he
was from moorishef. MOORISHEFF is a village
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west of the Dead Sea. If
you start in the Dead Sea and you
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head West, you would climb up
over some mountains, sometimes called the hill
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country in the Bible. Climb up
over some mountains and then, as you
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go down the mountains, you would
go into what's called the CHAPLA, which
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means lowland or lowlands. You would
go down and there are these lowlands which
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then eventually get to the coast.
A. Mica is from one of the
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towns in this area, this town
called more chef a town near gaff which
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is a Philistine country, a city. It's mentioned in verse ten. All
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these things, he says, tell
it not in gas, in other words,
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let not this word in this tragedy
go out from here. It is
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near towns and fortresses and this is
where anyway, this is where he's from.
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All of this is in what we
call the southern kingdom. We know
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that because it says that he is
testifying. Well, we know that because
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of its place, and then also
the names of Jotham, a, hasn't
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has a Kayak, kings of Judah
are mentioned. It helps to perhaps have
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a little bit of background here,
especially for those who are unfamiliar with the
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Old Testament. After God brought his
people out of Egypt, he freed them
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from slavery, he brought them into
the promised land after a period of wandering
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in the Wilderness, and eventually this
kingdom was established underneath a king. The
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first one was Saul, and you
might remember his name from earlier when we
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read Psalm eighteen and it said that
David Sang this psalm after he his life
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was preserved from Saul right. So
you can perhaps tell just by that verse
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that the Kingdom and the kingship did
not go well even from the very beginning.
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I'm Saul was king, then avid
after him, and then David Son
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Solomon. Then in hundred and thirty
two BC, the kingdom was split on
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North and south. The northern kingdom
was called Israel. The southern kingdom was
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called Judah, and it remained that
way for about two hundred years. There
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was a separate kingdom and seat of
kings and various things that were going on
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in the north, which is marked
here by Samaria in Mica, and then
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down in the south the capital Jerusalem
and its own history. That was going
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on. Occasionally. There was some
back and forth and I would encourage you
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to learn about that. The thing
to note, though, is that this
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divided kingdom, though it ceased in
seven hundred and twenty two, that was
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not because they all got together and
became a happy family again. It was
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because the Assyrians came and raided Samaria
and then there was only one left.
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So it's not divided any more,
because there was only Judah that was left,
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only the southern kingdom, and they
raid and attack of the Assyrians.
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The exile of the northern people was
really just a sad prelude to the fall
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of Jerusalem, eventually in five hundred
and eighty six, when the Babylonians came,
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and that was in some ways,
it seemed to be the end of
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God's people and God's kingdom, except, of course, for these promises that
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he made, promises to David,
promises to Abraham, promises that he would
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establish a king on his throne that
would be forever, a promise that one
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day, after the exile, after
the judgment, he would gather back together
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this remnant, this people, and
that's what Mica is testifying about. He's
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testifying at this time, right at
the end of the northern kingdom's lifespan.
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These Southern Kingdoms that are are southern
kings that are mentioned, Jotham, Ahaz
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and Hezekiah. They were the last
few kings that were reigning in the southern
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the southern kingdom, before the northern
kingdom fell. Mica is using this time,
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contemporary with Isaiah, to prophesy and
say wake up, disaster is coming.
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As I mentioned before, you could
think of him as kind of a
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and the other prophets, as well
as as prosecutors, right lawyers, covenantal
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lawyers, they are prosecuting the covenant
that God made. He established a relationship
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with his people and on Mount Sinai
he said, if you do these things,
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you will live, and if you
don't, I will scatter you out
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of this place, just like I
scattered the Philistines and everyone else who was
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here before you. You must live
by this law. Are you will die
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by this law, and that principle
of justice is reinforced in so many ways
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here in Mica. This coming destruction
on God's people is coming because they have
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broken the covenant. At the same
time, as we read at the end
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of Mica, to just to give
you a finish this overview, God remembers
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these promises he's made that have not
depended in any way on Israel's obedience,
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promises that depended sheerly on His grace
and favor. And because of those promises,
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because of his love, because of
his grace, because of his mercy,
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this is not going to be the
end of the story, despite the
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terror and the destruction and the wrath
of God that is coming, and we
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will get into some of the details
of that so that we might impress that
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on our hearts. Despite that,
somehow, out of all of that wife
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will come. Out of the death, out of the destruction, out of
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the wrath, a people will be
born, a king will come that will
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charge through this breach and will save
the day. And so as we come
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to Micca, and there's similar things
in the other prophets, we have a
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way that God is calling us to
understand him. God is not sitting up
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in heaven bored and wondering what to
do and not really seeing things, and
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now he's holy and he's powerful and
he's mighty and he's paying attention to the
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things that are going on. We
fool ourselves when we say, well,
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I just live the way that every
way I want. We can't do that.
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Michael reminds us that God sees things
and that one day he will,
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in the final judgment, which this
is a prelude to a shadow of what's
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coming, he will say he will
call the Earth to pay attention and it
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will be time to judge. So, in hearing the words of Mica,
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we don't just look back and we
say wow, those people were really awful,
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what's the matter with them? This
is an opportunity to look at our
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own hearts, to see how our
own lives correspond or don't correspond with God's
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law, to understand and recognize the
judgment that is due to those things and
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then to turn to Christ, to
find our salvation in him as our king,
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who goes forward, leads the way
and saves us, so that we
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might not come under the wrath that
is described here, a wrath that will
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be even worse than what is described
here. So with that introduction, let's
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take a look at some of the
details here in chapters one and two and
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hear how God expresses these things.
His power is holiness, is judgment.
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We won't have time to deal with
every detail, but let's consider these first
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few words here in verse two,
the Prophecy. Mica has prophecy. This
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word that came from the Lord begins
with an address to the whole earth.
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Here, you people's, all of
you, pay attention, Oh earth and
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all that is in it, and
let the Lord, your God, be
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a witness against you. The Lord
from his Holy Temple. Now MICAS I've
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said and as you've heard in the
word, is going to preach a particularly
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against Samaria and juice Jerusalem. This
prophecy is against his people. But the
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words from the introduction tell us right
away that it's not just for them that
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what as going on here is a
microcosm for everything. What the judgment that
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is going on here, the law
that is required here, the grace that
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is promised here, is something that
is not just for this people. It's
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a microcosm of something that is much
bigger that. All you people, the
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whole Earth, need to pay attention
to you because in some way, and
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hopefully in very obvious ways, it
is it speaks not only against them but,
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as he says, against us as
well. The let and and this
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comes with a witness. Let the
Lord God, the Lord, the King
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Yah Way, be a witness against
you, the Lord from his Holy Temple.
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In other words, this accusation comes
with the support of the greatest witness
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of all, the Lord, the
king, whose eye searches all and knows
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the heart of man. Psalm Eleven, for says the Lord is in his
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Holy Temple, the Lord's throne is
in heaven. His Eyes See, his
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eyelids, test the children of Man. Job Thirty four twenty one says something
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similar, for his eyes are on
the ways of man and he sees all
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his steps. Walking is one of
the great images of the that we have
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in the Bible. That describes the
way we live our lives. We use
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this language to ask questions like what
are the direction in which we are what's
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the direction in which we are heading? Are we heading toward towards God and
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towards righteousness and the things of God, or are we headed away from him?
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Are we straying from his path?
Do we walk in the truth,
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as children of a right or are
we running away, like Jonah did,
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for example, in disobedience and rebellion? Jonah, another prophet of the Lord,
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whose book is right here before Micah, Jonah Ran Jonah, thought that
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God wasn't in his temple, or
he at least for a time. He
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thought that perhaps he could just move
another direction. Even he thought he could
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die to get away from his problems, to get away from the Lord.
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And of course none of that is
true. Whatever we do, God sees
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it, and God not only sees
it. The Psalm says, as I
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said, God's eyelids test us.
He is seeing is not just a distant
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observing, a noticing, it's a
scene of witnessing, of judgment, and
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this he does not it is emphasized
that he does this from this place of
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holiness his throne, room, his
temple, his palace, and because of
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who he is, because of who
we are and what we have done,
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Mica tells us that we have reason
to be afraid if we are not those
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who stand in His grace and in
his favor, if we are not those
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who have been rescued and forgiven,
if we stand in our pride, if
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we stand on our high places,
if we stand in our idolatry. Mica
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tells us it's all coming to an
end, just as it came to an
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end for Israel and Judah is.
Mica tells us that God is not going
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to stay there on his throne.
He will shaking his head like a disappointed
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old man who has no powers to
fix the problems he sees. No having
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witnessed the sins of the world,
God will come in judgment, though it
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will be as easy as walking for
him. For behold verse three. Behold,
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the Lord is coming out of his
place. He will come down and
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tread on the high places of the
Earth, and the mountains will melt under
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him. In the valleys will split
open like wax before the fire, like
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waters poured down a steep place.
There are other descriptions of this. We
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read some of them in Sawmighteen.
Jesus talks about them in the gospels.
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We find them Hebrews and other places, where it's described that the coming of
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the Lord the Earth will be rolled
up like a robe, that the heavens
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and the heavenly stars and and the
hosts of Heaven and will just fall from
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their places, that the earth will
just crumble, as we read under verse
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four, will melt under him,
split open under the weight of his power,
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the weight of his judgment. It's
important to understand and believe these descriptions.
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Mike is not just shooting the breeze, and we know that because we
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hear his heart right he says in
Verse Eight, for this I will lament
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and wail, I will go stripped
and naked, I will make lamentation like
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the jackals and mourning like the ostriches. Listen to me, he's saying.
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And we also get the sense that
there are people who are saying something different.
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Chapter two, verse six. They
say do not preach to him.
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They say thus they preach, they
preach, don't preach. One should not
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preach of such things. Disgrace will
not overtake us. Stop giving us all
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this bad news, Micael, you
need a positive attitude. No, look
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at life on the bright side.
Come on, Mica. Michael will have
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none of it, not because he's
given over to glumness, but because he's
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heard in the word of the Lord
and, unlike Jonah, who ran it's
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going to preach what he has to
preach, Jonah eventually did. I don't
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mean to harp on Jonah too much, but it's a good contrast. I
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didn't mean to say this, but
I'll say Jonah. One of the reasons
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we have Jonah is because we have
this this story, in this this of
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this prophet, like it's telling us
that even the prophets are falling apart.
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At this this time, here's this
prophet WHO's supposed to announce repentance, even
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he's falling apart and the people he
preaches to, the Assyrians, they repent.
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Israel is this blind right that her
prophets don't get it, that the
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nations are getting it and are waking
up. Anyway, back to Micah.
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So as we hear these descriptions,
we should let them settle in. We
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should see God for who he is
and take very, very seriously. Are
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Sins, because he says that these
things are happening because of what he has
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seen. Verse Five. Why is
this happening? All this is for the
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transgression of Jacobin, for the sins
of the House of Israel. For six,
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therefore, I will make some AIA, a heap in the open country,
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a place for planting vineyards, and
I will pour down her stones into
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the valley and uncover her foundations.
In other words, what he's saying is
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that this, this city, which
is a capital, which has been cultivated,
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which is a stronghold, it's going
to become it's going to revert back
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to the beginning. Instead of having
foundations and streets and buildings and all of
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this, it's going to be the
kids of the place that you walk up
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to and you go, Oh,
I could plan a vineyard there. Right.
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He's taking it back, he's he's
destroying it to such a level that
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it would be unrecognizable as a city. I will pour down her stones into
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the valley, I will uncover her
foundations. That will be nothing left to
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build on, just a place to
put seeds into and start over again.
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And this is happening because of her
idolatry, Morrisons or in specific sins are
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mentioned in chapter two, but the
core of it is a spiritual problem.
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He'll talk about the way that they're
relating to one another as an example of
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how the spiritual problem is playing out, but at the core of it it's
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a problem between them and God.
All her carved images shall be beaten to
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pieces, all her wages shall be
burned with fire and all her idols laid
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to waste. They have been trusting
in these false gods and if you go
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back and you read through the history
of this time and before it, you'll
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see what he means. People who
were clinging to who rejected God's priesthood,
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who rejected his festivals, the one
who had brought them out of Egypt,
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who established into the promised line.
They were doing all the same things that
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the people who had brethen previously there
and we're kicked out for. They were
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now doing them, sacrificing their own
children to idols, giving themselves over to
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sexual immorality, establishing a whole religious
system apart from God, going their own
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way, doing their own things.
Why? Over and over again, the
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prophets and the histories tell us,
because they wanted so bad to be like
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the nations around them. They wanted
to look like them, they wanted to
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be like them, but God always
intended them for be something different, to
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be something holy, to be something
protected, to be something that wasn't marked
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by power struggles and oppression and greedy
grabs and deceitful practices and giving oneselves over
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to lust, but something that was
marked by his name. I. Love
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And Holiness and maturity and safety and
freedom. That's what God wants for his
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people and of course his laws correspond
perfectly with all of that. That's why
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they have to go together. But
they didn't. As we continue on in
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chapter one, we have this,
the section where he lists all of these
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cities, and here he's kind of
draws a circle. Is Likely what's going
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on around the place that he is
from, Morisheth gaff. He draws a
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circle on naming these various cities,
and I won't go into them all now,
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but there's a lot of love irony
going on. So, for example,
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already spoke about verse ten. Tell
it not in gas weep, not
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at all, but in Beth la
apar, Beth La Offra, roll yourselves
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in dust. Well, Beth Oprah, or how depends on how we translated
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it, literate it. It means
house of dust. That's what the name
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of the city is called. So
he's saying tell it, not in GAF,
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but pals of dust. Roll yourselves
in the dust. Chaffier, it's
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likely means something like beauty town,
which prided itself in splendor. Pass on
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your way, inhabitants of Safire and
nakedness and shame. There's this kind of
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reversal over and over again, or
a way in which he connects these various
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town names to the fit these actions. They ought to take the bitterness,
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the taking away all kinds of things. At the end of the day,
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though, what we have is this
picture in which he's calling his people to
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repent, to recognize who they are
in relation to God and turn away,
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as we are all called to do. Glacier six seven, the New Testament,
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Paul says, do not be deceived. God is not mocked, for
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whatever one shows that will he also
reap. Moving on to chapter two,
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then we have some of the specific
things that they were doing, and it's
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a reminder that evil is not evil
in general or just something that we make
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up or have some a abstract standard
for. It's the things that we know
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are evil. Mica begins in chapter
two. Woe to those who devise wickedness
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and work evil on their beds.
It's like they can't even stop right you've
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finished your work for the day,
you'll lay down, and yet you're still
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working at devising evil. You can't
even sort of stop and just rest in
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your beds. You just keep going
in when the morning dawns. They perform
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it. Why? Because the power
is in their hand. What else are
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they going to do? They devise
evil, they plan it, they do
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it even on their beds. Verse
Two. They covet fields and they seize
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them, and houses and they take
away. They oppress a man in his
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house, a man and his inheritance. What kinds of commandments are they breaking
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here? The Ten Commandments? God
says in the ten commandment do not cove
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it, and they are covening.
God says do not steal, and they
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are stealing. They say, I
want that house, I want that Vineyard,
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I'm gonna take it. I don't
care if it belongs to someone else.
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I want what I want and I
want it now. To the victims
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of this MIA is a relief.
If you've ever been the victim of a
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crime if someone has ever done something
that is hurt you or your family or
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stolen something for you and your family
and they get away with it. There's
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a constant frustration there. We have
to sort of reminders on. I'll just
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get over it move on, right, but there's this sense that sits with
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him and say justice was not done, justice should be done. We want
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it to be made right. Well, Mica, to and many, many
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other places in scripture, promise us, to those who have been victimized,
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to those who have been oppressed,
to those who have been hurt, that
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God does see and God will make
things right. This is a joy to
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victims, to the oppressed, to
the downtrodden, and hopefully a terror to
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the thieves. In pride and in
confidence, they take what they think they
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can take, but in disaster,
Mica promises they will fall. And these
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things are mentioned here, stealing,
theft. People will say, MICA,
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as we've considered, MICA, don't
preach such things. You're hurting people's feelings,
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you're making them feel bad. Your
might bother someone who's in charge,
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but as I am the like a
continues a head, and good that he
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did. There was one king who
did hear Micah has a Kiah, and
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we know from a scripture that has
a Kiah heard the words of Mica and
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made reforms and things improved for a
while and that was great, except,
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of course, that has a Kioh
had his own sins and his own failures,
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and eventually they needed a greater king, a king who would come from
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David's line, a king who was, of course, Jesus. And when
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Jesus came, the New Testament makes
very clear to us that he is this
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king, this promised one to have
come, are to come, this one
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from the Line of David, and
he does what is promised. Then,
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in verses twelve and thirteen, which
is where will end after these promises,
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of of curse and destruction and woe, Micah says, speaking the words of
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the Lord, this Great Promise,
I will surely assemble all of you,
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Oh Jacob, I will gather the
remnant of Israel, I will set them
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together like sheep in a fold,
like flock in its pasture, a noisy
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multitude of men. This gathering together
is what Jesus will do. The Gospels
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we read that one point Jesus looks
out on the people and he pities them.
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Because these sees them is like sheep
without a shepherd, and he is
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that Shepherd, that image of gathering
and protecting and knowing and loving. He
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does that for us, he does
that for his people, and Shepherd is
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an image also that's used frequently of
kings as well. He is the great
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shepherd king who is going to take
care of his people, he's going to
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gather them together, and he does
this with power. He who opens the
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breach, goes up before them.
They break through and pass through the great
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going out by it. Their king
passes on before them. The Lord is
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at their heads. Likely speaks to
a particular moment in history, but even
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that moment points forward to the work
that Jesus would do and has done for
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us. So that's why, when
we read Mica, we hear these promises
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and we hear about these curses,
it's important that we read it in light
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of the Greater Prophet to come,
the greater king to come, who's Jesus,
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because he fulfills these things. And
this great contrast between the judgment of
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the Lord and the salvation of the
Lord, this one hundred and eighty degree
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term learned that happens between verse eleven
and twelve. We see those things coming
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together in Christ, how well we
see them coming together in him, as
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he takes the judgments that are described
here in Mica on himself, when he
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takes when he who knew no sin, Paul says, became sin. In
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other words, he took on our
sins and our judgments and all of this
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wrath it is described here, so
that he could bring us through it and
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gather us together in a safe place, not dying and going away and fust
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another person to come, but to
continue to be our Lord and our head.
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And so, when you hear the
words of judgment here in my car
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or in any other place of scripture, fear of the Lord, but don't
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remain in your sins. Go to
Jesus, the Lord who promises to take
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on your sins, to forgive them
and bring you into his sheepfold, to
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be our great shepherd, to protect
us and keep us forever. This is
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the work God promised to do.
This is the work God did and is
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doing. Praise be to God.
