When I was a kid, probably fifth or sixth grade, a young boy was killed in our hometown in a tragic hunting accident. And, it was this horrific and terrible thing. Being a really small town, everyone had some connection to this family, and so it was something that affected many people. And, as a result, there were a lot of people who were processing some level of grief I think. I remember, though, a story that was told at the time, and, in retrospect, this story was probably apocryphal. It probably never happened or at least didn’t happen in the exact way it was described. And, yet, in the wake of this tragedy, I remember the story being passed around as a sort of explanation for why it had happened. The story went like this: Several weeks before the accident, this family had been visited by a local pastor. I think they had attended this pastor’s church at some point, but had dropped off and didn’t really attend any more. The pastor visited them at home and invited them back to church, but they made it clear that they were not interested. So, the pastor’s response was to tell them that they were playing with fire. That God was not happy with them not going to church, and that something bad could happen to them as a result. And, then, a few weeks later, their child was dead.
Now, that’s a crazy story, but I remember hearing it from adults and other kids. And, when you step back and consider it, it is a story about how God supposedly killed a child because the parents wouldn’t go to church. And, my guess is, that most of us would say, “well that’s not how God works.” God is not sending horrible tragedies to families because they don’t go to church. God is loving and gracious and merciful.
And, yet, for months now we’ve been studying through the minor prophets, and the consistent theme has been God telling the people of Israel that he is going to destroy them because they have abandoned Him. And we know that, historically, that came to pass when the Assyrian armies invaded the Northern Kingdom of Israel and completely destroyed it…killing men, women and children and carrying many into exile. So, who is this God? How does he really work?
Micah 1:1-9
1 The word of the Lord that came to Micah of Moresheth (More-eh-shet) in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem.
2 Hear, you peoples, all of you;
pay attention, O earth, and all that is in it,
and let the Lord God be a witness against you,
the Lord from his holy temple.
3 For behold, the Lord is coming out of his place,
and will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth.
4 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.
5 All this is for the transgression of Jacob
and for the sins of the house of Israel.
What is the transgression of Jacob?
Is it not Samaria?
And what is the high place of Judah?
Is it not Jerusalem?
6 Therefore I will make Samaria a heap in the open country,
a place for planting vineyards,
and I will pour down her stones into the valley
and uncover her foundations.
7 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.
8 For this I will lament and wail;
I will go stripped and naked;
I will make lamentation like the jackals,
and mourning like the ostriches.
9 For her wound is incurable,
and it has come to Judah;
it has reached to the gate of my people,
to Jerusalem.
Today, we begin Micah, the fourth prophet in our study of the twelve minor ones. Thus far, all the prophets have had a consistent characteristic of being prophets of the northern kingdom of Israel during the reign of Jeroboam II. Only one was actually from Judah and not Israel, and that was Amos. We come to Micah, though, and we meet a prophet who is not only from the Southern Kingdom, but is also speaking to the Southern Kingdom.
Thus far, all the prophets we have considered, except for Jonah (whose purpose was a bit different), have spoken of destruction coming for Israel because of their sins, which were myriad. They had abandoned Yahweh God to worship false gods. They had crushed the poor. And they had put their trust in themselves, their money and their military rather than in God. So, God had been sending prophets to call out their sin and to call the people to repent.
But what about Judah? Micah of Moresheth, a place twentyish miles south of Jerusalem, declares God’s word during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah. That span of time would have been 758-697 BC. So, we’re still seven hundred years before the time of Christ. This would have been about the same time as Jeroboam II in Israel, but Micah is probably coming a few years later than when Hosea was preaching in the North. And during Micah’s time, he would watch as the Assyrians destroyed Israel and knocked at the door of Judah, even though they were never able to conquer Jerusalem. Here’s the difference with Micah, though. Jonah, Amos and Hosea had nothing but an evil king to deal with. Literally, all the kings of Israel had abandoned Yahweh God. In Micah’s day, however, he has much more of a mixed bag. Jotham, for example, was generally a good king. 2 Kings 15 says:
32 In the second year of Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, Jotham the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, began to reign. 33 He was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Jerusha the daughter of Zadok. 34 And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, according to all that his father Uzziah had done. 35 Nevertheless, the high places were not removed. The people still sacrificed and made offerings on the high places. He built the upper gate of the house of the Lord.
Ahaz, Jotham’s son, however, was the exact opposite. 2 Kings 16 says:
In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remaliah, Ahaz the son of Jotham, king of Judah, began to reign. 2 Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. And he did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord his God, as his father David had done, 3 but he walked in the way of the kings of Israel. He even burned his son as an offering, according to the despicable practices of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. 4 And he sacrificed and made offerings on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree.
Ahaz is followed by Hezekiah, though, who is one of the greatest kings Judah has ever seen. Hezekiah comes in and completely restores temple worship. He rips down the pagan altars and he restores the full observance of the Passover. He even sends messengers to the Northern Kingdom to invite them to participate in the Passover in an attempt to perhaps restore the union of Israel of Judah, but the messengers are mostly laughed at. He then watches as the Assyrians completely destroy Israel in 723 BC.
Micah however, despite living in a time when there were some decent kings, brings a message of God’s judgement. But, that message wasn’t just for the Southern Kingdom, it was a message for everyone…meaning all Hebrews. Now, it’s clear why his message would have fit with the sins of the North. All of their kings had been evil. But, with the South, it also showed that the beliefs or actions of one king did not necessarily change the beliefs or actions of a people. And, when you took the whole of Israel as a historical unit, you were really looking at hundreds of years of collective disobedience and paganism. God has had enough!
3 For behold, the Lord is coming out of his place,
and will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth.
4 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.
5 All this is for the transgression of Jacob
and for the sins of the house of Israel.
Micah says that the Lord has witnessed everything that has happened. He has seen all the sin; there is nothing that he has missed. And, as a result of what he has witnessed, he is coming out of his place and it will be like the mountains are melting and the valleys are being split open and this will all happen as easily as wax melts before a fire. And, all of this he says is happening because of the transgression of Jacob and the sin of the house of Israel. Those are not two separate things though…they are one in the same. Here he is speaking not of a northern kingdom or a southern kingdom, but of a Hebrew people. The house of Israel…the descendants of Jacob…north and south…everyone.
But, what exactly have they done? Well, that’s a complicated question. The simple answer is: lots of things. But, let’s just begin with this:
5 All this is for the transgression of Jacob
and for the sins of the house of Israel.
What is the transgression of Jacob?
Is it not Samaria?
And what is the high place of Judah?
Is it not Jerusalem?
Firstly, Samaria itself. Samaria was the capital city of the Northern Kingdom and sometimes the prophets would refer to the whole kingdom as Samaria. But, as far as God is concerned, the whole Northern Kingdom is an abomination. An abomination is something that causes disgust, and that’s exactly how God feels about what he has witnessed.
The picture that Micah paints, though, is that the sins of the North are sort of like a contagious disease that has slowly been infiltrating the South as well. Even though there have been more righteous kings in the South, the paganism of the North has slowly been creeping in. Hence, the “high places” of Judah in verse five. This is a reference to the altars of pagan worship. Even with Jotham, a king who did what was “right in the eyes of the Lord,” there were still pagan altars in the high places, and all of that was creeping into Jerusalem. It continued even with a righteous king. He says in verse nine:
9 For her wound is incurable,
and it has come to Judah;
it has reached to the gate of my people,
to Jerusalem.
And, here the imagery depicts the way sin festered in Samaria and eventually made its way to the gate of Jerusalem. The same thing was true of destruction. Samaria would be the first to fall in 723 BC, and eventually destruction would also make its way even to the gate of Jerusalem. And, the end of chapter one lists the individual cities that formed the approach to Jerusalem that would eventually fall one by one by one.
So, much like many of the other prophets, especially Amos, Micah is not simply declaring judgement, he is also building a case against the people. The primary reason is to show that the Lord is just. Don’t miss this. God has not arrived at the decision to destroy Israel without cause, and he has also not done it quickly. This is because as the psalmist says: “the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. (Psalm 103:8) While God cannot act like he hasn’t seen what he has seen, his character is such that he airs on the side of grace and mercy instead of anger and long-suffering patience rather than quick punishment. God could have destroyed Israel much sooner and still would have been justified, but he has been extending grace and mercy to them…and sending his prophets to make the people aware of their sin and to call them to repent. All of which were continually rejected.
So, here in chapters one and two, the two big accusations Micah makes are this:
- You have devised ways to steal people’s properties and livelihoods so that you can enrich yourselves.
2:2 They covet fields and seize them,
and houses, and take them away;
they oppress a man and his house,
a man and his inheritance.
- You have refused to listen to the true words of the Lord.
6 “Do not preach”—thus they preach—
“one should not preach of such things;
disgrace will not overtake us.”
7 Should this be said, O house of Jacob?
Has the Lord grown impatient?
Are these his deeds?
Do not my words do good
to him who walks uprightly?
He then says in verse 11
11 If a man should go about and utter wind and lies,
saying, “I will preach to you of wine and strong drink,”
he would be the preacher for this people!
This is what we want. We not only want people who tell us what we want to hear, but we want those who would validate even things that we might think to be wrong. People who would tell us that our sins are not sins. So, Micah, sarcastically, says that if a preacher came along who said, ‘God delights when you are drunk,’ that people would have quickly jumped on board. And, isn’t that true today? The church, in many quadrants, has over the last fifty to seventy years come to validate things that have long been thought of as sin and to the point where they aren’t thought of as sin at all anymore. A great example of this is divorce. The Scripture is clear that God hates divorce. That it is never his intention. And, even though in the Scripture there do seem to be a couple of valid reasons for divorce (namely infidelity), it is still something that grieves the Lord. But, the American church has gotten really casual with divorce. Perhaps more than compared to any other past generations, we see it as being somewhat morally neutral. Sometimes people get divorced. Sometimes things just don’t work. Whatever.
Micah’s point here is that the people have become so morally compromised that they simply won’t even listen to a truthful preacher. And, this, again, shows that the Lord is just in his proclamation of destruction on Israel. I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again. God is not just one thing. Yes, God is love, but you don’t get to define his love–he does. He sets the bar. He tells us what love is. But, the Scripture also tells us that God is not ‘only’ love. That is not his only attribute. He is also mercy. He is also justice. He is also truth. He is also wisdom.
And, even though God sends destruction on Israel, we can make no accusation against him.
- Can you say that “God has not been loving to Israel”?———No.
- Can you say that “God has not been patient with Israel”?—–No.
- Can you say that “God has not been generous to Israel”?—–No.
- Can you say that “God has not treated Israel justly”?———–No.
The point for us today would be this: God has not changed. He is not a different God in the Old Testament. And, he is also not just an angry God itching to strike people down. In fact, the picture that Scripture paints is that he is quite the opposite. He is a God who is so loving and so generous and so merciful that he sacrificed his only son so that our sin and waywardness would not result in our destruction. But, he hasn’t done those things so that we can just continue in our sin. He has shown us kindness so as to lead us to repentance. And we are to learn from the example of Israel.
We ask questions about why terrible things happen in our world in an attempt to explain them, but the explanation is that our world is broken because of sin. This is the story of the Bible. And, here’s the thing, it’s not just some people’s sin that has broken the world; it is all of our sins. We have no ability to look at any situation and say that something has or hasn’t happened because of someone else’s sin. And, I think it makes us look like fools when we do that. For example, when some preacher tries to say that some natural disaster has happened or some tragedy has occurred because of the sins of whatever people-group he hates. But, here is what you have the ability to do. You have the ability to look at your own life and examine the ways that your unwillingness to put sin to death separates you from God. The ways that you have fallen short of the glory of God and are thus deserving of nothing other than death. This is the proverbial log in our own eyes. We love to avoid our own sin by focusing on the sin of others. We love to place the blame and responsibility on others. This is how we can learn from the example of Israel.
God gave Israel everything: land, provision, wealth, safety, food. He gave them abundant kindness, which they repeatedly rejected to the point of their destruction. He has done the same thing with each of us and, yet, we have the benefit of a picture of what not to do. How not to respond to him…and yet so many people are missing it. Who, like the Israelites, give him lip-service, but live lives that do not honor him as the true king.
Friends, today’s text should lead us to, yet again, examine the areas of our lives that we have not fully submitted to Christ. We often say that we are all unbelievers in some way. Some part of your life that you simply don’t trust Jesus with. Some part of your life where you struggle with doubt. What is that for you? And, what more could God possibly do for you that would lead you to give it over? Micah 2 ends not with destruction, but with an optimistic picture of the future. A picture that points us to a coming Messiah, the one who will unite all under the banner of salvation, under the banner of the only true and righteous king.
12 I will surely assemble all of you, O Jacob;
I will gather the remnant of Israel;
I will set them together
like sheep in a fold,
like a flock in its pasture,
a noisy multitude of men.
13 He who opens the breach goes up before them;
they break through and pass the gate,
going out by it.
Their king passes on before them,
the Lord at their head.
