Micah 7

the victory of god

(Micah 7)

Jason Procopio

We have finally arrived at the last sermon in our series on the book of Micah. If you’ve been with us since the beginning, you know that this is a dark book, but it’s not only dark—we’ve had long stretches in the shadows, punctuated by incredible periods of sunlight breaking through the clouds.

In this book Micah has prophesied against the people of Israel—that is, he has transmitted the words of God to the people of God—concerning their rebellion against him. God has condemned them for their idolatry, their corruption, their oppression of the weak (from both the religious and political elite in Israel), and he has promised judgment against them for their sin. He has promised that they will be removed from their homes, taken into exile far away, and punished for their wickedness.

At the same time, he has also promised to send a Savior, a Shepherd-King, to deliver the people from their exile and to shepherd them into the peace of his kingdom forever.

And throughout this whole series we’ve seen how this Shepherd-King has already come, in the person of Jesus Christ, and how now Micah’s prophecies to the people of Israel apply to us today—because we struggle with the same sins as they did, we have the same rebellious tendencies as we did…but we know where the salvation of God comes from.

And in this, the final chapter of the book, Micah gives us a kind of snapshot of everything he’s said before. The chapter is divided into three separate sections, and each of them shows us three separate ways God calls us to respond to what he has told us here.

So let’s begin.

The Commonness of Sin (v. 1-6)

Like I said before, Micah has been prophesying against the people of God since the beginning of the book, and he gives a kind of summary prophecy at the end of chapter 6, reminding them of the list of accusations God has brought before them.

Now, after his summary at the end of chapter 6, it’s almost as if Micah takes a step back. It’s like he looks at the state of the world around him, and is (momentarily, at least) filled with despair.

He gives a good list of everything going wrong around him, starting with the simple lack of anything in the world that could satisfy him. V. 1:

Woe is me! For I have become

as when the summer fruit has been gathered,

as when the grapes have been gleaned:

there is no cluster to eat,

no first-ripe fig that my soul desires.

“There’s nothing here for me! It feels like everything around me is just death and decay and emptiness.” When the workers went out to cut the fruit or grains during the summer harvest, there was always some left. The law of Moses actually required them to leave some behind, so the poor come come through the fields and glean enough to eat.

But Micah says there’s nothing left. The promises God has made to preserve a “remnant” among his people… Micah’s not seeing it. At least not yet.

Next, he despairs of the violent and corrupt tendencies of the people he sees around him.

2  The godly has perished from the earth,

and there is no one upright among mankind;

they all lie in wait for blood,

and each hunts the other with a net.

3  Their hands are on what is evil, to do it well;

the prince and the judge ask for a bribe,

and the great man utters the evil desire of his soul;

thus they weave it together.

4  The best of them is like a brier,

the most upright of them a thorn hedge.

The day of your watchmen, of your punishment, has come;

now their confusion is at hand.

The despair here is palpable: everyone is wicked! (We can hear an echo of Psalm 14 and Romans 3, which quotes David saying, “There is none who does good, not even one.”) We might hear what Micah says here and think, Come on, he’s exaggerating a little, isn’t he? There is no one upright? They all lie in wait for blood? They are all corrupt? That’s laying it on a bit thick.

We’ll come back to that in a minute, but there’s something important we need to realize, because it’s one of the main truths of the Bible. When the first man rebelled against God, sin entered the world and corrupted its every corner, and its every inhabitant. There is not an inch of our hearts that has not been touched by depravity. Of course that doesn’t mean all of us are as bad as we could be, thank God; but none of us can escape it. Down to our roots, we are born in sin. That’s what Micah is saying: the sin which causes the murderer to kill, or the corrupt judge to ask for a bribe…that sin is in all of us. It comes out in different ways, but there is no escaping it: you’ll find sin in the best of us.

(Think about what this means. Those you most admire, whom you most want to emulate, the ones you turn to when you need help… The same sin is in them too.)

And Micah knows that because of this sin, judgment is coming. The “watchmen” here are God’s prophets, who have warned the people since the beginning of the consequences of persisting in sin. Israel hasn’t listened, so now, the judgment the prophets warned against is on its way. God will not let things continue like this forever. Micah has been promising this since the beginning of the book.

His last lament is particularly powerful, because it’s heartbreaking and identifiable: he laments that because of the sin around him, he can’t fully trust anyone. V. 5:

5  Put no trust in a neighbor;

have no confidence in a friend;

guard the doors of your mouth

from her who lies in your arms;

6  for the son treats the father with contempt,

the daughter rises up against her mother,

the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;

a man’s enemies are the men of his own house.

In most weddings these days the bride and groom like to write their own vows. I do a lot of weddings, so I’ve heard a lot of vows that people write (including those that many in this room have written). One of the most frequent things people say in their vows is this: “You make me feel safe.” It’s beautiful, because it’s one of the deepest needs we all feel, and it’s nice when we have found someone that makes us feel safe.

But I’m not just present at the wedding ceremony; I’m also present for more difficult conversations that come in the following months and years. And one thing we always see is this: the bride and groom will disappoint each other. They’ll hurt each other. They’ll sin against one another. And it’s especially painful when it happens there, in that context, because they thought they were safe. They thought that this was the one place where they didn’t have to worry about these things anymore.

But it doesn’t work that way, because when we marry, we marry a sinner. And we bring our sin into the marriage. Guard the doors of your mouth from her who lies in your arms, Micah says. Eventually, every married couple will read v. 5-6 and say, “Yep, that’s right.” Couples, parents with their children, brothers and sisters… None of them can be trusted.

And if they are all untrustworthy…that means that I’m untrustworthy too. Because I’m a sinner just like them.

And this is one of the first ways God calls us to respond to this book: he calls us to recognize and confess the commonness of evil. I’m taking this phrase “the commonness of evil” from Bryan Chapell, because it so perfectly describes what we see in v. 1-6 (and in chapters 1-3, and in chapter 6).

Evil is everywhere—in our neighbors, in the people we’re closest to, in the members of our family, even in ourselves. And sooner or later, we will cave under the weight of this evil if we’re not aware of how omnipresent sin is. We will be surprised and shocked that anyone could act this way, that anyone could treat us this way. But if we know and admit how common sin is, even in ourselves, it won’t take us by surprise, and it won’t break us—it will be painful, but at least we won’t be blindsided.

That’s good, but if we stop there, we will almost definitely become bitter and hardened: we’ll put up our guard and be unwilling to open ourselves to others and to God, because that would mean opening ourselves up to the possibility that we’ll get hurt.

Assurance in the Darkness (v. 7-10)

Which leads us to the second response, which is Micah’s own response.

V. 7:

7  But as for me, I will look to the Lord;

I will wait for the God of my salvation;

my God will hear me.

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.

10  Then my enemy will see,

and shame will cover her who said to me,

“Where is the Lord your God?”

My eyes will look upon her;

now she will be trampled down

like the mire of the streets.

This is what we saw last week, so I won’t take too much time here. Micah takes on the mantle of spokesperson for the people of God, and speaks to the enemies who wait at the gates. The contemporary enemies Micah is addressing are Assyria and Babylon, both of whom he has mentioned in the book. Assyria would conquer the northern kingdom of Israel shortly after this book was written, and take them into exile; Babylon would conquer the southern kingdom of Judah sometime later, and take them into exile. So these enemies are real and imminent, and yes, they will win.

So Micah tells them, “Yes, you will win…but you won’t win. What you think is happening isn’t what’s really happening.”

He tells them to not celebrate, to not imagine they have gained victory over us, because God will hear us, and bring us into the light. Micah acknowledges the judgment the people are sitting under at the moment, and accepts to bear that indignation as long as God wants to give it (because it’s what the people deserve), but he assures the enemies of Israel that God will soon be executing judgment for his people, and not against them.

And at that time, there will be a decisive and eternal reversal of roles. It will no longer be the people of God who are brought low, but the enemies of God. Whatever victory the enemies of God’s people may gain here is only temporary; when God comes to restore his people, it will be his victory, and not his enemies’.

So here is the second call of this book. In these verses, in the example of the prophet Micah, God calls us to accept the pain that comes as a consequence of sin, for as long as God wills it, and we remain faithful, trusting that he will deliver us from that sin. This is the humble posture of heart Micah displayed for us in v. 8-9. Micah accepts God’s discipline because he knows it’s what the people deserve…and he knows it won’t last forever.

Our sin has consequences. All sin has consequences. And sometimes we’ll be the ones to suffer the consequences of other people’s sin. That’s the world we live in, and God, in his wisdom, doesn’t always choose to spare us that pain.

But the pain we may have to endure as a result of sin doesn’t change what is right. Doing what God commands in this book—to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God—is not a bullet-proof vest. It will, in fact, usually attract more bullets.

But it is still right. That’s why Micah does what he does here, when he takes on himself the role of spokesperson for the people, and accepts the consequence of their sin, as if it was his own. Because guess what?—that’s what Christ did. As Peter says in 1 Peter 2.21: For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.

In the face of the pain that sin causes—whether it’s our sin or the sin of others—we courageously accept it, for as long as God wills it, and we stay faithful.

The Victory of God (v. 11-20)

And that’s the transition. Starting in v. 11, there is a massive shift in focus: from what is happening now (and what will be happening very soon) to that day when everything changes. Up to v. 10, he’s talking about current (or at least imminent) realities: this is the people’s sin, this is what they deserve, this is what they are suffering because of their sin. Their hope is current, too—today, in darkness, in the thick of it, they have abundant reason for hope.

But what exactly are they hoping for? What will God’s rescue look like, and what does it tell us about him? We begin to see the answer to that question in v. 11.

11  A day for the building of your walls!

In that day the boundary shall be far extended.

Remember the context. For any Israelite coming after Micah, any Israelite who remembers his own history, when they read about “the building of your walls,” they’ll instantly know what he’s talking about. About a century after Micah wrote these words, Babylon’s armies arrived and conquered the kingdom of Judah and breached the walls of Jerusalem, opening the city up to full siege.

If you remember what happened once the people were finally able to come home, in the book of Nehemiah, what do you see? You see the people rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. So we might think that the “day” he’s referring to is that day—the day the people would come home from exile and start rebuilding the walls.

But that’s not quite right, because he also says that in that day, the boundary shall be far extended.

In other words, this is talking about a better rebuilding than the one Nehemiah lead after the exile. This is God saying, “No, don’t put up new walls yet—the city’s not big enough. We need to make more room.”

V. 12:

12  In that day they will come to you,

from Assyria and the cities of Egypt,

and from Egypt to the River,

from sea to sea and from mountain to mountain.

I love this, because this is the kind of thing that would have been so incredibly shocking for the people during Micah’s time that they wouldn’t quite have known how to process it. But he’s given us clues all throughout the book about how to interpret what he means (who the “they” of v. 12 are).

Four separate times already in this book (in Micah 2.12, 4.7, 5.7 and 5.8), he has told us that God would preserve a “remnant” among his people—that in this people, repeatedly condemned for their unfaithfulness, God would make sure that some remain who would be faithful.

And what we saw already when we were in those chapters—what we see much later in the story, when we arrive to the New Testament—is that he’s not only talking about Jewish people who would be scattered throughout the world and who would come home, but about people who aren’t Jewish, who don’t have any reason to lay claim to the promises of God, who would be brought in to those promises.

That’s why the walls need to be bigger. That’s why the boundaries need to be extended. The Shepherd-King we saw in chapter 5 isn’t just bringing home sheep from his fold who have wandered off; he’s bringing in sheep who hadn’t previously belonged to this fold, but who do now.

He’s talking about the gathering of all of God’s people, from all nations, from everywhere in the world. In the gospels we see Jesus come, and fulfill the covenant that God had made with the Jews, and establish a new covenant that would extend outside the Jewish people. In the book of Acts we see the apostles spread the gospel in Jerusalem, yes, but also outside, to other nations; the Holy Spirit is given to them as well; they are brought in to the family.

And here, we have the promise that one day, all of God’s people, scattered throughout the world, will be gathered in and brought home. They will even come from enemy nations—they will come from Assyria (the home of the current enemy of God’s people) and Egypt (the home of the past enemy of God’s people), from sea to sea and from mountain to mountain.

Now the question is, what will happen to those among the nations who don’t belong to God’s people, who continue to reject God’s invitation to come to him and be saved? V. 13:

13  But the earth will be desolate

because of its inhabitants,

for the fruit of their deeds.

The picture is pretty simple, and we’ll see it throughout the rest of the chapter: we have the holy city of God’s people, blessed and flourishing and protected by the walls that the Shepherd has built; and we have everything outside the walls, rendered “desolate” because of the sins of the people condemned to stay there.

It’s not a literal picture—I don’t believe we’ll spend eternity literally enclosed inside city walls—but it is accurate. Or to put it another way: I don’t believe this prophecy is just speaking about a future event, but rather about a future state. Every human being who has ever lived or who will ever lived will be found in one of these two possible states: those who have placed their faith in Christ will be protected and blessed in God’s presence forever (in Micah’s image, we’ll be the ones inside the city); those who have rejected Christ will be judged for their sins and rendered “desolate” forever (those outside the city).

And the rest of the chapter is basically one long celebration of that picture—and it’s really important for us to see, and accept, and love: God’s people are meant to celebrate both of these sides of the picture: the blessing of God’s people, and the judgment of God’s enemies (those who reject him)—that is the famous “vindication” Micah spoke of in v. 9-10.

V. 14 is spoken as a prayer to the Shepherd-King of chapter 5:

14  Shepherd your people with your staff,

the flock of your inheritance,

who dwell alone in a forest

in the midst of a garden land;

let them graze in Bashan and Gilead

as in the days of old.

And God responds to this prayer in v. 15:

15  As in the days when you came out of the land of Egypt,

I will show them marvelous things.

What are the “marvelous things” God showed his people when they came out of the land of Egypt? The first thing is exactly what Micah just prayed for, in v. 14.

The very first passage of Scripture I ever memorized was Psalm 23. My mom made me memorize it when I was about seven years old. I was annoyed at the time, but I am very grateful now. Because this image we see in Psalm 23—The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul…—has been THE picture my mind always comes back to when I think about what it means to belong to Christ, and to be protected and guided and cared for by Christ.

It is this same image Micah is giving us here. He’s praying that the Shepherd-King would guide his people to a place where there are no enemies to threaten, and abundant nourishment to be enjoyed—alone in a forest, in the midst of a garden land.

And he uses the collective memory of Israel to send this image home. Bashan and Gilead were among the first lands that Israel gained after the Exodus; they were the areas where (if you remember the book of Joshua) the land was so fertile that two men returned with a cluster of grapes so huge that it had to be carried on a pole between them. The people retained the idea of these lands in their mind with longing and melancholy, because while Bashan and Gilead were among the first lands they gained, they were also among the first lands they lost to enemies.

He’s praying that the Shepherd-King would bring his people to the place where everything is right: where there are no threats to look out for, no need that could go unmet—a place of perfect peace and provision. That he would guide his people to an even better Promised Land than the first—a Promised Land that would not be overthrown or taken away from the people, but protected and kept by the Shepherd.

But that’s just the first thing. What else did God show the people when he took them out of Egypt? He showed them his awesome power to defeat the greatest power on earth at the time. He showed the Pharaoh of Egypt the power of his judgment through the plagues he unleashed on the people, and the destruction of the Pharaoh’s army when he pursued the people into the wilderness.

This is what we see in v. 16-17:

16  The nations shall see and be ashamed of all their might;

they shall lay their hands on their mouths;

their ears shall be deaf;

17  they shall lick the dust like a serpent,

like the crawling things of the earth;

they shall come trembling out of their strongholds;

they shall turn in dread to the Lord our God,

and they shall be in fear of you.

Now we can read this and it can seem very hard to us—but we have to keep in mind that the goal here is to remind us of the distance between God’s holiness and ours. We’re not meant to compare ourselves with ourselves; we’re meant to compare ourselves to God. That’s the question here. Ultimately, this passage—and this whole book—is not about us, but about God. We cannot be in fellowship with God if we are full of sin, because then God would not be a just God. And that’s why he sent Christ: to take the penalty for our sin, to suffer in our place, so that we wouldn’t have to take that punishment ourselves.

But if we reject God’s solution to our sin, that means we’re still in it. And God can’t just overlook our sin, because he is that holy, and sin is that horrible.

Can you see his point?

In heaven, we will look at all the incredible blessings God has given to his unfaithful people because of our faith in Jesus Christ (the faith that he himself gave us), and we will marvel, and say, “How great is our God—he is so merciful!”

And in heaven, we will look at the terrible punishment God gives those who reject him, and we will marvel, and say, “How great is our God—he is so just!”

Both sides of this coin—the blessings of v. 14, and the punishment of v. 16-17—are reasons why we will celebrate the greatness and power and strength and holiness and justice of our God.

Which leads us to the final celebration of this chapter, the final response God expects of his people. In this book, God calls us to trust in his present and future faithfulness to his promises that sin and its consequences will not last.

V. 18:

18  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.

19  He will again have compassion on us;

he will tread our iniquities underfoot.

You will cast all our sins

into the depths of the sea.

20  You will show faithfulness to Jacob

and steadfast love to Abraham,

as you have sworn to our fathers

from the days of old.

This will be our song, for all eternity. WHO IS A GOD LIKE YOU?

It’s amazing to see Micah end this way, because it’s very personal for him. It’s no accident that this is how he begins his final proclamation. The name “Micah” means “Who is like Yahweh?” There is no way that he wrote these words without thinking of himself here—this is the prophet, celebrating the greatness of our God, and showing us how to do it.

Conclusion

Brothers and sisters, there will come a day when the Shepherd-King arrives, and judges all sin, once and for all. God was faithful to his promises to send our King Jesus, and he will be faithful to send him again. The sin we see around us, the sin we see in us, is not forever.

So in the meantime, we adopt Micah’s posture of heart. In the darkness, we trust that the light is coming. We stand, and we tell our sin, 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. He will again have compassion on us; he will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea, and will show faithfulness to his people, as he has promised.”