Micah 7.8-9
Courageous humility
(Micah 7.8-9)
Jason Procopio
If you’ve been in the church for any length of time, you’ve probably heard the words “repent” or “repentance” used more than once.
When trying to define what it means to repent, Christians will often say that to repent means to ask forgiveness for our sin, our rebellion against God, and to turn in the opposite direction—we walk towards Christ, and away from sin.
That is absolutely true; that is a good definition. But it’s not quite complete.
Repentance isn’t just an act we do; it is also—and perhaps most especially—a posture of our hearts, if we have understood who we are and what Christ has done with us. It is a posture that will be willing to do anything to put our sin to death and to live for God.
That posture of the heart is what we’re going to see today. I had planned to do Micah chapter 7 in two halves: v. 1-10 today, and v. 11-20 next week. But as I was preparing, I ran into two separate problems with my plan.
The first was that I couldn’t quite get into the first ten verses without continuing on to the second half. The second half of the chapter truly completes the first half—and the rest of the book if I’m honest—in such a beautiful way that I just couldn’t bring myself to completely split them up.
The second was that one section of verses in this chapter is so monumentally important for me—and has been throughout most of my Christian life—that I just can’t bring myself to go over it too quickly, and leave the time we’d need to look at the chapter as a whole.
So I’ve come to a compromise of sorts, which I hope will be useful.
We just read v. 1-9. I asked that we read the whole first part of this chapter, in order to understand the context, but we’re going to focus mainly on v. 8-9 today, before moving on to the entire chapter next week.
We’re doing this because in these two verses, Micah basically takes on the mantel of representative for the people, and repents of their sin—but he does so in a really particular way. His way of repenting doesn’t look much like the way we often repent; the posture of his heart is in a really different place.
And I believe that this is the definitive posture the rest of the Bible would drive us to, if we are to take our repentance seriously.
Context (v. 1-6)
Micah begins this chapter with a lament, which is completely appropriate, if you remember what came before. God has condemned the corruption and sin and idolatry of his people multiple times so far in this book, and promised judgment against that sin. What we haven’t really seen so far is how all of this affects Micah himself.
And that’s what we see in the first six verses of chapter 7. Micah laments the situation in which he finds himself—that because the fear of God, the desire for holiness, seems absent from the people of Israel, there is nothing left here that can satisfy him, nothing that he can trust.
It’s a heartbreaking thing to say, coming from this man who’s been begging the people for six chapters to turn back to God and repent. It’s heartbreaking because he knows his words are likely not going to have the effect he would like to see: God has promised exile, and has given Micah no reason to think he won’t make good on his promise.
So the context is one of present suffering, which will produce future suffering. It’s the suffering of living in a nation (or in a world, or in a life) where sin is everywhere, and where that sin will certainly have consequences…which will produce even more suffering.
The question is, in the face of all this misery and despair and sin, how does Micah respond?
Micah’s Response (v. 7-9)
Micah’s response is the picture of simplicity. After giving this list of the many problems in Israel, he looks away from his long list of problems, and turns to the one person he can trust: God himself.
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.
We need to stop for a minute, because it’s important to see that Micah is making a choice here. It’s not that everything he said before isn’t true; it is. Things are bad. His despair is still present and real. Before, he was speaking about what he feels concerning his difficult circumstances.
But here, Micah makes a choice that flies in the face of his feelings. He is forcing himself into a willful refocusing of his attention. The long list has not disappeared; but neither has God. He’s been there this whole time, all the time Micah was talking about his reasons for despair. His despair is real…and God is there.
Both are true. So Micah chooses to focus on one rather than the other. As for me, I WILL LOOK to the Lord. That’s the first thing.
The second thing is important, too: He says, I will WAIT for the God of my salvation. In other words, God is there, but Micah doesn’t necessarily understand what he’s doing. God is there, but he hasn’t yet shown all of his cards. So in the meantime, while Micah is still in the dark, surrounded by his problems, he will wait, and trust that his God will save him, that his God will hear his calls for help.
It would be easy to turn this into an opportunity to give an easy promise—the kind of easy promise that prosperity preachers throw out like confetti: God will get you out of that bad marriage! God will get you that job! God will take away your financial problems! and so on.
That is not what Micah does. Instead, in v. 8, he makes a shift.
He gets down and identifies himself with the people against whom he has been prophesying—he becomes their spokesperson. And as he does this, he turns around and speaks to the enemies of God’s people.
Remember, multiple times now he has mentioned these enemies—he mentioned Assyria, who would conquer the kingdom of Israel in the 8th century B.C.; and he mentioned Babylon, who would conquer the kingdom of Judah in the late 6th century B.C. These enemies are still very much on the horizon. They will come, and they will win, and they will take the people away, into exile, far from their home and the temple of their God.
And what Micah says to these enemies is extraordinary. V. 8:
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.
There are several reasons why this response is so remarkable, but the first is that this book was written shortly before the exile in Assyria, and a couple hundred years before the exile to Babylon. Imagine hearing these words, and remembering them after you’ve been exiled, when you’re suffering and have no visible reason to think that it will be over soon. What would you hear?
You would hear, firstly, that it is right that you are here in exile. God is indignant against your sin, and his judgment is just.
You would hear, secondly, that God’s judgment against your sin does not mean that he has abandoned you . He will execute judgment for you, against your enemies. Those who say, “Where is your God?” will see: “Here is my God.”
This is not a fluffy promise. He never promises the enemy won’t come, that the enemy won’t get the upper hand. He never promises the people that they won’t be judged for their sin.
He says that the pain of judgment is right…but that it won’t last forever.
So, speaking for the people, Micah accepts what’s coming. Micah, standing in for the people of Israel, will humbly submit to God’s discipline, for as long as God decides it should continue.
This is an unbelievably hard decision to come to. Micah is speaking as someone who is hurting because of his sin, and making the conscious decision to accept even more pain because of his sin. He makes the decision to look forward to the light, although all he can see for now is darkness.
I had a conversation with a brother last week about exactly this difficulty: when we know, intellectually, theologically, that we have been adopted by God through faith in Christ, that now God sees us as his children and declares us righteous, because Christ has given us his righteousness…but then we look around at our own lives, at how unrighteousness we are in actual reality…and it’s so hard to believe that God would choose not to consider us that way.
Such a decision is difficult, and courageous. It requires the maturity and the perspective to know that the whole of my life isn’t limited to what I can see: I can’t see the light now, God, but I’ll trust you when you say the light is coming. It feels like this will last forever, but you say it won’t.
This is the brave and humble decision to trust God’s wisdom concerning the present reality of our sin…as well as the consequences of that sin.
It’s incredibly hard to do. But it’s what we must do.
Micah, speaking for the people, says that he will humbly accept the Lord’s discipline, for two reasons: 1) He knows that it is right (they are guilty of sin), and 2) he knows that it won’t last: God will be the one to defend him and exercise judgment for him; God will bring him out into the light.
Accepting God’s Discipline (v. 8-9)
We’re not used to praying like Micah. Can you imagine a modern Christian praying this way? Most of the time, if we find ourselves in a difficult situation (whether our pain is a visible consequence of our sin or not), we simply pray, “God, I’ve asked for forgiveness already—please make it stop!” Or if we’ve sinned, and we’re not suffering any consequences—say it’s a sin that no one is aware of but you—we will feel bad, ask for forgiveness, then stand up, brush off our knees (“Well that’s done!”) and move on with our lives.
But that is not necessarily where the Bible would advise us to go. And for a good reason.
There is a profound difference between asking forgiveness for our sin and putting our sin to death. When we sin, and we come before God for forgiveness, we humble ourselves before him and admit that we have done wrong. We remind ourselves of what Christ did for us, and we accept and trust in his sacrifice for our sin. This is an absolutely indispensable step.
But it’s not the end. Just because Christ has taken the punishment for our sin does not mean that sin isn’t still trying to get the best of us—like a zombie who is dead, but who keeps coming after you anyway. And if you want proof: how many of you have fallen into the kind of cycle where, once a week or once a month, you find yourself asking God for forgiveness…for the same exact thing you’ve confessed a hundred times before? It’s good that you ask him for forgiveness…but if you stop there, what’s the point? Why not just wait until next time?
We must put our sin to death—didn’t Micah already remind us of this in chapter 6? Micah 6.8: …what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? We must put our sin to death, and one of the most profoundly useful tools to do that is found right here, in v. 8-9.
He gives us three steps. We start with hope:
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.
If we don’t start here, our confession to God will become a pity party: “Oh God I’m so awful, how could you ever love me?” No—we already know God loves us; we already know what he has done to save us; we already know that he has declared us righteous, because his Son was righteous for us; we already have the promise that if we are saved, it is that we might be conformed to the image of his Son, that the one who has called us is faithful, and he will make it happen (cf. Rom. 8.29, 1 Thess. 5.24).
So we start with our hope, and then we move on to willful submission to God’s discipline:
9 I will bear the indignation of the Lord
because I have sinned against him…
This is the hard part. This is the part where we say, “God, I know this sin still gets the better of me. Please do whatever you need to do to root it out and kill it. Do it even if it’s painful for me. Do it even if it’s humiliating. Sin is worse than humiliation. It is worse than embarrassment. It is worse than pain, because it kills me and dishonors you. Please do whatever you must.”
We ask him to excise our sin, like a surgeon cutting out a tumor…and then we submit to whatever means he decides to use to get it out, even if it’s painful.
And this is the part where some Christians get tripped up. The one big difference between our situation and Micah’s is that Micah is looking forward to a resolution which hasn’t come yet: he knows God will bring him to the light, but he doesn’t know exactly where that light will come from.
But we do. We’re on the other side of history, and we know that our vindication, the judgment against our sin, the removal of condemnation, have come in Jesus Christ.
Which means that God’s discipline against our sin is no longer punitive. So many Christians ask me this question: “Is God punishing me?” If you have been saved by grace, through faith in Christ, the answer is unequivocally no: Christ took our sins on himself, and was punished on the cross, in our place. God is just: he does not punish the same sin twice.
That being said, he does allow us to suffer consequences for our sin—not to punish us, but to correct us, to form us, to shape us into his image. He allows us to suffer, yes, to teach us the horrors of sin, and to make us want to run away from that horror, and flee to him for refuge.
There are a million ways this can play itself out. It could be that your family or friends find out about your sin, and you suffer the embarrassment and shame of that exposure. It could be that your relationship is shattered, and you are devastated by the loss. It could be that you’re suffering in a situation that has come out of nowhere—say, you get injured in a car accident or you’re diagnosed with cancer—but the experience of that suffering helps you see how little you trust him. It could even come through church discipline, the process through which the church follows the Bible’s prescriptions and, if you are a member, you might be confronted or removed for your sin, or if you are a leader, you might be temporarily or even permanently removed from your leadership responsibilities.
However this might play out, here’s what we have to remember: God’s discipline is a gift. Rather than run from it, we are exhorted to embrace it, like Micah: to humbly accept to bear it.
So we stand firm in our hope, and we humbly accept God’s discipline—why? Because (and this is the final step) we rest in the assurance that God will defend us.
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.
So often we see people who have sinned pulling out all the stops to defend themselves—to defend their reputation, to defend their image, to defend their right to have their lives remain unchanged. They will turn against those against whom they have sinned, trying to convince everyone around that no, actually it was all his fault, it was all her fault. That really, I’m the victim here. They stop at nothing to vindicate themselves, and damn the consequences for those they have hurt.
And they feel they need to do this because they forget this fundamental truth: we don’t need to defend ourselves, because God has promised to rise to the defense of his children.
When God saves us, a fundamental change takes place in our nature. Christ takes our sin, and we get his righteousness: the righteousness of the perfect, sinless life he lived. So as we stand there, “dressed” in Christ’s righteousness (as we saw a couple weeks ago in community group), our status shifts. We go from enemies of God to children of God. We go from those whom God is judging…to those whom God is defending. He will plead my cause, he will execute judgment for me—not against me.
It is on the basis of this solid assurance, this new identity in Christ, that we can accept his discipline. Because we know it’s not punitive. He loves us; he will defend us; he will vindicate us; so we can rest, and humbly accept whatever he decides to give us, to help us put our sin to death.
I don’t know where you’re at today. I don’t know what guilt you’ve brought into this room with you, what struggles you’ve brought with you. But I do know this: you will never grow if you allow yourself to move on too quickly from one sin to another, from one moment of confession to another. Far too many of us will either do that—say “God forgive me” and just forget about it—or we’ll look at God’s discipline for our sin and refuse to see what’s happening. Far too many of us will simply take it as a “hard time I’m going through”, and will just passively wait it out, like waiting for a storm to pass.
The end result of either of these will be a plateau of Christian maturity and holiness—you’ll never grow, because you won’t accept the way God chooses to grow you. You’ll move on to the next distraction, all the while praying, “God, make me like you, but please don’t punish me! Make me like you, but let it be easy! Make me like you, but don’t let it hurt!” And you’ll end up fifty or sixty or seventy years old, still struggling with the same sins as when you were twenty, still with the same lack of assurance and perseverance.
But if we learn to confess like Micah…if we allow God to do the hard work of disciplining us, no matter how painful that might be…we will see our sin shrinking little by little, and our capacity for obedience growing little by little.
Because this is how God does this work in us—not every time, but very, very often. He does it, in part, so that he might have to force us to obey him. He brings us to pain, to show us the horror of our sin, that we might want to run away from our sin, and towards him: Lord, PLEASE get me away from this sin! Do whatever you have to do!
So this message, this passage, might be for now, or it might be for the future; I don’t know what all of you are going through. But whether it’s today or in three weeks or in a year, you will come to a point where your sin will be made plain to you, and you will need to do something about it.
And in that moment, my prayer is that all of us, as individuals and as a church, might learn to pray like Micah. To accept God’s discipline—to accept the indignation of the Lord—because we know that we deserve it, and we know it won’t last. Our Father loves us. He will plead our cause. He will defend us. When we sit in darkness, he will be our light.
