INTRO
Today we are starting a new series looking at the book of Micah in the Old Testament.
Micah is a collection of prophecies by a man named “Micah of Moresheth” during a really intense time for the people of Israel.
Things were falling apart for the people of God, and Micah is doing his best to help them understand why.
And this is why we chose this book to explore right now as a church. Because frankly, when you look around at our world it feels like things are falling apart for us too.
• Income inequality is reaching absurd levels.
• Poverty and mental illness and abuse are spreading.
• The pandemic has ripped a hole in the status quo.
• Our nation is divided and hostile and hate-filled.
• Social media is sucking away our souls (and our critical thinking, apparently).
• And church attendance has dropped below 50% for the first time in our country’s history.
Things are falling apart. And even though our situation is vastly different than ancient Israel, I believe God can still speak to us through the words of the prophet Micah even today.
Why do things fall apart? And where is God when they do?
PROPHETS
Quick reminder: as I’ve said many times before, biblical prophets don’t tell the future; they tell the truth.
Now sometimes that truth includes glimpses of what’s to come (or what could come), but a prophet’s job is not to be a fortune teller. Their job is to see the world the way God sees it, and to try and help the people understand.
In Micah’s case, his prophecies sometimes seem like they’re all over the place. He goes back and forth from intense condemnation on one hand to tender hope on the other… and then back again. It’s enough to give you whiplash.
The reason is because things are falling apart in Israel. The haves and the have nots. The powerful and the powerless.
Micah’s message of God’s truth lands differently depending on who he’s speaking to. It’s really good news for those who are being oppressed, but it’s really bad news for those who are doing the oppressing.
Put simply, Micah afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted.
And I think he can do the same thing today.
WORLD BEHIND THE TEXT
So before we read, let’s take a quick look at the “world behind the text” - what was going on in Micah’s day. How exactly were things falling apart?
When Micah was born, the kingdom of Israel had been split in two for almost two hundred years. Israel in the north and Judah in the south.
What was once a powerful nation under kings like David and Solomon had devolved into two bickering factions with separate kings constantly fighting with one another and getting into alliances with other nations, etc.
Injustice was rampant in both nations, poverty was spreading, and people were taking advantage of one another left and right. (Sounds kind of familiar)
In the midst of this turmoil - in the 700’s BC, a new threat arose: the kingdom of Assyria. [Image: Assyria 1] (I made a little map for you so you can see how this all went down.)
You can see Jerusalem, the capital of the southern kingdom, and Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom. And up in the north was Assyria.
Assyria was a ruthless, powerful kingdom which was out for blood and they took no prisoners. [Image: Assyria 2] In 732 they began to expand and captured the capital of Syria, Damascus.
[Image: Assyria 3] 10 years later they captured Samaria and destroyed the northern kingdom.
[Image: Assyria 4] And then, it got so bad that in 701 BC, the Assyrian king Sennacherib got his armies all the way down to the gates of Jerusalem and put the city under siege. At the end of the day, the Assyrians withdrew and didn’t capture Jerusalem… but that’s a story for another time.
It was during these 30 years of chaos and invasion and war that Micah was speaking his prophecies to the people. I tell you all of this because when you read any of the prophets it’s easy to miss the gravity of what they’re trying to say.
When Micah is out there “afflicting the comfortable,” he’s not just being a Debbie Downer. He understands the intensity of this coming invasion and wants the people to wake up because, according to Micah, this Assyrian flood is a direct result of the corruption going on in Israel.
At the same time, when he’s “comforting the afflicted,” he’s not just being optimistic to make people feel better. No. He’s planting seeds of hope that God will be faithful to his people no matter what happens and that in the end he will rescue those who are oppressed.
Micah was speaking God’s truth at a time when things were falling apart. Afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted.
So, with all of that context in mind, why don’t we dive in and take a look at some of what Micah had to say.
MICAH 2
Grab a Bible and turn to
Micah 2
Page ______
The hill country of Judea, southwest of Jerusalem, where Micah was from, was not a particularly fertile area. It was hard living being a subsistence farmer there.
Evidently it was common for wealthy landowners to sweep in and take peoples’ property whenever they fell on hard times. Here’s the message Micah had for them:
Micah 2:1-5
What sorrow awaits you who lie awake at night,
thinking up evil plans.
You rise at dawn and hurry to carry them out,
simply because you have the power to do so.
When you want a piece of land,
you find a way to seize it.
When you want someone’s house,
you take it by fraud and violence.
You cheat a man of his property,
stealing his family’s inheritance.
But this is what the LORD says:
“I will reward your evil with evil;
you won’t be able to pull your neck out of the noose.
You will no longer walk around proudly,
for it will be a terrible time.”
In that day your enemies will make fun of you
by singing this song of despair about you:
“We are finished,
completely ruined!
God has confiscated our land,
taking it from us.
He has given our fields
to those who betrayed us.”
Others will set your boundaries then,
and the LORD’s people will have no say
in how the land is divided.
Here Micah is afflicting the comfortable.
As I’ve talked about a lot, God’s desire for humanity is that we would experience his blessing - abundance, peace, fertile land, equality…
And the nation of Israel was supposed to be the prime example of what blessing could look like – a land of joy and harmony and overflowing harvests - an invitation to the rest of the world to return to an Eden kind of life.
But here we have Israelite landowners who weren’t spreading blessing; they were spreading the curse.
These landowners were taking advantage of other peoples’ suffering - amassing wealth and stealing property and kicking people off their land. They were cursing their community in their greed.
No wonder things were falling apart.
Micah’s message here is clear: you are going to experience the consequences of this. You’re going to reap what you sow.
“Someday God’s going to let a bigger fish come along, and when that happens, they’re going to be the ones amassing wealth and stealing your property and kicking you off the land.”
Verse 5: “Others will set your boundaries…”
And by the way, when Assyria invaded, this is exactly what happened. These wealthy landowners were the first ones carted off into exile.
Micah goes on. He actually quotes these landowners.
Micah 2:6-11
“Don’t say such things,”
the people respond.
“Don’t prophesy like that.
Such disasters will never come our way!”
Should you talk that way, O family of Israel?
Will the LORD’s Spirit have patience with such behavior?
If you would do what is right,
you would find my words comforting.
Yet to this very hour
my people rise against me like an enemy!
You steal the shirts right off the backs
of those who trusted you,
making them as ragged as men
returning from battle.
You have evicted women from their pleasant homes
and forever stripped their children of all that God would give them.
Up! Begone!
This is no longer your land and home,
for you have filled it with sin
and ruined it completely.
Suppose a prophet full of lies would say to you,
“I’ll preach to you the joys of wine and alcohol!”
That’s just the kind of prophet you would like!
I find it really interesting that these landowners don’t just reject prophecy outright. They like prophets… just the prophets who tell them what they want to hear.
“Such disasters will never come our way… Let me preach to you about the joys of wine and alcohol! Let’s party. I’m the party prophet! God wants you to enjoy yourself. He wants you to be blessed, right? So be blessed. Treat yourself.”
Put simply, these landowners had listened to these false prophets and bought the lies of incomplete truth.
Yes, God wants humanity to be blessed. But that blessing can never come about by spreading the curse. God’s blessing doesn’t grow out of injustice.
No. The complete truth is that if these wealthy landowners want to experience God’s blessing, they’ve got to use their resources to ensure the blessing of others. Remember the passage we looked at a few weeks ago?
Isaiah 58:9-10
Remove the heavy yoke of oppression… Feed the hungry, and help those in trouble. Then your light will shine out from the darkness…
This is the complete truth these landowners were ignoring. God is working to bless humanity, but you’re not going to experience that blessing if you’re fighting against his work. Verse 8. If you’re “rising against him like an enemy.”
They’re happy to enjoy blessing for themselves, but they’re grabbing it at the expense of destitute fathers, homeless mothers, children with nothing to their name.
Look at the verdict in verse 10. “Up! Begone! This is no longer your land and home, for you have filled it with sin and ruined it completely.” You’ve cursed the land that was meant to be blessed.
In other words: the Assyrians are coming like a flood to purge this land, and you have forfeited your chance to experience the blessing that you stole from others.
Micah says in verse 7, “If you would do what is right, you would find my words comforting…” But right now these are words of condemnation.
Yikes. That’s a little intense. Like I said, Micah afflicts the comfortable.
Now, we’re about to turn a corner, because Micah shifts his focus from the oppressor to the oppressed. All of this is really the foundation for what I want us to focus on: hope in a tumultuous time.
But I don’t want to move on too quickly. Because, even though most of us are not billionaire landowners and robber barons, we do sometimes fall into the trap of believing incomplete truths.
We do sometimes look for prophets who are going to tell us what we want to hear.
For example, we’ve believed truth about some aspect of justice or morality (“this is right!”), but we’ve used that truth as a license to hate other people who disagree. We claim the blessing of justice yet spread the curse of hate. It’s an incomplete truth.
Or we’ve been saved from our sin by Jesus, but we’ve judged and excluded others from the church because of their sin. Sanctification without grace. It’s incomplete.
Or we believe the truth that God loves us, but then we live however we feel like living. Our morality is loose and ill-defined. Grace without sanctification. It’s also incomplete.
Or, like these landowners, we’ve enjoyed the blessings of wealth and home and health and family, but we have ignored the suffering of our neighbors. Blessing for us but not for our world. It’s not the whole truth.
All that to say, I hope we don’t move too quickly beyond this invitation to introspection.
You don’t have to be a wealthy landowner for Micah 2 to afflict your comfort a little bit. But you also don’t have to be a destitute farmer for these words to bring comfort… Let me show you what I mean.
COMFORT
In verse 12, Micah completely changes his tone and addresses those who have been oppressed and downtrodden and overwhelmed. Let’s read.
Micah 2:12-13
“Someday, O Israel, I will gather you;
I will gather the remnant who are left.
I will bring you together again like sheep in a pen,
like a flock in its pasture.
Yes, your land will again
be filled with noisy crowds!
Your leader will break out
and lead you out of exile,
out through the gates of the enemy cities,
back to your own land.
Your king will lead you;
the LORD himself will guide you.”
In a time when things are falling apart, I find this imagery really compelling.
It’s as if the sheep of Israel have been scattered but God, the Good Shepherd, is faithful to gather them back together into safety.
Micah is tapping into imagery which you can find all over the Bible.
Psalm 78:52
[God] led his own people like a flock of sheep,
guiding them safely through the wilderness.
Isaiah 40:11
He will feed his flock like a shepherd.
He will carry the lambs in his arms.
Psalm 23:1
The LORD is my shepherd;
I have all that I need.
The Good Shepherd will care for his flock.
Now, again, when you hear imagery like this in the prophets, it’s easy to think of it as some kind of schmaltzy and sentimental wishful thinking. “Oh how nice. Sheep.”
But when you look at this prophecy in light of the passage before, it takes on a whole new significance.
These sheep of Israel are the very people who were being crushed and abused and scattered by the unjust landowners.
This “remnant who are left” in verse 12 are the men who were cheated out of their property in verse 2. They’re the “women evicted from their pleasant homes” in verse 9. They’re the children stripped of their inheritance.
These are the ones who will be led by God himself back into their own land, to rebuild their “pleasant homes” and experience their true inheritance - the blessing - he always promised them.
The words “noisy crowds” in verse 12 are meant to make us imagine the sound of hundreds of happy sheep in a pasture eating grass and chatting. Little ones calling out for their moms and moms responding…
The flock is safe. They are whole. They are blessed. And the Good Shepherd watches over them all. Meanwhile, the predatory, the unjust, the corrupt have lost everything and they’re not in the picture anymore.
Micah afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted. The complete truth of Micah 2 is that God’s blessing will win the day.
It’s just up to us whether or not that’s good news.
JESUS
Now, Micah lived 700 years before Jesus. We, as followers of Christ, know how this is all coming to pass.
We know that Jesus established a kingdom for the lost and last and least - where the downtrodden have special honor.
We know that he brought healing and love to those rejected by the world.
And we know that through his death and resurrection, we can be freed from the curse and invited into a life of abundance. Into New Creation, now and forever. God’s blessing will win the day.
Micah’s words have proved true. There’s a reason it’s his book in our Bible and not the words of the party prophets.
LISTENING
So here’s what I want us to do. I know many of you are feeling the weight of the world’s brokenness right now. Things are falling apart, right? And in many cases it’s because of the actions of others.
It might not be wealthy landowners stealing your farm, but it could be
• an employer that won’t give you a living wage
• it could be an abusive spouse keeping you under their thumb
• it could be a bully at school
• it could be the hurtful words of someone in authority
Whatever the case, if you identify at all with the downtrodden in Micah 2, I want to read these last two verses over you and let the Holy Spirit speak truth to you.
The truth that God has not forgotten you. The truth that God is working to bring his blessing into your life. And the truth that Jesus, the Good Shepherd, has you in his arms.
Micah 2:12-13
“Someday, O Israel, I will gather you;
I will gather the remnant who are left.
I will bring you together again like sheep in a pen,
like a flock in its pasture.
Yes, your land will again
be filled with noisy crowds!
Your leader will break out
and lead you out of exile,
out through the gates of the enemy cities,
back to your own land.
Your king will lead you;
the LORD himself will guide you.”
Your story is not over yet. God’s blessing will win the day.