Micah Preaches for Us
Micah 7:18-20
June 25, 2023 anno Domini
You don’t know much about Micah, except for perhaps one thing. Micah is the prophet who said God’s Son would be born in the little town of Bethlehem. It’s not a bad thing to remember today. Six months from today is Christmas, which means we celebrated John the Baptist’s birthday yesterday.
You should know more about Micah than you do, because even though he lived 700 years before Christ, he, like the rest of the prophets are prophets for our time. Nothing changes under the sun, especially our need for Jesus, and thus also our need to hear the prophets like Micah continually call us to repent.
So today, I’m going to do my little 15-minute part in telling you about Micah. Micah was a prophet in Judah. That’s the southern kingdom. The northern kingdom of Israel wasn’t doing so well at the time of Micah. In the year 722 they were taken captive by the Assyrians. For a point of illustration imagine Canada was overtaken by communist China. Micah would be a prophet in Minnesota during that time.
Even though Israel had fallen, Judah was doing well and confident in her greatness. The economy was surging, olive oil and fig futures were up. Judah was prospering and they may have even rejoiced a little in their brother’s downfall. After all, they were in the south. They had Jerusalem. They had the temple. They were very comfortable with their lives and surroundings. The northern tribes of Israel had none of those things. Maybe they got what was coming to them.
The text for this morning is from Micah 7. They are the last words Micah prophesied, a wonderful and blessed sermon of God’s mercy. Micah preaches the uniqueness of Judah’s God, Yahweh, the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Their God, the God of Scripture, the Triune God, pardon’s iniquity. He doesn’t hold His anger long, but instead delights in love. He casts out their sins and keeps His promises. He is faithful and wants His children to receive their inheritance.
But here’s the problem. Hearing just those words is like daydreaming until the pastor gets to the end of the sermon. You hear a bit, but you don’t know the whole message. It’s like hearing that God is love but separating that from Christ’s death on the cross. God loves by calling you a sinner and then forgiving your sins at a great cost to Himself.
Micah has a simple message for Judah, a message that is still true today, for the world, the church, and for you individually. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. Judah may have gloated over the fall of the northern Kingdom. They were very secure in their worldly ways and took God’s promises for granted, so much so that they worshipped the wicked and wayward gods of the world. They didn’t love their neighbor. The rich oppressed the poor. The powerful abused the weak. They loved the prophets who preached peace but wanted Micah to keep his mouth shut. They put more faith in the diviners of the future than the Word of God. Because of their love affair with the perverse gods of their age, because they despised God’s Word, because they loved themselves at the expense of their neighbor, God’s judgment was coming. Jerusalem would fall. Judah would be taken captive. The temple would be destroyed.
Does Micah’s prophecy preach to you? Do you gloat over those who “get what’s coming to them?” Are you more comfortable with the world than with the Word of God? Do you listen more to the diviners of the weather, wealth, and the world, than you do to God’s preacher? Do you love yourself at the expense of your wife, your children, your neighbor?
It’s going to get worse before it gets better, so repent. Babylon would take Judah captive and destroy Jerusalem and the temple in 586 B.C. Micah preached about 120 years before it happened. In that way he is like Noah pounding nails in the Ark for the one hundred years before the flood came. Every hammer blow was a call to repent. Your future is not in this fallen world. Your hope is not in the apparent successes of man, or the prosperity and gifts God has given you.
The Lord has told us in His Word what the future brings. Humanity will continue to devolve by perverting God’s good gifts. They will throw aside His Word and persecute those who preach it, believe it, and confess it. Your husband will get alzheimer’s. Your children will get divorced. Your niece will die of breast cancer in her thirties. Your children and the government will get everything you worked for without working at all. You will suffer and then you will die. I know you don’t want to hear that, but don’t blame me. Blame Micah.
Actually, blame yourself. Repent, and then look to the Lord whom Micah preaches, “Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love.”
The God of Judah pardoned Judah’s iniquity. That’s what sustained her as things got worse, as she was taken captive, as Jerusalem was destroyed. The Lord never left her, but sought her, loved her, and brought her back. It’s the same story we are told in Luke’s Gospel. A sheep gets lost by its pursuit of the greener grass on the other side of the fence. Life gets worse for the sheep. It gets attacked by prowling lions. It gets caught in the thicket. It’s swept up in a raging river. That’s you. What does your Shepherd do? He finds you by coming after you. The Son of God becomes a man and takes on that prowling lion the Devil. He gets into the thicket of your sins and the torrent of death coming your way and He dies so you can live. He finds you so He can bring you home.
A coin is lost to a woman. The coin, like you, cannot do anything to be found. The coin is dead and so are you in sin. What does the woman do? She tears her house apart. She moves the fridge and the stove. She goes into the darkest parts of her moldy basement because she values that coin. So, God the Father tore this world apart when He sent His Son. Jesus upset everything in this world when He came. The religious leaders were cast down and the lowly virgin, tax collector, and prostitute were lifted up. He went into the darkest corners of this house, the place where you are lost in sin, to find you, grab hold of you, forgive you, and bring you home rejoicing that you believe in Him.
It’s going to get worse before it gets better, but it is going to get better. You have the Lord’s Word on it through His Son, the Word made flesh, Jesus of Nazareth. In the midst of the disappointment and disaster that comes in this fallen world, even when your own sinful words and actions are the cause, believe this. The Lord pardons your iniquity. He delights in loving you by forgiving you.
When you forgive as He forgives you, then you play your part to give hope to others who suffer. You confess the truth that better days are coming. I’m reading another book about marriage these days because I’m not that good at it. One bit of advice from this author, that he and his wife practiced is “keeping short accounts” when it comes to sin. Be quick to confess your sins and quick to forgive your spouse. Why? The first reason is that God has done so for you. He does not retain His anger forever and He delights in steadfast love. The second reason is that it will beautify your house. The author compares it to not picking up a mess you made immediately. You don’t do the dishes one night and the next day the pile is bigger and so discouraging you wait another day. By then the mess is so monstrous you don’t even know where to begin. Your sins are far messier than dirty dishes or laundry. So, pick up your sin and confess it. When your spouse confesses, clean it up quickly with forgiveness. Then like the Shepherd and the woman rejoice that what was lost is found. rejoice as the angels in heaven rejoice when one sinner like you repents. Rejoice that forgiveness makes for better days and anticipates that day when Christ will carry us home to the Father, rejoicing because He found us and forgave us. In the name of Jesus. Amen.