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Hey, well, good morning, and again, to all the mothers out there, happy Mother's Day.
Thank you so much for joining with us today in worship.
If you've got your Bibles, open them up to Micah 4, as we're going to continue in our
study in the book of Micah.
So it's been a good study so far.
What we're seeing is the continual flow of Scripture that comes forth from the message
that God's revealing, as He's calling His people, reminding His people for His desperate love
for them, and their return love back to Him, and then also God's call for justice, for us
to love our neighbor.
And what we saw last week is what this means, to love our neighbor.
It means to love our friend, love our enemy, to love the widow, to love the orphan.
That's this calling on our lives, and that when God's people break from that standard from
Him, that there's consequences to that.
And so that's what we're seeing.
And so last week, as we finished up the end of chapter 3, where God's people are as a nation,
if it just ended there, it's a gloomy message.
But what we're going to see begin to roll forth in chapter 4 is that not only have we seen
the punishment of God, not only see the wrath of God, but what's going to come out of that
is a message of hope that we're going to look at.
And it's going to be a part of that as we look at the entire narrative of Scripture that
we begin to see and apply for our lives.
That this isn't just a message for them in their day, but it's what we can draw from as
you and I face our own set of circumstances, as you and I face our own sense of reality
of where we are, and the hope that comes to us from Christ.
So let's start reading this morning in Micah chapter 4, starting in verse 1.
God's Word says this,
It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall
be established at the highest of the mountains.
And it shall be lifted up above the hills, and peoples shall flow to it.
And many nations shall come and say,
Come let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may teach us his ways, and that we may walk in his paths.
For out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
And so what I want us to see are three different aspects in this that cause us to look forward
regardless of the circumstances that we have and the certainty that we have in our relationship
with God.
And so the first thing that we're going to do is we're going to talk about what it means
looking to hope, to look forward to hope.
Micah begins in this by establishing that in these last days, let's understand the when of
what he is talking about.
Micah isn't just speaking to the end of the captivity for Israel.
He's not just speaking to an earthly season that will await them, but Micah is speaking
instead to a point in the future to an eternal reign of God.
And what he's reminding them of what awaits them as captivity is there, that there should
be within them, that what captivity should create in them is a longing and a hope for the future.
Not just a future for when they'll be set free from their earthly captivity of the Assyrians,
but when they'll be set free from the captivity that is held of us within this world.
And it's not just them, it's not just the Israelites that need to long for this day, but it's you
and I.
And that what is set in us by God is an eternal longing that will call us to long for him.
Paul talks about this in Romans, starting in verse 19.
Paul writes, and he says,
For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected
it in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and
obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
For we know, right, the church knows that the whole creation has been groaning together in
the pains of childbirth until now.
And not only the creation, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the spirit grow
inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoptions as sons, the redemption of our bodies.
And so what we begin to look at is a difference in mindset from what we're used to in our earthly
days to instead this eternal longing that we have for Christ to return and to establish
what is there for us.
And so how I think about this in my life is in our world, are we simply trying to shuffle
the circumstances or are we looking forward to bringing redemption?
Now, one of the things that happens oftentimes in our house, let me see if I can explain it
this way, is that Aaron and I, we move into a home and we take our furniture that we bring
into the home and we set up what we think is going to be the best home possible for us.
And then after a couple of months or maybe even a couple of years, we look around of what
we've established and we decide, you know what, this isn't the most efficient.
It's not what we need.
And so what we do is we don't throw out the furniture, right?
We reshuffle, we rearrange the furniture that's in the room to now best suit for us.
Well, then what do you think happens a couple of years later, right?
We shuffle it back over again.
And so we're not getting anything new.
We're just shuffling around what's there.
And that's oftentimes what we do in our life is not living in the hope, not looking for the
hope that we have, we instead look at the circumstances around us and we shuffle them around in our
life.
But what we find is that later on, we still see that we're not satisfied because there's
something created in us that what we're looking for is not to shuffle our circumstances, but
we need to look forward to the bringing redemption that comes with Christ and Christ alone.
So that in this world, you and I right now as believers in Christ, as followers of Christ,
we're not satisfied with the way things are because simply put, we're never going to be satisfied
in the way things are because the way things are in this world are broken.
We're not meant to find our satisfaction in them.
And so in us should be a groaning for the way that we long things to be, the way that will
come when Christ comes and establishes.
And so we look at this world and we realize the effect of the brokenness of this world.
So here's what I'm not saying.
I'm not saying that we don't need to look at this world and figure out how to make it a
better place.
We need to do that as we talked about last week.
I'm not saying that in this world, we don't look around and not try to figure out how we
can help people.
We should absolutely do in that.
And this is not a cop out for you and I as Christians, not to look into a way to make
this world a better place and to work for the betterment of mankind.
But here's what I am saying.
Because of sin, there is a brokenness that is here and that will always exist in this current
world that we know.
There will always be unrest.
There will always be strife.
Greed, destruction, and war.
And what God does is God takes these things.
God takes this pain.
God takes this suffering.
And he uses that in a wonderful way to draw us to him.
Look back at verse 23 of Romans 8.
So when we see the destruction of this world, when we see the destruction of this world, when we see the pain of this world, when we see the pain of this world, when we see the struggles and the suffering of this world,
when we see the suffering of this world, what it creates in us is a longing, what it creates in us is a suffering that comes as we long for Christ to return.
There's a phrase that we use, and I'll be honest with you, there's a phrase that's used by many different churches as they talk about the next season of life, or maybe even the next season of their church.
Or I know that I've used this before in my life is as I move out of a difficult season or as I'm in a difficult season and I look forward to the next season of life.
And we use the phrase, the best is yet to come.
But the reality is, unless the best is Jesus, then our target is too low.
Because if the best is yet to come, and that's what we're talking about for Christ, and the season of his return, the eternal season that will never end,
then the target that we set and the standard that we set is too low.
Because next season doesn't bring the best if the best isn't Jesus.
And so as Micah speaks to God's people then, as he speaks to the people, as captivity faces them, as the wrath of God faces them,
it's the same exact message that he shares with us today.
We're not going to be satisfied.
We're going to be held captive.
And what we're looking for is not a different season of life.
What we desperately long for is not to be moved and not to reshuffle the furniture.
But what we're looking for is the return of Christ, where all the things that we know that were old are gone away.
And what comes from that is the new.
Micah's looking forward to a better tomorrow, where God's people are no longer held in captivity.
But that happens through the saving work of Christ and God's plan for all of history.
Micah wants to set this mindset in the people who stand in the path of God's wrath,
that there is still hope.
And hope is going to come with Christ.
So what is hope?
What does that mean?
Again, it's a phrase that we use.
And when we think of hope, oftentimes we refer to hope as wishful thinking.
And so we use phrases like, you know, I hope it doesn't rain tomorrow.
I hope I get the promotion at work.
I hope I get the feeling better as I get past this cold that I'm going through.
But when we talk about hope in terms of what we're looking at with Scripture,
hope is connected to not what we know, but what we wish to be true.
And biblical hope is much different than that.
Biblical hope is a confident expectation of what we know because of who we know in Christ Jesus.
And so it's what we see, it's what's described in Romans 8, 24 through 25.
For in this hope, we are saved.
Now hope that is seen is not hope.
For who hopes for what he sees?
But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
And so this is what comes from in our life,
that we have such a deep-rooted confidence in who Christ is and what Christ has done
and what Christ brings, that that establishes hope.
So it's not just a simple wish of what we would like to take place,
but it is instead a rooted confidence in who God is because of we know who he is.
The writer of Hebrews talks about this,
of the connection between hope and faith in Hebrews chapter 11.
And he gives many examples of this, but one of the examples he gives is with Noah.
In Hebrews 11, verse 7, he says this,
By faith, Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen.
What's he talking about?
So God comes to Noah and tells Noah there's going to be a flood.
Now there's never been a flood that's ever happened
because the oceans stop where the oceans stop.
But yet God said that there's going to be a flood that's going to happen.
It's going to happen because rain is going to fall,
and rain has never fallen before.
And so what does Noah do?
Does Noah question God?
No, he doesn't question God.
What does he do?
He has faith in God.
He puts his hope in God,
and it becomes action.
Because it says,
And so that's what we see.
And Micah continues to build on that.
An eternal hope.
Because Micah's not just talking about the hope for the Israelites.
Because in verse 2, he talks about all of the peoples will gather.
And all of the nations will be there at the mountain of the Lord.
Micah's speaking beyond the circumstances.
And what that teaches me today is this.
Is that just as my hope in God is bigger than the circumstances of the captivity that God's people faced.
That my hope in God is bigger than the circumstances and the situations and the fears and the doubts and the struggles that I face today.
And so in that, we look forward.
We focus our eyes.
And we claim the hope.
Not just wishing that tomorrow will be different.
But the hope of what we know will come with Christ.
Let's keep reading verses 3 and 4.
It says,
And so what we see is not only looking.
For hope.
But we can see here, finding peace.
So there's a result of the hope that Micah wants to talk about.
And that result is peace.
And it's peace like you and I cannot even possibly imagine.
It is peace like no other.
And so what happens is Micah says that the weapons that we carry, the sword and the spear.
That this peace is so permanent that they'll be turned into farming tools.
That nations will stop fighting and not just a moment in temporary peace.
But that they'll never fight again.
And this happens not because man has figured it out.
Not because man has built a peace treaty.
But because God has put it in place.
You see, what you and I know in our world is temporary peace.
We know temporary peace between nations.
We know temporary peace between people.
We even know temporary peace within us as individuals as we battle through the individual battles that we have.
But Micah is not talking about a temporary peace.
But he's talking about an eternal peace and the reign of God that will never end.
The word peace is used 429 times in scripture.
And here's what we can learn about peace as a snapshot from God's word.
Number one is this, is that peace is a gift from God.
That peace that we get is given from him and him alone.
And it's only given the second thing to God's people.
Isaiah 48, 22 tells us that the wicked will not gain the peace of God.
We do know from scripture as well that peace is counterfeit.
That we can be given an illusion of what peace would be.
But it's a tool used by Satan.
It's counterfeit.
We know that peace is connected to rest.
An eternal rest.
And that's why it's proclaimed at the birth of Christ, peace on earth.
The rest that will come from him and from him alone.
It says that we're not to simply wait for peace.
But that you and I are called as believers to seek peace between each other.
That we do wait for it eternally.
But that we seek it in the immediate between us.
We find out through God's word that peace should reign in our hearts.
Meaning that we as believers, that that's found when we follow God.
And we trust him with all that we are and all that we have.
But we do know this, that a reminder from Micah and the reminder from so many, that peace will
not fully come until the eternal rule and reign of Jesus comes.
And that's part of the strife that we go through.
It's part of the longing of what's there.
And so it's what we seek.
It's what we look for and that we hope to find.
Let's continue on in verse 5.
It says,
For all the peoples walk each in the name of its God.
But we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever.
And what we see and begin to understand in here is that as we look for the hope, as we seek
to live in the peace, as we seek to hope for the peace that will come with Christ, what that
looks like in our life is living in reliance, to live in reliance of God.
So how?
How can you and I find this hope?
How can you and I find this peace and make this our reality right now in all the battles
and all the strife that we go to?
When Micah says this, he says, all of us, what we're doing is we're walking in the name
of something.
And to walk in the name, that phrase that he uses means to adhere to religious requirements.
And so what he's saying is, he says this, you're either walking in the requirements of your
little G false God, or you're walking in the requirements and the strength of the holy God.
And so what that builds from us on, if we're walking in the strength of God, then what or
who do we rely on?
Church, think about that.
When it comes to your life, when it comes to your welfare, when it comes to your care,
who are you truly relying on?
I know one of the things that the coronavirus is teaching me right now as we're walking through
this season is as we walk through the season right now, we have to make decisions not based
off of experience because we've never experienced anything like this, not based off of training
because we've been never been taught and how to walk through situations like this, not on
anything else.
But if the one thing in my life right now that God's teaching me more than anything else is
that we have to rely on him and him alone.
I want to share this story real briefly with you.
But we've learned this as a church and God's faithfulness and how God's worked through you.
When it came as the opportunity for us to apply for the PPP, for the payroll and put out by
the government, we were given that multiple times and asked to that from our bank that we
could apply for that.
And so we prayed about that.
And here's where we came to the decision on that is this, that we didn't want to depend or rely on a
government to pull us through what we knew that God wanted to pull us through.
And what God has done, God has done through each and every single one of you that through this
season of struggle, that through this season of many churches and many businesses not making it,
that because of God's faithfulness and because of God working through you and because us as a body of
believers relying on him and him alone and our dependence on him, God has brought us through that
because we have not relied on ourselves, because we have not relied on anyone or anything else,
because we have relied on God.
Church, who are you relying on for your day-to-day, for your eternity,
for your salvation, for every part in every aspect of your life?
Who are you relying on?
Let's close out this chapter in verses six through eight.
It says,
In that day, declares the Lord,
I will assemble the lame and gather those who have been driven away and those whom I have afflicted.
And the lame I will make the remnant and those who were cast off a strong nation.
And the Lord will reign over them in Mount Zion from this time forth and forevermore.
And you, O tower of the flock, hill of the daughter of Zion,
to you shall it come, the former dominion shall come, kingship for the daughter of Jerusalem.
And what I want us to close on this morning is becoming the remnant.
You know, remnant is a difficult word for me to embrace,
because oftentimes remnant is connected with the negative, as it's the leftover.
I think of remnant with, like, you go to grab something that you desperately want or that you desperately need,
and what you find in there is not enough, but what you find in there is just the leftover,
what someone else has already taken, and all you get is what's left behind.
But God, in his redemptive nature, redeems that word for us.
And what we see when we think of the word remnant in Scripture is not something negative, but it's a positive.
And it refers to those who not have been left behind, but it refers to those whom God has saved.
In Isaiah chapter 10, the remnant are those who are no longer under the Assyrians because God saved them.
In Genesis chapter 6, Noah and his family are described as the remnant after the flood because God's saved them.
In Genesis chapter 19, Lot and his daughters are described as the remnant because God saved them from Sodom and Gomorrah.
And so what we see is a beautiful picture of what it means to be the remnant in Scripture, that it is those who God has saved.
But it is the minority.
But it is the few.
It is not the masses.
Because those of us who found our salvation in God are the remnant.
Let's look at Jesus' words in Matthew chapter 7.
It says this,
Those who find it are the remnant.
Why is it so hard?
Why is the gospel of Jesus so hard?
Because I believe it's counterintuitive to everything and our sin that we long for.
You see, the gospel calls you to look at yourself and see that in and of yourself that you're not good enough.
But the gospel also calls you to look at yourself and to look at your bad and see that you're bad, that you're filth, that you're sin, yours and mine, cannot overcome the good work of Jesus.
You see, that's what makes it so hard for people to hear the message, for people to respond to the message.
Because it places all the beauty on him, because the remnant is found in Christ and in Christ alone.
So church, for Israel, as they look to their future, their future was not found in what would happen through the powers of military.
The future would not be found in what would happen in their economy.
The future was not going to be found in what happened to them and to them alone.
But it was found in the work of Christ.
So I want to ask you as you sit there in your living room this morning, when you think of your future, when you think of your hope, when you think of your peace, when you think of what you're relying on,
is it found in the situations in where you find yourself today?
Is it found in your strength or your strength alone?
Because if it is, then you're part of the masses.
Is it found in Christ?
And in that, you're the remnant.
Let's pray.
Lord, as we go back into worship, Lord, I pray for the people who hear this message today.
Lord, I pray that they would find their hope in you, in you alone, their life in you, in you alone.
Lord, thank you for the remnant.
Thank you for what you call us from and what you save us for.
And it's in Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
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