Word of Salvation – April 2011

 

KNOW THAT GOD IS HOLY; HE JUDGES SINNERS

By Rev. John de Hoog

(Sermon 1 in a series on Micah)

 

Text- Micah 1:1-7

 

What do you think of Psalm 137?

 

“By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept

when we remembered Zion.

There on the poplars we hung our harps,

for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy;

they said, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’

How can we sing the songs of the LORD

while in a foreign land?

If I forget you, O Jerusalem,

may my right hand forget its skill.

May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth

if I do not remember you,

if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.

Remember, O LORD, what the Edomites did

on the day Jerusalem fell.

‘Tear it down,’ they cried,

‘tear it down to its foundations!’

O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,

happy is he who repays you

for what you have done to us—

he who seizes your infants

and dashes them against the rocks.”

 

It’s a happy little Psalm, isn’t it!

 

Could we possibly pray the words of Psalm 137? In the NIV vss 8-9 read, “O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us – he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.” But in the Hebrew here, the word “blessed” appears twice, “Blessed is he who repays you for what you have done to us; blessed is he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.” It’s the same word as in Psalm 1: “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.” It means approved by God, right in God’s eyes. The man who will wreak the horrible vengeance of vss 8-9 is approved and right in God’s eyes.

 

How can this be? Does your view of God include this aspect of God’s character? What is your view of God? For many people, even many church-goers, God is a far-off nebulous concept they have read about, but he does not influence or affect their daily lives. For many people, God cannot really be known; their ideas about him are vague and undefined. And as for thinking of him as a God who punishes sinners, that idea is just too far out to think about!

 

Let’s suspend our questions about Psalm 137 for a few moments and turn to the first section of the Book of Micah. Micah insists that God’s character can be known, and that he acts in ways that are consistent with his character. And in this first section of the book, Micah affirms that God is a holy God, who will come in power to judge sinners on the earth.

 

Micah’s name means: “who is like God?” It is interesting that even his very name raises the question of the character of God. Right at the end of the book, in the concluding hymn of praise in Chapter 7:18, Micah’s name appears artfully inserted in the text: “Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance?” One of the great themes of Micah’s book is to teach us about the true, knowable character of God, and how to respond to him.

 

Micah was a native of Moresheth, a country village on the Philistine plain. He prophesied in Jerusalem during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah of Judah, and was contemporary with the prophets Hosea, Amos, and Isaiah. Micah had a powerful ministry which changed the course of a nation’s history. We know that from what is recorded in Jeremiah 26:17-19. It’s more than a hundred years later, but Micah’s powerful ministry is still remembered.

 

In Jeremiah 26, the prophet Jeremiah is being threatened with death because certain priests and prophets don’t like his preaching of judgment on Judah. But some faithful elders in Judah have heard of Micah’s ministry, and they intervene on Jeremiah’s behalf. Jeremiah 26:17 “Some of the elders of the land stepped forward and said to the entire assembly of the people, ‘Micah of Moresheth prophesied in the day of Hezekiah king of Judah. He told all the people of Judah, ‘Zion will be ploughed like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble, the temple hill a mound overgrown with thickets.’ Did Hezekiah king of Judah or anyone else in Judah put him to death? Did not Hezekiah fear the Lord and seek his favour? And did not the Lord relent, so that he did not bring the disaster he pronounced against them? We are about to bring a terrible disaster on ourselves!”

 

See the powerful effect Micah’s ministry had! By the power of the Holy Spirit, Micah’s stirring voice changed Hezekiah’s heart, reshaped the politics of Judah and saved the nation from immediate catastrophe. Because Hezekiah heeded Micah’s voice, the nation survived another 140 years when certain destruction seemed imminent.

 

As vs 1 tells us, Micah prophesied during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, which dates his ministry from about 750 to 700 BC. Halfway through that time, in 722 BC, during the reign of King Hezekiah, the northern kingdom of Israel fell, Samaria was destroyed and the people were taken away into exile by the Assyrians. This fall of Samaria in 722 BC is the background for Micah’s preaching in vss 2-7.

 

Let’s work our way through this preaching of Micah’s, and then draw some conclusions about God’s character. And remember, in the back of our minds the question about Psalm 137 still lingers.

 

Vs 1 “The word of the Lord that came to Micah of Moresheth during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah – the vision he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem. Hear, O peoples, all of you, listen, O earth and all who are in it, that the Sovereign Lord may witness against you, the Lord from his holy temple.”

 

Notice that the Lord summons the nations to a trial. Even though his words through Micah are concerned with Israel and Judah, and even though Micah spoke his words in Jerusalem, the Lord addresses the words first of all to the nations. This is very significant. The condemnation that God is going to heap upon Israel serves as a typical example of the judgment that he will enact upon all peoples that forsake him and turn to idols. Yes, his judgment starts with Israel, for judgment begins with the household of God. But it doesn’t stop there; all the peoples of the earth will be judged. The peoples are summoned to see what God is doing to Israel, and what he is doing to Israel is meant to be a warning to them. If this is how he treats his own people when they turn away from him, imagine how he will treat the rest of mankind!

 

I have said that Micah is concerned with declaring something of the character of God – we need to know what God is like, and we need to understand that he always acts in ways that are consistent with his character. To understand how God acts, we need to understand what he is like.

 

But as Micah makes clear here, all peoples need to know about the character of God. We need to tell people the truth about God and about what he is like. God is witness to the sinful deeds of every single individual in the world today. Every single person is accountable to God. We need to tell people that. Micah is not just concerned with a local dispute in a relationship between one little god and one little nation lost in the sands of history. Rather, the way that the God of all the nations deals with his own people has implications for every single human being.

 

So far then, the Lord through Micah has called upon all the peoples of the earth to hear and heed. And now he goes on to detail the judgment that the Lord is going to wreak against Israel and Judah.

 

These words were preached by Micah before 722 BC. Before the northern kingdom of Israel, and her capital Samaria fell to the Assyrians, Micah of Moresheth speaks God’s Word in Jerusalem and predicts what is going to happen.

 

Vs 3 “Look! The LORD is coming from his dwelling place; he comes down and treads the high places of the earth. The mountains melt beneath him and the valleys split apart, like wax before the fire, like water rushing down a slope…Vs 6 “‘Therefore I will make Samaria a heap of rubble, a place for planting vineyards. I will pour her stones into the valley and lay bare her foundations. All her idols will be broken to pieces; all her temple gifts will be burned with fire; I will destroy all her images. Since she gathered her gifts from the wages of prostitutes, as the wages of prostitutes they will again be used.’”

 

Vss 6-7 outline Israel’s demise and explains the reason for it. The northern kingdom of Israel, from the moment of its inception, was an idol-worshipping nation. The first king of Israel, Jeroboam son of Nebat, established golden calves, one in the south at Bethel, and one in the north at Dan, so that the people of Israel would not need to travel down to Jerusalem to worship in the temple, but could “worship” God at the golden calf shrines and so stay within Israel. And this false worship led Israel astray and she worshipped idols all her life as a nation. Israel had not one godly king who reversed any of this. Israel was, in effect, doomed from the very beginning of her life as a nation, for she was an idol-worshipping nation.

 

Israel’s destruction was virtually inevitable, but Micah is careful to depict this destruction in terms of God’s work of judgment. God comes down from his dwelling place, he comes and treads on the high places of the earth, and the mountains melt and the valleys split open. The high places of the earth are not only high geographically, the word “high place” came to mean a pagan shrine in the land. Idol-worshippers would build a shrine to their god on the local hill, the word “high place” came to mean a place of idolatrous worship. Time and again you read, even in the account of Judah, and even in the account of good kings, that even though the good king did a lot of good, he did not remove the high places from Judah. This is even the case for Solomon. In other words, he did not really win the battle for the hearts of the people of Judah, because the high places continued as places of idol worship. But the Lord comes down and he melts these high places like wax melts before a fire.

 

So far, Micah’s hearers in Jerusalem are probably quite pleased with Micah’s preaching. Micah is predicting the day when the Lord will deal with all the evil nations of the earth, he will come down on the mountains like he came down on Mt Sinai, and he will destroy the high places of Israel, the northern kingdom, that corrupt nation. But now Micah drives the point home in a way that would have been highly offensive. Vs 5 “All this is because of Jacob’s transgression, because of the sins of the house of Israel. What is Jacob’s transgression? Is it not Samaria? What is Judah’s high place? Is it not Jerusalem?”

 

Can you imagine the shock and horror of this statement? How can Micah call Jerusalem the high place of Judah? How can he compare the temple worship in Jerusalem with the corrupt religion being practiced in the northern kingdom of Israel? God predicts the total destruction of the northern kingdom, but if Jerusalem is simply another “high place”, simply another place of idol worship, then what will happen to Jerusalem? Is Micah really serious?

 

Let’s just look ahead to vs 9 to see that Micah is deadly serious about calling Jerusalem a high place. Vs 9 “Her wound is incurable, and it has come to Judah. It has reached to the very gate of my people, even to Jerusalem itself.” We’ll look at vs 9 next time in its own context. But please understand that God is speaking powerful words of judgment against Judah and Jerusalem through Micah.

 

Pause

 

From this passage today, learn that God deals with sinful people in two ways: in surprising and undeserved grace, and in deserved justice.

 

First, God deals with people in surprising and undeserved grace. In grace he sends his prophets and preachers to convict people of their sin and warn them of his ways. That is exactly what Micah is doing in this sermon. He is demonstrating to Judah and Jerusalem the nature of their sin, he is warning them that God will come with great power to deal with sinners, and he is calling upon them to repent, to turn from their wicked ways and live.

 

In his grace, God is long-suffering and patient with the wicked, so that they will have an opportunity to repent. The passage that we read from Jeremiah earlier shows that Hezekiah and the people of Jerusalem heeded Micah’s message, and repented and turned their lives over to God, and so changed the history of their whole nation! Micah’s ministry was supremely successful.

 

But see how patient God is with sinful people. When Jeroboam, the first king of Israel built the golden calves, God did not immediately wipe out Israel. Rather, he sent prophet after prophet to them, and gave them 200 years to listen and respond! And I’m sure, in the process many did respond and were saved eternally. Prophets like Elijah, Elisha and Amos had powerful ministries in the northern kingdom. But after 200 years of patience, God finally wiped Israel off the map as a nation. Micah predicted it, and Micah saw it happen in his own lifetime.

 

So we see that there is also a second way in which God deals with sinful people, and that is with deserved justice. The first way is with surprising and undeserved grace, giving people time to repent. But second, he deals with people with deserved justice. When his undeserved patience and compassion are ignored, then God will eventually bring deserved punishment. This is the main emphasis of Micah’s ministry – God is going to judge his people because they have turned away from him. But this is not just a message for God’s people, because…remember vs 2 – he calls upon all the peoples to hear, and all the earth and all who are in it. And that is precisely why Jesus sends his disciples out into all the world with the message of the gospel, because it is a message for all nations. The message of the gospel is fundamentally the same message as Micah’s message as it finds its fulfilment in Christ.

 

So then brothers and sisters, where do you and I stand today before this same God? Since you are still alive, I know there are only two options. First, it may be that God has been gracious to you in changing your heart and has enabled you to trust in Jesus Christ for your salvation and to live your life for him as Lord. Or second, it may be that God is being gracious to you in giving you time, now, to repent and turn to Christ to be saved. Either way, I know that this is a time of grace; in either case, God is graciously at work in your life.

 

But hear the warning of Micah. If God’s grace and patience are ignored, then all that is left is fearful judgment. All that is left is the dashing of infants’ heads against rocks. Let’s be frank. It is a fearsome thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Dashing infants against rocks is nothing compared to the eternal punishment that awaits any who ignore God’s patience and grace in these days of grace.

 

You need to know this about God. God does not ignore evil and rebellion. He always punishes it. He either punishes it in Christ, who on the cross took the punishment on himself for all of the sins of all of his people, or he punishes it in the sinners themselves, those who ignore his grace and his patience.

 

Dear brother or sister, where are you today? Do not ignore God’s grace, but repent and believe the good news about Jesus Christ. That’s what Hezekiah did 720 years before Christ because of the preaching of Micah. Are you going to ignore such a great salvation?

 

Amen