Micah 1
the coming judgment
(Micah 1)
Jason Procopio
I am so happy to be starting our new series today. I have a hard time with topical preaching (that is, when we pick a theme and then preach on that theme, like we’ve been doing since the beginning of the year, looking at the spiritual disciplines). It’s sometimes useful—like it was for us at the beginning of the year, I think—but I don’t like it much. Firstly because I’m just not creative enough to come up with things to say on my own, but mostly because when we do topical preaching, it’s much harder to show people why I’m saying what I’m saying. The things I’m saying may be absolutely true—but how do you know that? How do you know I didn’t just pluck a passage out of its context and apply it to something it never really addresses?
When we do expository preaching, we can avoid that; and that’s why the norm for our preaching in Eglise Connexion is expository. Expository preaching is when we choose a book of the Bible (or a section of a book, like the Sermon on the Mount), and we simply preach from the beginning all the way to the end, week after week. When we do this, we don’t start with a theme, and then look for passages to support our theme; we start with the text and we ask simply, “What does this text say?” And because we’re looking at the text in its context, it’s much easier to show why we’re saying the things we’re saying: because they’re right there.
We try to do this most of the time here, and we also try to go back and forth between books in the New Testament and books in the Old Testament. We want to show why we should read all of the Bible (and not just the parts that are easy), and how all of the Bible points to Jesus Christ.
We did the Sermon on the Mount in the fall and winter, and now—after our break in the spiritual disciplines at the beginning of the year—today we’ll be starting a new series on the Old Testament book of Micah. It should take us about ten weeks, pretty much up to summertime.
I’ll give you fair warning now: Micah is not a “fun” book. It’s very dark, and when it exposes and condemns the sin of God’s people, it exposes and condemns our sin. So at nearly every step, it’s going to make us uncomfortable.
It’s also difficult because of the structure of the book. The main themes of this book (like most of the prophets) are sin, judgment and hope. Micah’s going to expose injustice, but more importantly, he’ll expose what’s behind injustice; he’ll tell us what God’s reaction to that injustice is; and finally, he’ll offer hope for redemption. But that hope isn’t explicitly given until several chapters in, so for a long while, it’s going to seem very dark.
However, when we keep the message and the goal of this book in mind, we’re less apt to shy away from the pain and discomfort all this talk of judgment can cause. The message of this book is fairly simple, and we find it in miniature form in two verses which come almost at the end, in chapter 7, verses 8 and 9. After all this judgment against God’s people, Micah gives this incredible (and counterintuitive) declaration:
8 Rejoice not over me, O my enemy;
when I fall, I shall rise;
when I sit in darkness,
the Lord will be a light to me.
9 I will bear the indignation of the Lord
because I have sinned against him,
until he pleads my cause
and executes judgment for me.
He will bring me out to the light;
I shall look upon his vindication.
The key verse for understanding this book is v. 9. We tend to see God’s anger as something to try to escape. But Micah sees it as something to be accepted, because it’s right. I will bear the indignation of the Lord, BECAUSE I HAVE SINNED AGAINST HIM. In other words, I’ll take the consequences of my sin, because those consequences are right. They’re just.
Now, no matter how just those consequences might be, no one can readily accept them, because no one can actually bear God’s judgment fully. We’d never survive it. So the hope is found at the end, in the promise that God will plead my cause, and execute judgment—not against me, but FOR me. The judgment is coming, but God will turn it into light for us and not darkness.
The book of Micah teaches us to accept our guilt, and to sit under the Spirit’s conviction for our guilt—something Christians sorely need to learn. Because if we don’t know our guilt, if we don’t sit under it…the good news of the gospel isn’t really good news. It’s just another nice side-dish to add to an already-full plate.
So all that being said, let’s get started.
Context (v. 1)
Micah begins by giving us context. In verse 1 of chapter 1, he writes:
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.
Micah’s introduction differs from many other prophets’, in that he doesn’t give his family name (“Micah son of X”), but rather a place (Moresheth). And Moresheth isn’t where Micah is from, but where God sent him to prophecy (as Bruce Waltke points out in his commentary).
So details on his personal identity are a little hazy, but his introduction still tells us a lot. It says that the word of the Lord came to him in the days of three kings of Judah, concerning Samaria and Jerusalem. He gives us historical context (the reigns of the kings mentioned are recounted in 2 Kings 16-20 and 2 Chronicles 27-32), and he tells us what the word God gave him concerns.
Two centuries earlier, God’s people had split into two separate kingdoms: the kingdom of Israel in the north, and the kingdom of Judah in the south. The capital of Israel was Samaria, and the capital of Judah was Jerusalem. So anytime you see Samaria or Jerusalem in this book, they’re talking about the northern kingdom of Israel, and the southern kingdom of Judah, respectively.
Judgment Against Idolatry (v. 2-9)
The very first thing we see after this introduction is an announcement that God is coming to judge the people. V. 2:
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.
So God is coming to judge his people for their sin. What is the specific sin he’s referring to here? It is the sin of idolatry. God was very clear with his people that they were to worship no other gods but him—not just for himself, but for their own good. And yet…that’s exactly what they are doing.
We see this in v. 3, when Micah says the Lord is coming to “tread upon the high places of the earth.” He’s not saying God’s going to trample down mountains and hills and really tall trees. “High places” is a term for the pagan shrines to idols, often located on mountains or hills. God is coming to get rid of the idol-worship that occurs there. And he’s coming with incredible power: v. 4 gives this vivid image of mountains melting and valleys splitting open before the fire of his wrath.
Now I’ll probably say this a lot in the coming weeks, but it bears repeating: God’s anger and God’s judgment are truths we have a hard time accepting. It’s difficult for us to hear about God’s anger against his people and to see it as a good thing.
But our negative response to God’s anger is a knee-jerk reaction that we need to reconsider. As Becky Manley Pippert notes, when we analyze God’s anger, we do it through the lens of our own anger. Think of how our anger often shows up, for example, with our families: we are irritable and impatient, and we get angry over stupid things that don’t actually deserve that anger. So when we read about God’s anger in the Bible, we instinctively imagine that God is doing the same thing we always do: overreacting to something less serious than we make it out to be.
That is not what God does. God’s anger isn’t contrary to his love, but fueled by his love. We understand this too. If someone you love is intentionally and willfully doing something that is dangerous to them and to others—say, something that would put your own children in danger—you won’t make a suggestion; you won’t speak with tolerance, saying, “You know, it’d be great if you stopped doing this; I think it would be a good idea if you didn’t put yourself and my children in harm’s way.”
You’d reach a point where you got angry—specifically because you love them. This happened with my grandfather near the end of his life. My Grandpa was a wonderful man: he loved Jesus and he loved others; he was a model to follow. But he also loved fried foods. He also loved sugar. And he had a serious heart condition. The doctor put him on a strict diet, because breaking that diet could kill him. And often, my family would find him sneaking off to get fried fish by himself, or sneaking chocolate from the cupboard when no one was looking. So we would get angry with him—not because we were unreasonable, but because we loved Grandpa, and the things he was doing were getting him closer and closer to an early death. As Pippert writes: "Love detests what destroys the beloved. Love destroys that which destroys the beloved.”
This is what we see when the Bible speaks of God’s anger: his love motivates his anger, because sin is killing the people he loves.
And as hard as it is for us to stomach, God delivers his people through his judgment on them. Stephen Um writes: “God will judge his people now, to remove their idols and return them to himself, so that they will not be left with their idols and be destroyed by them, and along with them, at his final judgment.”
And all of this, he says in v. 5, is because the pagans in the land—those not belonging to the people of Israel—are not the only ones who have adopted idols to worship at the high places. God’s own people are worshiping idols along with them. God’s own people have adopted high places of their own—as he says in v. 9, the wound of their sin “has reached to the gate of my people, to Jerusalem”. Because of this, God is coming in his judgment (v. 6-7):
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.
Now it would be easy to wonder why this is such a big deal. It’s not as if the people have completely abandoned God. They haven’t become atheists. They haven’t become outright pagans. They still worship according to the Law of Moses.
The problem is they are practicing syncretism (adopting the practices of other religions, not instead of their own, but along with their own). That is as bad as if they had simply abandoned their God—and in some ways, it’s even worse.
More than once, the Bible refers to this kind of idolatry as “adultery” (Micah uses the word “prostitution”). Any kind of adultery is bad, we can agree. A man cheats on his wife and leaves her for another woman, that’s terrible. That’s devastating. But what if, instead of leaving, he says, “I didn’t mean it. I really do love you. We can work this out.” So being merciful, she forgives him…and he cheats again. And again. And again. She keeps forgiving him, because she loves him…and he keeps abusing her by breaking his vow to be faithful to her.
That’s not better.
And that’s exactly what the people are doing.
We need to see that this is what we often do as well. Tim Keller wrote: “The greatest danger, because it is such a subtle temptation which enables us to continue as church members and feel that nothing is wrong, is not that we become atheists, but that we ask God to co-exist with idols in our hearts.”
We say we love God, and we actually feel love for him—some of the time. But the rest of the time, we pursue other loves as well. We pursue pleasure instead of the purity by which we see God (cf. Matt. 5.8). We pursue our own selfish desires rather than the good things our Father gives us. (And then we complain to God, asking him why he’s not giving us the good things we want.)
And that’s the horrible thing: the things we pursue, which we think will make us happy, actually wound us, as Micah says in v. 9. They twist our hearts and souls out of shape, so that we no longer desire what is good for us.
How could God not be angry, when he sees that his people desire and pursue the poison which is killing them, more than they desire and pursue their loving heavenly Father? How could he not be angry?
Shame for Idolatry (v. 10-16)
What we see starting in v. 10 is exactly that: the people pursue idols while pretending to pursue God, desiring what is destroying them…so God says, “All right then: I’ll give you what you want.”
Micah gets creative here. He gives a list of cities in Israel and Judah, basically laying out the path of the Assyrian army, which will soon take over Israel and bring them into exile. He uses a series of plays on words to describe the fates of these cities. (We shouldn’t see them as one thing happening to one city, and another thing happening to another; he uses the cities’ names to colorfully describe the coming judgment on all of them.)
In v. 10: Beth-le-aphrah means “house of dust”—and its residents will roll in the dust, a sign of mourning over their misery.
In v. 11: Shaphir sounds like a word meaning “beauty town”—and what will they have in the end? Nakedness and shame.
In v. 11: Zaanan sounds like “going forth” or “coming out”—but because of their fear, they won’t come out to meet their judge.
In v. 11: Beth-ezel means “house of taking away”—and why are they lamenting? Because the city—the standing walls which surround them—will be taken away from them.
In v. 15: Mareshah sounds like the word for “conqueror” or “dispossessor”, a word that’s often used to describe Israel’s dispossession of Canaan. Remember? They came into Canaan and drove out the people and took over the land? Well now, the people who cast out the Canaanites will be cast out themselves, by the conqueror whom God will send (in this case, King Sennacherib of Assyria). In terror they will flee to Adullam, where David fled while he was pursued by Saul.
Here’s a modern example of what he’s doing: the etymology of the name of our city—Paris—is debated, but most propositions turn around the notion of warriors (according to Alfred Holder, Paris comes from words meaning “the warriors” or “the commanders”; according to Pierre-Yves Lambert, it comes from a word meaning “spear people”). If Micah was to pronounce this same judgment on Paris today, his pronouncement might be: “God will send warriors and commanders against you with spears.”
The point is simple: the things you are pursuing, the things you turn to in order to define yourself, will turn against you. The idols you are pursuing will make you the opposite of what you’re hoping for.
Jesus calls Satan “the father of lies” in John 8.44. This is the truth of every act of rebellion we could pursue: God tells us how to live, but we don’t want to obey his commands. We want to pursue this (whatever it is) instead. But we don’t do it because we hate God; we just want this other thing more. We want what we think it will give us—whether it be pleasure or satisfaction or validation or security. And pursuing whatever sin we’re talking about may even bring us that thing for a time.
But Satan is a liar: sin never delivers on its promises. It may give us something we want…but it exacts a terrible cost in return. We find ourselves twisted out of shape by our own desires, made into the very things we used to hate. The idols we pursue make us the opposite of what we’re hoping for.
And the end result of all of this is shame: when Micah calls them to make themselves bald and cut off their hair in v. 16, “for the children of your delight,” he’s reaping shame upon them. He’s saying, It is your children, and not just you, who will suffer the consequences of your idolatry. Why? Because you’ll teach your idolatry to them, and they will follow in your footsteps, and be judged themselves—they will go into exile as a result of the idolatry you are teaching them.
An Advocate for Idolators (v. 8-9)
Now like I said at the beginning, this is dark stuff. In v. 16, Micah foretells the idolators’ children going off into exile…and then the chapter just ends. You wouldn’t think there’s a lot of hope here, and there’s not. Not yet—not until later.
But even here at the beginning, we have a glimmer of what’s to come.
This chapter, you may have noticed, is structured like a trial. In v. 1 we have the call for everyone to listen to the case against Israel and Judah (this is the part in the movie when the judge comes in and the bailiff calls out, “All rise!”):
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.
This is legal language. We are being summoned to listen to God’s testimony—his “witness”—against his people.
Next, in v. 5, we have the accusation against both Israel and Judah:
5 All this is for the transgression of Jacob [= Israel]
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?
God is accusing his people of sin, of transgression. He is accusing them of adultery against him, of abandoning him to run after these other gods (even though they may not think that’s what they’ve done).
Finally, in v. 6-7, we have the sentence handed down for their idolatry:
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.
This is a snapshot of a courtroom scene, with a summons, an accusation (with the testimony an expert witness), and a sentence. It seems like this is pretty open-and-shut.
And it is…but we see a bit of the prophet’s heart in v. 8-9, which gives us a foretaste of something to come later. Micah says:
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.
This isn’t God speaking (at least in the context of the passage); this is Micah speaking. And he’s devastated. Because these are his people. He’s willing to bare himself completely and go around naked and wailing and lamenting, because the wound of idolatry has reached his people.
And there’s nothing he can do about it. He’s interceding—you can see that he wants to pray for them—but he can’t ask God to not judge the people, because he knows God is right to judge the people. All he can do is lament.
Sometimes, that’s the kind of advocate you want. Sometimes, the best kind of friend is the kind who won’t be able to do anything to help you, but who will sit with you and weep with you and lament for you.
But there is someone coming who can do something to help, and Micah’s lament gives us a foretaste of him—when we see Jesus lamenting over Jerusalem, he’s doing the same thing. It’s not a stretch to make that connection, because of course the book of Micah is just a part of a much larger story. Everything we see in the Old Testament is both background and anticipation of what is to come. It’s like reading any good book: for a large part of the story, we don’t necessarily know where it’s going, but when we finally get there, we look back and see that everything was leading this way the whole time.
The destination that everything in the Old Testament is leading to is the person and work of Jesus Christ, who also stood as an advocate for his people, but who—contrary to Micah—could do something about it. Micah’s name means Who is like God? “Who is like Yahweh?” Stephen Um, commenting on Micah’s intercession, writes, “Who is like Yahweh? No one. No one is like Yahweh. Except then Jesus enters the courtroom, and he answers the question ‘Who is like Yahweh?’ by saying, No one is like Yahweh. And I am him. I am not like God. I am God.
“Not only that, but Jesus essentially came to earth to say, I’m the Lord who will become naked so that you will be clothed with my righteousness. I am the Lord who will be rejected so that you will be fully accepted and embraced. I am the Lord who will become unclean and contaminated by your idolatry so that you might be rescued from its judgment and its attraction. I am the advocate.”
And he is. Christ took on a human nature and was born into this idolatrous people. He took their idolatry—and ours—on himself, and was punished in our place, for our sin. His life, death and resurrection is the solution—the only way out—of the judgment Micah announces in this book. He is the hope we can’t quite see yet. But we will.
Application
Often at the end of a message we try to give some application points—ways we are called to respond to the text. We want to know what we’re supposed to do, how we’re supposed to respond to what we’ve read.
The application of this particular text is given to us, but it’s not something we’re comfortable doing. We see it in the very first verse: we are to hear what God has to say; we are to pay attention to what God has to say.
And what does God say? That his people have committed idolatry—they have commited spiritual adultery—and that their adultery is shameful. Our reaction in this first chapter is meant to mirror Micah’s: we are to lament.
Because we would be fools to imagine that the problem Micah describes here is limited to his place and time. The idolatry he describes is far more prevalent than we like to imagine, because this syncretism—this mixing of affections—is something we have been trained to do. We have been trained to look for pleasure wherever we can get it, and if something is not immediately gratifying, we jettison it and look for something better.
And most of us, if we’re honest, have already experienced the disappointment that comes from such a life: that we give in to this kind of idolatry, and then find that the area in which we nourish idolatry is the very area where things don’t go the way we hope they will. We have seen that false gods disappoint. We have seen that no job, no leisure, no relationship can bear the weight of our ultimate hope for happiness.
But still we pursue it…when our Creator and our Father is standing right in front of us all the time, inviting us to see what he has done for us in his Son, and promising us eternal life and happiness if we turn to him.
The good news is that today, thanks to Christ, we can still do that. But first we must see and admit what we have done. We must confess, and lament, and repent. That is what this text expects of us. So I’d like us to take a couple of minutes to do that—to sit and pray silently, and confess the idols of our heart that we’ve asked God to co-exist with, before we take Communion and remember there there is no other God who deserves our affections—that no one is like Yahweh.
