Judgment, Micah 1:1-7

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September 14, 2008

First Church of the Brethren

H. Kevin Derr

Micah 1:1-7

“Judgment”

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.

² Hear, you peoples, all of you,
listen, earth and all who live in it,
that the Sovereign LORD may witness against you,
the Lord from his holy temple.

³ Look! The LORD is coming from his dwelling place;
he comes down and treads on the heights of the earth.

⁴ The mountains melt beneath him
and the valleys split apart,
like wax before the fire,
like water rushing down a slope.

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?

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.

⁷ 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.”

Often we find the notion of prophets to be primarily centered around the activity of telling people of what will happen in the future. And while there is clearly a quality like that to the work of Micah, you will notice that there is a much stronger and more profound nature of dealing issues of sin and morality. Even here when there are promises of the future, they are based in the righteousness of God and the sin of humanity.

Prayer:

I. Here is the first verse concerning the prophet Micah. The text reads, 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.

a. Micah prophetic career run between 735 and 700 B.C. during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah who were the kings of Judah.

i. Ahaz is the low point in the kings of Judah

ii. Hezekiah is the high point of these three

b. What do we know about Micah?

i. He was from the town Moresheth Gath, located about 25 miles southwest of Jerusalem. This is a small town, rural.

ii. The prophet’s name, in its elongated form “Micaiahu”, is commonly translated “Who is like Yahweh?”

II. This passage is part of a larger portion of text that is often referred to as the first cycle, it runs from 1:2-2:11. You can envision this as two movements

a. The first movement is 1:2-2:11 and is comprised of several sections

i. The Divine Warrior comes to judge Samaria and Israel 1:1-7

ii. Micah laments the coming invasion of Judah 1:8-16

iii. Woe to the wealthy and oppressive land-grabbers 2:1-5

iv. The wealthy wicked and their false prophets versus Micah and his God 2:6-11

b. The restoration of a remnant 2:12-13

c. We see a very familiar cycle

i. God’s people sin

ii. God sends a warning

iii. God’s people continue to sin

iv. God brings judgment

v. God then saves a portion of the people

vi. This is the story of the tower of Babble, Noah, and every prophet that comes after we saw it play out time and time again in Judges.

d. This cycle like the second (3:1) and third (6:1) cycles begins with the word, “Hear”. It means more than just listen and receive information, this is a call to understand and to respond to in it in an appropriate fashion.

i. Listen to these words, ² Hear, you peoples, all of you,
listen, earth and all who live in it,
that the Sovereign LORD may witness against you,
the Lord from his holy temple.

1. It is not directed just to Israel or Judah, but it is a call for all the nations, all the peoples of the earth to hear the Lord.

a. The reason is not to receive good news, or a blessing, but rather to enter into a set of proceedings with the Lord.

i. This is no provincial deity, some local God, but the universal Lord that all people and powers to whom all peoples must give an account.

ii. This accounting does not begin with some pagan people, but rather with those who have received the word of the Lord and are more accountable than any others.

iii. There is a great caution for us in this realization, for we have had even more revelation that the people that Micah spoke the word of the Lord to.

b. The Sovereign Lord wishes to witness against you, this is the reason that the people are being called to hear.

c. He calls all people to hear, but only speaks against Israel and Judah, but if God will judge his people this way, it suggest that other peoples are standing in judgment as well.

d. God bring judgment from holy temple, which is an image of that which is set apart, holy, righteous. In fact God’s kingship is tied up in the notion of being holy, set apart.

i. You can see this in the description of the temple, the holy of holy is set apart

ii. Being set apart is the root of the idea of holiness in Hebrew.

2. Micah continues and as in the first portion of this cycle we are called to hear, now we are called to see. “Look” is the command. Micah writes, ³ Look! The LORD is coming from his dwelling place; he comes down and treads on the heights of the earth.

a. The call is clear, “Look, and see that the Lord is coming from his dwelling place…’

i. It may be better translated, “Look! The Lord is about to come from his dwelling place…”

1. He comes from his dwelling place, his holy temple to the earth, to intervene in the history of humanity

2. We serve a God who is both transcendent, universal, and beyond but who is also close, involved and present.

ii. He comes down to tread on the high places of the earth.

1. High places can be specifically the pagan shrines we see in the land of Israel and Judah at the time, which were typically placed on high hill tops.

a. This is a vision of conquest and punishment, destruction, and judgment.

2. Or it is a reference to God striding about he earth no the high mountains.

a. This is simply a vision of God’s power and his ability to stride the earth and hold it all in his sway.

b. Either is a good way to understand this vision, though , I think the first is more in keeping with the theme of the text.

3. Now we see the effects of God’s intervention in the affairs of humanity, what happens when God treads on the high places. Micah writes, ⁴ The mountains melt beneath him
and the valleys split apart,
like wax before the fire,
like water rushing down a slope.

a. This is an image of power, mountains melt like wax before a fire, valleys split apart like water rushing down a slope

b. These things that don’t move of their own accord for us, flee before the presence of the Living God. In a real way this is a call for us to humble ourselves and repent before the Living God.

i. Because you do not want the Living God to come and judge you, to tread on your high places and bring you low.

ii. The wise person will repent! While we in Christ may not need worry about our salvation, we will give an account to the Living God, it is not a bad idea for us to get an idea of who will stand before.

e. Why is the Sovereign Lord coming down from his Holy Temple? The next verse begins to unpack this for us:

i. 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?

ii. There are three specific references in this passage:

1. One to Jacob the whole of the covenant community, all of the those who had or are descended from those who came through the Red Sea, the Wilderness and established the people of God in the promised land.

a. This is the first Jacob, the whole of the nation and the reason the Lord is coming is because of sin, rebellion, the breaking of the covenant by the people of God.

b. But then Micah gets specific: What is Jacob’s transgression, it is Samaria.

i. It could be an indication of the split between Judah and Israel and fracturing the body of God’s people, and that lead to an increase in sin in the northern kingdom of Israel.

ii. It could be that the leadership in the capital was corrupt and lead the people into corruption

iii. Yet, these two are very closely tied.

c. Judah does not escape the pending judgment, is not Judah’s high place Jerusalem?

i. Kings who did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord had installed pagan Idols in the Temple, and Jerusalem became a high place.

ii. It could also be that Jerusalem itself became an object of veneration, an Idol itself

iii. There will come a time when people assume that Jerusalem will never fall to an enemy because God would not allow his temple to be destroyed, and so they wrongly assumed the importance of Jerusalem and the temple.

III. The Lord’s punishment for Israel, the Northern Kingdom, begins to be seen in the lifetime of Micah, in 722-721 when the Assyrians capture Samaria, it’s conclusion is seen in the time of John Hyrcanus in 108-107. Micah announces the Lord’s punishment for the sins of Jacob.

a. 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.

i. Making Samaria a heap of rubble, a place for growing plants, not for growing families

ii. It will be laid bear, to the very foundations

b. Listen as the punishment is detailed:

i. ⁷ 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.”

ii. Idols broken to pieces, temple gifts burned with fire, all of her idolatrous images destroyed.

1. Why, because they were not holy, they were profane

2. These were temple gifts to an idol, a prostitute being paid for acts of religious intimacy that should have been reserved for God alone.

a. But, rather than honoring their covenant with God they sought other gods, like a man married to a pure wife seeking intimacy with a prostitute, paying for that intimate act that was rightly reserved for his wife.

b. So, the people of god went to prostitutes and with their fees they built temples to these profane, substitute gods, the gods of their unfaithfulness.

c. So, these gifts, these glorious things given to prostitute will now be used to pay prostitutes.

i. One of the chief sources of wages for t he soldiers in ancient armies was the loot that they could take form captured cities

ii. Where to soldiers spend their loot, prostitutes.

iii. This is where your hard work, your efforts is going to go, to see others with prostitutes.

IV. This is a serious call for us to avoid idols in our own living. While we may not construct them in the same way, but we none the less worship many false gods in our contemporary culture.

a. And at points we too set up false gods in the church:

i. What translation of the bible we read, what kind of songs we sing, which evangelist we will listen to, which books we will read….

ii. Sometimes it is good discernment, at times it is person preference, and at times it becomes nothing but the idolizing of a specific person, type of music, specific translation, or some other cause

b. Micah’s warning should ring in our hears, Hear, Look, the Sovereign Lord is coming