Today we conclude our journey through the book of
Micah with two songs. In Micah 7:1-20, Micah records a song of lament and a song of victory in order to
give God’s people hope and call them to faithfulness in the midst of their
distress. The dynamic we see here is
very instructive for the church today. God’s
people must learn to be hopeful and faithful in their brokenness and
distress. Too often we are tempted to
hopelessly despair over or yield to the overwhelming wickedness of our
world and the seeming strength of our enemies.
Micah’s songs teach us that it is possible to be broken over wickedness
and distress while remaining faithful to God as our only hope. My prayer today is for God to use this passage
to fill us with hope and resolve to remain faithful to Him no matter what we
may face.
[7:1] 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. [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. [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. [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. [11] A day for the building of your walls! In that
day the boundary shall be far extended. [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. [13] But the earth will be
desolate because of its inhabitants, for the fruit of their deeds. [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. [15] As in the days when you came out of the land of
Egypt, I will show them marvelous things. [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. [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. (Micah 7:1-20 ESV) How can we remain hope filled and faithful while
waiting upon God to bring about His final salvation?
I.
A People Broken, yet Resolved (7:1-7): Song of Lament
In verses 1-7, Micah voices a song of lament, expressing his brokenness
over the sins of God’s people and the distress it has brought about, but also
his resolve to look to and wait upon
God in faithfulness until He sees His purposes through. In verse 1-6 we see Micah’s brokenness and the reason for it. He is like a vinedresser who enters his
vineyard and finds it fruitless. This
stripped vineyard serves as an illustration of the pitiful state of God’s
people at the time. Just as a
vinedresser who gleaned his own vineyard without finding any fruit that he
desires, so Micah has looked among God’s people without finding any examples of
godliness among God’s people. There are
no godly leaders (2-4) or godly people (5-6). He says that “the godly has perished from the earth” and that “there is no one upright among mankind”
(2). Leaders who should’ve been lovers
of justice and compassion had become greedy men who were like a “brier,” pricking and hurting instead of
loving and helping. As a consequence,
they are going to experience a time when a person cannot even trust his closest
friends and family (5-6). A “man’s enemies” will be “the
men of his own house” (6). This
probably refers to the time when siege will be laid against Jerusalem. People will be willing to turn upon their own
family in order to advance their own agenda or to save their own hides. This is a far cry from the “HESED” that was supposed to mark God’s
people (6:8). This deplorable situation was reason for
Micah to be broken (1).
However, in verse 7 we also see Micah’s resolve and the reason for it. Micah says, “but as for me, I will look to the LORD,” and will “wait for the God of my salvation,”
confident that His God would hear him!
Micah’s brokenness “did not drive
him to despair, but into the arms of the God to whom he was personally
related.”[1] He chose to do what God’s people are all
expected to do in the midst of their distress, to watch and wait upon the
Lord to bring about His salvation.
Habakkuk was another prophet who experienced such
brokenness coupled with resolve: [16] “I
hear, and my body trembles; my lips quiver at the sound; rottenness enters into
my bones; my legs tremble beneath me. Yet I will quietly wait for the day of
trouble to come upon people who invade us. [17] Though the fig tree should
not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the
fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd
in the stalls, [18] yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the
God of my salvation. [19] GOD, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet
like the deer's; he makes me tread on my high places.” (Habakkuk 3:16-19 ESV)
This first song is a call to be broken over the
sin in our country, community, church, in your family, and in your own life
(and to express that brokenness in prayer), but have the resolve of Micah not
to give into despair or to yield to it. Resolve
to watch and wait upon God to bring about His purposes in His time. Remember also that waiting in the Bible is not a passive thing. The waiting that the Bible envisions is an
active waiting, where one looks to God in prayer and remains faithful to what
they know in the meantime.
One final application of this passage that we need
to point out is how Jesus applied 7:5-6 in
Matthew 10:34-39. He
cited this verse to describe the kind of contention that the gospel would bring
about. Following Jesus can cause your
family and friends to turn against you, therefore a person must resolve to love
Jesus above their own family if they are going to follow Him.
II.
A People Bold, yet Overwhelmed (7:8-20): Song of Victory
In verses 8-20,
Micah voices a song of victory on
behalf of God’s people. This song has a hopeful, healthy boldness about it. Boldness is not necessarily the same thing as
being conceited or cocky. Here, God’s people agree with God about their sin and
bear responsibility for it, but also display confidence in God’s promises and character to redeem and vindicate them
before their enemies. At the same time, God’s
people are overwhelmed by the
greatness of God’s forgiveness and faithfulness in verses 18-20.
Think of this song as one with four verses (8-10, 11-13, 14-17,
18-20). In the first verse (7:8-10),
God’s people (the “me” and “I” in this section is probably “the daughter of Zion/Jerusalem” from 5:8) confess their faith in Yahweh to
their enemies. They look their enemies
in the eye and tell them not to “rejoice
over” them, because though they are currently experiencing “the indignation of Yahweh” due to their
sin, there is coming a time when Yahweh will turn the tables and shame their
enemies. God’s people here are
confessing both their sin and their faith that Yahweh will eventually plead
their cause and vindicate them. Then
their enemies, who taunted them and their God, will be put to shame.
The second verse of the song (7:11-13) celebrates
the coming expansion of God’s people
and the reality that they will be the only sheepfold that offers salvation to a
world under judgment. It will be a day
for the building of their “walls,”
because “in that day” the boundaries
of God’s people “shall be far extended”
and people from all over the world will come into the fold. However, outside the boundaries “the earth will be desolate” because of
the wickedness of its inhabitants (13).
What we see here is that God will expand His people and offer the safety
of salvation to all who will come into His fold, but that judgment awaits those
who refuse to come into His flock.
In the third verse of the song (7:14-17), Micah
offers a prayer to Yahweh that Yahweh answers.
Micah prays that Yahweh would “shepherd”
His people with His “staff” and
restore their former glory (14). Yahweh
replies that He will in fact do so. He
promises to show His people “marvelous
things” as He did when He brought them out of Egypt. This is another allusion to the New Exodus theme
in the prophets. On that day, Yahweh
will humiliate the nations who are
enemies of His people as He did the Egyptians (16-17).
Verse four of this song of victory (7:18-20) ends
the song and the book of Micah in celebration and wonder over the fact that God
will hurl their sins into the sea in order to fulfill His covenant promises to
His people. The first line here, “Who is a God like you?” is a play on
Micah’s name, which means, “Who is like
Yahweh?” Note how overwhelming it
becomes when one ponders the questions. Who
is a God like Yahweh, who pardon’s the
iniquity of His people and passes
over their transgressions? Who is a
God like Yahweh, who “does not retain His
anger forever” because “He delights
in steadfast love (HESED)?” Who is a God like Yahweh, who will “tread” the “iniquities” of His people “underfoot”
and cast “all” their “sins into the depths of the sea?” Who is a God like Yahweh, who will “show faithfulness to Jacob” and “steadfast love” (HESED) to Abraham as
He has sworn, no matter what they do in return?
The new
exodus theme is brought even more in the similarities this song has with
the Song of Moses in Exodus 15:1-18. There we see the same question asked, “Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods?”
(Ex. 15:11). There we see the vindication of God’s people
before their enemies and those enemies being put to shame celebrated. There we see how God “cast” Pharaoh’s chariots and his host “into the sea” (Ex. 15:4). These allusions are intentional, because God
is promising here to do with their sins what He did with the Egyptian
host. Just as God overcame the Egyptians
to deliver His people in the exodus, He will over come their sins to deliver them
in the New Exodus. But how will God do
so?
The gospel of Jesus Christ is the answer to how
God would overcome the sins of His people in order to bring about their
ultimate deliverance. The work of
Christ is how Yahweh has pardoned the
iniquities of His people; it is how
He has cast our sins into the depths of the sea. Psalm
130:3 says, “If you, O LORD, should
mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?”
Our sins are a much greater foe than the Egyptians ever were. But because of the sin atoning work of Jesus
Christ on the cross, those foes are nailed to His cross and I bear them no
more! On the cross, Jesus publically
shamed the forces of hell forever (Col.
2:15). Christ’s death on the cross is also how God has shown how much He delights
in HESED. HESED calls
covenant partners to be willing to die before they are disloyal to a covenant;
in God’s case, He was willing to die to keep
His covenant.
Also, the victory of Christ in the Gospel should
cause even greater boldness and humility to erupt among God’s people in the
church. We should be humbled and
overwhelmed by such love, forgiveness, and faithfulness, but we should also be
emboldened by it. The gospel is the
motivation in the great passage of Romans
8:31-39. The reason we can live with
the boldness that Paul calls us to in that passage is because of verse 32,
because God has not spared His own Son.
If He hasn’t held His own Son back, but freely given Him up for us all, what
other resource will He withhold in order to redeem His people? May we say with Micah this morning, “Who is a God like you?”
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