Micah 1; God’s Judgment Is Very Real and Awful.Wednesday November 20, 2024 The prophet: Micaiah is a sentence name, meaning Who is like Yah? He artfully inserts his name in the people’s hymn of praise at the end of the book:
Mic 7:18 Who is a God like You, who pardons iniquity And passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of His possession? He does not retain His anger forever, Because He delights in unchanging love.
740-690 BC. Long time for a little book. Contemporary with Isaiah.
He does not recall his calling to ministry. He “saw” the message from God.
He is a true prophet. Giving God’s message, a flashing preacher, not telling them what they want to hear (love and not judgment, forgiveness and not holiness), not afraid and silent.
There are several oracles which have been compiled into three addresses. We’ll look at the first one today.
Judgment Oracle: Address, Accusation, Announcement of Judgment.
Mic 1:2-7 Hear, O peoples, all of you; Listen, O earth and all it contains, And let the Lord God be a witness against you, The Lord from His holy temple.
God calls more than Israel. His witness is against you.
He comes from His holy temple. While He remains there people think they there is no judgment. But when He moves, judgment is swift.
3 For behold, the Lord is coming forth from His place. He will come down and tread on the high places of the earth.
High places of the earth refers to the strategic high ground.
4 The mountains will melt under Him And the valleys will be split, Like wax before the fire, Like water poured down a steep place.
The imagery here is amazing. Mountains represent kingdoms and kings and power on earth. God melts them. He melts human powers and arsenals like wax.
The people are familiar with water flowing down from the mountains into the valley and filling the streams and rivers.
But what Micah sees is not Yahweh, but the tool that God uses - the powerful Assyrian army.
Now for the reason:
5 All this is for the rebellion of Jacob And for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the rebellion of Jacob? Is it not Samaria? What is the high place of Judah? Is it not Jerusalem?
Jacob and Israel refer to the whole nation. The nation split in civil war under the horrible rulership of Solomon’s son Rehoboam.
Yet, inserted in this oracle against Samaria, Micah adds Judah, whose demise he had also seen.
6 For I will make Samaria a heap of ruins in the open country, Planting places for a vineyard. I will pour her stones down into the valley And will lay bare her foundations.
Samaria was made the capital of the Northern Kingdom by Omri and Ahab. It was on a hill overlooking the western plains. Ahab adorned it into a beautiful city.
Like the water rolling down the mountains, so the stones that thousands of laborers and masons formed into the wall and towers, citadels and palaces, all broken apart and tumbling down the hill.
Adultery: Attributing love and security to someone or something and not God.
Samaria adorned, beautiful city on a hill. Built by Omri and Ahab, especially adorned by Ahab who married Jezebel (daughter of Ethbaal, king of Siddonians) and “did more to provoke the Lord than all kings before him.” (1Ki 16:31-33).
Instead of the city being a light to the world, it plunged the nation into moral darkness and licentiousness. When the Christian church conforms to certain sins, it does the same (adultery). Samaria will “melt” off the hill.
7 All of her idols will be smashed, All of her earnings will be burned with fire And all of her images I will make desolate, For she collected them from a harlot's earnings, And to the earnings of a harlot they will return.
Finally, of that whole city of Samaria, all that was destroyed and all the people murdered or taken away into captivity (men, women, children, animals), what is particularly mentioned as being destroyed are the idols.
Notice the three-fold repetition: smashed, burned, made desolate. Not a remnant of the false religion will be left. Samaria lost her heart for God and she will lose her cult.
Earnings: temple prostitutes. Cultic prostitutes in the temples were a source of revenue. They promised fertility to the womb and the crops. Sacred prostitution spread like cancer by Canaanites whom Israel refused to remove as they were warned.
God warns us to remove areas of sin from our lives. The teaching on the love of God only fails to make any believer Christlike. Love and holiness, a tense mixture in all of the prophets, as it is in Micah, must be understood through study and application.
The Canaanites were not removed and then, years later, a king in Israel like Ahab who openly worships Baal and floods his country with this worship of demons. Ahab opened Baal worship even more and it flooded Samaria (1Ki 16:31-33).
Story of Baal vs. Yahweh at Mt. Carmel (1Ki 18:18-22). Ahaziah, son is law of Ahab introduced it to Jerusalem (2Ki 8:25 cf. 2Ki 23:7; Eze 8:1-14).
In Eze 8 the prophet sees the abominations being committed by the priests in the temple, in secret (hole in the wall). Secret sins that we think no one sees. Earlier kings allowed the high places - as leaders they lacked the courage to clean their house. Church refuses to exercise church discipline. Church condones sexual immorality.
2Th 1:7-10, It is coming on the nations as the destruction of Israel is a warning to the world. (Vesuvius pics: do they look like they saw it coming?)
Modern man’s security in money and technology etc.
Why has this fallen on Samaria and why has God sent to her prophets to warn her, that perhaps within her, some may repent? Covenant.
Covenant: Covenant is more than a contract. It is linked to lovingkindness. God chose Israel to be a light to the nations. People are born into it. Covenant is sovereignty and love. [click in] Spotlight on their idols and the earnings that the idols brought them.
Judgment: Wrath on Canaanite was a warning to Israel; now wrath on Israel is a warning to the world. God uses Assyria as an instrument.
Ironic judgment: Israel’s idols were melted down and used for other nefarious sins (cult prostitutes) in other lands. And new idols, just as worthless. Theme: lex talionis (“eye for an eye”) is sounded and it will be heard many times more in this book.
In the prediction of the destruction of such a great city, only the fate of the idols are mentioned. Idols are attractive to the flesh with no moral rectitude. Money, sex, substance abuse.
Judgment is coming. As God seems to delay, it is only because He desires many to repent.
2Pe 3
Remnant: A believing remnant can have great impact on church by not allowing (in the church) the open immorality, even discussion of. But in Israel these puny rivals were allowed to continue and the whole nation were crushed with them.
Application: God’s judgment on sin is so great that you should overflow with thanksgiving that you are saved by faith in the finished work of Christ on the cross.
If the judgment of God on sinful nations is so severe, we should be renouncing all sin.
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