The Minor Prophets: Micah

Introduction: Our commentator Bruce Waltke advises us that: our passage for today is a liturgical hymn which “consists of four almost equal strophes with three verses in each one:

It is the first three portions that we will consider today, leaving only the last three verses to finish our series next week. One further note about the text should be made. Waltke would advise us of “striking similarities with Moses’ victory song at the Red Sea. Both songs celebrate in similar terms the truth that the Lord saves Israel and vanquishes her enemies.”

Given the desperate situation in which Hezekiah and the people found themselves with their back against the wall, it is not without foundation that similarities with Moses and the people backed up against a wide expanse of water – becomes a real focus of prayer, revival, reformation and national salvation. This hymn which starts in quiet desperation ends in the triumph of national renewal and a real security: once the Assyrian Army is laid low by the powerful hand of God alone!

As we consider the prophetic ministry of Micah along side that of Isaiah we may be pleased to remember that a real revival and reformation came to fruition by the grace of God when good King Hezekiah believed and trusted in the Lord along with a significant majority of the people in the city of Jerusalem. However, we get ahead of ourselves in singing the end of the story before that ending has been accomplished in the strength of God alone.

Development: Richard Phillips, in a book detailing The Biblical Pattern of Reformation, compares the situation of King Hezekiah with that of his father King Ahaz. In Isaiah 7: 2-3 the prophet is instructed to meet Ahaz at a specific crossroads outside of the wall of Jerusalem. The prophet was instructed to offer salvation for the king and country if King Ahaz would turn to God alone as his hope and promise in all things, political and spiritual.

Sadly, Ahaz refuses to do so and seeks a diplomatic solution to his desperate military situation. He calls for Assyrian help against local kingdoms. Many wicked and evil compromises must be accomplished to attain this worldly relief. A generation later, the quiet desperation of his son Hezekiah is modeled in the scene with the caustic servant of the Assyrian king who demands the surrender of the city in Isaiah 36: 1-3. Phillips notes well the somber reality of increasing weakness for the state of Judea. He writes: “Note the precision in naming the place where this emissary stood; we can be sure that this detail is not merely mentioned in passing. The herald of the Assyrian king stood directly upon the ground where once Jerusalem’s king had stood.” Hezekiah to be sure was still behind the walls of the city, but the outer precincts and suburbs had already been occupied and the enemies of God were that much closer to a final conquest.

And yet, as Phillips tells us: Hezekiah’s “position was not truly worse because of [his father’s] earlier failure. In the final analysis his situation was precisely the same as that of Ahaz, precisely the same as that of every Christian in every trial. There is the world, advancing in its might, drawing nigh to the walls of God’s city with mocking threats and scornful derision. And there in heaven is the God of glory, the Lord Almighty, by whose power the chariots of Pharaoh drowned in the sea.”

How would Hezekiah react? Would he be his father’s son and seek a material answer to the desperate nature of his predicament? Would he do better than his father and trust in the God of Israel? Isaiah 37: 20 records the king’s reaction. After he had gone into the Temple, the king bowed before the Lord and earnestly prayed: “So now, O Lord our God, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone are the Lord.” Later in that same chapter Isaiah 37: 36a we read that very night, “the angel of the Lord went out and struck down a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians.”

It is in this context that Micah’s text is written. Let us begin with verses eight to ten to see the confession of the prophet which became that of the King and people as well. Here we see that sin was not minimized, it was sin pure and simple which had allowed the enemy to literally reach the gates of the city to threaten King, country and temple. But the enemy is warned that their greatest weapon was the God of heaven and earth and if they should truly repent, fall on their knees and seek his forgiveness – thereby would they be saved eternally if not politically. We see in verse nine that all concerned are ready to throw themselves into the hands of their Almighty God and Creator. He will judge aright between the elect and the depraved of all the earth.

The last colon in verse nine reminds me of the great motto of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. “post tenebras lux;” that is in clear English, as related by Phillips: “After darkness, light.” And in the presence of that great Light of the World: the church of every age will see where the wicked shall go and in dismay all the enemies of Christ shall know their shame because they dared to question “Where is the Lord your God?

The scriptures may well ask: “Where is the scholar, where is the wise man?” Horse droppings every one, as our text so eloquently likens “the mire of the streets.” The phrasing here reminds me of the ancient Hebrew at the time of the occupation, wherein the common Palestinian word for king was recorded in the Hebrew as “a horse’s tail.” Such is the way of all tyrants as even our own colonial politicians imagined it.

Verses eleven through thirteen contain a message of hope in response to the contrite confession of sin. All of this in response to a confession thrown at the enemies of God: all we have to do is confess our sins and you, who oppose God, will be destroyed. And yet, even peoples from the former enemies shall come to Zion’s Holy Hill and there too be saved by grace. The Church will become the great ark encompassing all of those who seek refuge from the final deluge of fire and destruction. The knowledge of God shall indeed stretch from sea to sea and “earth remotest regions, shall his empire be.”

In the contemporary world, we have the supposed plight of a former Palestinian people who seek only a just portion of the “land flowing with milk and honey.” And yet, history records that the area of Palestine was barely inhabitable at the turn of the Nineteenth Century – you see: until the return of the Zionists the parched land yielded the barest of sustenance and Arab goats and sheep kept the desert from blooming – the followers of Mohammed had created a desert in the promised land and indeed almost completely throughout the whole ancient fertile crescent.

Let us raise that specter to the spiritual level knowing full well the gracious promises of the Lord our God, that in Him and through His Son and Spirit there is life everlasting, outside of Him there is only darkness, starvation and gnashing of teeth. Even as the once popular advertisement went: “I could have had a V-8;” so must the worldly and pagan of every stripe admit in hell for all eternity: “Could I have sought after Christ?” One good thing we do know, the remnants of all the nations that once surrounded Judea did come into the Old Covenant Church. There are of course many more to come, even from the ends of the earth.

A commentator Allen, quoted by Waltke observes that the oracle here “is the counterpart to the Christian doctrine of the Last Judgment. In traditional language which Israel could understand it expresses the assurance that deficits in the moral balance sheet of the world are eventually to be paid, while the kingdom of God is to be established in triumph.”

Application: Now as we come to the end of our text for the day, Commentator Michael Bentley tells us that “by the time we reach verse fourteen it seems as if the message of the prophet was beginning to reach the hearts of the people. There we read that when they heard and understood what Micah was saying to them they started to pray.”

So let us consider in that spirit, the last section of verses for the day: verses fourteen through seventeen. The great Shepherd of the Church is here the object of prayer. And so God is asked tenderly to guide and direct the Covenantal people even as he would a flock of sheep.

Another way of outlining this section is in the response we sing week by week: “Every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” And so, year by year down through the millennia more and more military empires are humbled and slowly but quietly the ideals of the Kingdom are spread far and wide. Some of course, like many in our own fair land would rather have the benefits of the Spiritual Kingdom without the great King who gives them.

This is nothing new; it is as old as the world. God establishes a people; they forget Him and devolve into a pagan morass of humanity devoid of every godly whim. Then once again according to the gracious pattern of love and devotion to His people, God Reforms those whom He is calling to Himself; then there is peace for a time. May we take great hope from the story and prophecy of Micah – and may we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God does indeed work in history His will and purpose. And may we pray all the more that in our own time God will raise up preachers to spread the word and if He be so minded: may we earnestly pray to see a revival again even as we work diligently to reform His church for service in every opportunity.

PREACHING RESOURCES
Bentley, Michael.  Balancing the Books: Micah & Nahum.
Boice, James Montgomery.  The Minor Prophets: An Expositional Commentary 2.
Phillips, Richard D.  Turning Back the Darkness: The Biblical Pattern of Reformation.
Waltke, Bruce.  Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries:  Micah
The Holy Bible:  English Standard Version.
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