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The Harvester Podcast is brought to you by the Florida School of Preaching. Listen weekly to take a dive into biblical topics and thoughtful studies on things that matter to our eternal souls.
Welcome to this episode of the Harvester podcast.
I'm Forest Antemesaris today joined by my co-host.
All right.
And today we've worked our way through.
We're looking at the book of Micah today.
one of the Minor Prophet books that you might think, well, that's not too minor.
I there's seven chapters here, so there's a good bit of material to cover.
It's an interesting book.
I would encourage readers of the Old Testament to spend some time in the Minor Prophet,
especially this prophecy of Micah, because they all have great value.
They all have a lot to share with us.
It may seem that the prophecies are redundant.
Hey, judgment is coming.
You better repent.
Then there's this glimmer of hope.
But they do remind us of
the multifaceted personality of God.
He is merciful and just and kind and those things, but he is also vengeful against sin.
ah Micah is unique in that he is one of the prophets that prophesies both to Judah and to
Israel.
Though it seems that there may be in part a little bit more to one nation or the other,
but he still addresses like both of them as he wants to start out.
He ah begins
letting us know who he is.
The word of the Lord came to Micah, the more shy in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and
Hezekiah, kings of Judah, which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem.
And so here you've got both nations represented.
When Micah is preaching, this is in a time of like moral, spiritual decay.
Things are not what they are supposed to be, obviously.
And because of that, he's gonna bring down this uh message from God that there's gonna be
judgment coming.
ah Wealth and prosperity were there for certain individuals and not for others.
So there was, you you have this, ah only political stuff going on because of the kings,
you also have economic injustice and things happening.
Now, this is not one of the books I would say a person should turn to to kind of, ah
be a treatise on economics in our current culture, but it is to say that it is a book to
which we can appeal to demonstrate the hearts of people.
How those can run afoul and we can begin to do things that we find ourselves in enmity
with God.
So also you have uh political, or excuse me, religious corruption.
You've got priests and prophets doing all kinds of things and uh
We look at the world around us today and see people living in all sorts of ways and think,
well, how could they, why would they, and all these sorts of things.
And here's an example.
It can happen.
Yeah, it can happen.
I think the big thing that you saw during my kids day is a sense of false hope, right?
Because you know, these false teachers and preachers and you have it.
Oh, we got our money.
We got our whatever like we're good to go.
And I think I feel like we see that in America a lot too, where it's like, we think nobody
can touch us.
Well, the Lord can.
And if we don't get right with him, there's going to be there could be some issues, you
know.
Absolutely, also kind of brings to the point, the song that we sing, how it begins, that
my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus and his righteousness.
For us, like, what do we build our hope on?
Is it like, we have better politicians that can make better policy, we have more money, or
we have the greatest military might?
Man, none of that stuff matters.
There have been tremendous military leaders and powers and world, know, empires before.
and in the same cycle, they've risen and they have fallen.
So that doesn't protect, know, borders and walls and military, that stuff doesn't do it.
So Micah kind of encapsulates the message for us in any culture at any time that the true
hope that any person or any people can have has to absolutely be in God.
And if it's not, the only thing that we can truly fear is gonna be God, because the other
stuff is only gonna last a short period of time.
um There is a, what I'll do is I also want to introduce what I think is like a kind of a
key highlight passage in here in Micah chapter six, which is one that a lot of people will
recognize once we get to it.
Micah chapter six, beginning around verse six, going through verse eight there.
It's one of the passages in the book of Micah that most people might be familiar with once
they hear it, when we go through it.
So I'd like to just kind of overview some of the chapters here as Micah begins.
He comes right out, he says in verse number two of chapter one, hear all ye people,
hearken, earth, and all therein is, and let the Lord God be witness against you, the Lord
from his holy temple.
I think it was in our last episode where we were talking about Jonah, how Jonah also
identified God in his holy place, his holy temple, and it shows that this God who was
looking down on you is in fact holy.
So he's not going to be partial, it's not that he's been bought off like one of these
corrupt prophets or priests.
His judgment is going to be holy and righteous.
So whatever they're going to hear from God, they can know it's going to be coming from
this place of righteousness and true uh holy judgment.
Yeah, there's anybody don't want to as a witness against you.
Oh, it's the Lord.
You know what mean?
Like he sees everything.
He knows everything and say, Hey, I'm bringing my evidence into court.
Like y'all are about to hear what's up.
That's kind of a common theme you'll find like these almost like legal terms sometimes
with the minor prophets and also you think about when you just talk about Jesus or the
Lord as a witness, I think about Jesus as a witness.
And we think about that in a positive way.
uh However, what about in the negative for those that would be unrighteous, think about
God being a witness.
In a court case, there are witnesses who may see things and hear things but...
their perception may be jaded in some way, shape, form.
I said, well, man, I saw a guy, I think he was about six feet tall, think he had on a hat,
but when the Lord is bringing his witness against you, he doesn't forget.
No, no, And you know, few have tried Jonah, Job, to try to ask questions, but the idea is
he is the one that sees, knows everything, even beyond what the.
worldly witness could see, he knows every detail from every perspective at a vantage
point.
And so when he's talking to Israel and Judah, he's identifying the things they've done and
they are in fact true.
He says in verse number uh five, he says, for the transgressions of Jacob is all this.
And for the sins of the house of Israel, what is the transgression of Jacob?
Is it not Samaria?
What are the high places of Judah?
Are they not Jerusalem?
And here are these places that are supposed to be
like sacred places, these are places that are to be important for Jehovah and they're
using those places.
It's not like they went way in the far corners or somewhere.
Even though the world is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, these specific places they
are using to bring about their wickedness and worldliness and unrighteousness is, you
would think that a person might say, well, come on, let's go over here or go over there.
But for them it's like, no, we're disobey God right here where we are.
Yeah.
So they were guilty of idolatry, says in verse number seven, and all the graven images
thereof shall be beaten to pieces and all the hires thereof shall be burned with the fire
and all the idols thereof will I lay desolate for she gathered it all for hire of a harlot
and they shall return to the hire of a harlot.
The language is strong.
Some of these minor prophets may use extremely strong language, some language that we
might think might not be fitting for
certain audiences to call somebody a harlot.
That's a little bit strong.
But to me it's like, I see the strong language only representative of the abhorrent
behavior.
I forgot to have to tell this prophet to use these words, imagine what they were like.
What does God see when he sees us?
You we might think, well, it's not that bad.
Come on, that's a little bit tough.
That's a little bit, you know, harsh.
But what about the holy God of heaven who's done nothing but good to
And there's people I mean like when people know better, I mean that's where you really see
God be the most harsh You know what mean?
Jesus like Jesus was the most harsh with the Pharisees and he said stuff to Pharisees He
didn't say to the text selectors and the prostitutes and stuff, right?
Because they actually knew better and same thing with Micah like y'all know better You're
supposed to be the teachers of the law You're supposed to be my holy nation and y'all
y'all can't even treat each other, right?
Yeah
That was one of the things, sometimes we'll look at the behavior of Jesus especially and
people will think, oh yeah, we gotta be rough and harsh and that sort of thing.
Excuse me, to the masses, or we gotta be gentle to everybody.
And there were points in time where he was both and it was the people that knew better.
know, chapter 23 of Matthew, know, woe, one to you, scribes and Pharisees, over and over
and over again.
So not only was there idolatry, chapter two begins with this social injustice and the way
that he pronounces it, the people were wicked.
He says, woe to them that devise iniquity.
So woe to these people who sit there and think about and plan out wickedness.
And not only they devise it, they work evil upon their beds.
When the morning is light, they practice it because it's in their power, in the power of
their hands.
So here are these people who sit up all night just thinking about wicked things to do.
Just because they can.
Just because you can do it.
Yeah.
To me that is
Like you're bored, so what am I gonna mess up today?
Yeah, just think about what are you doing your free time?
Like at the end of the day, you know, when my day is over and I'm sitting in bed before I
fall asleep, most of the time I like crossword puzzles.
So I do a crossword puzzle.
It helps my mind relax.
You what?
I my tapioca pudding.
Yeah, love crossword puzzles, man.
So I do a crossword puzzle and kind of puts my mind at ease and my wife and I will talk
about some stuff.
We'll pray and then, you know, that'll be it for the night.
But here are these people who
You know, they're sitting there at night thinking, you know what, I bet I could do this to
that person.
I bet I could do this to that person.
So all night, they're sitting up there thinking about evil in their bed, and then as soon
as the morning, it says, when the morning is light, so at dawn, when they can get up, they
get up and practice it.
Why?
Just because it's in your power to do it.
Not because, you know, I need to do this for my own safety, or I think I need to do this
for my own benefit, but no, just because I can, it says, what are they doing?
They covered fields, they take them by violence and houses and they take them away.
So they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage.
And so they're evil, taking away people's things, which was against the law of Moses to
take and sell property from a particular tribe.
And it says also, therefore, verse three, thus says the Lord, behold, against this family
do I devise an evil.
from which ye shall not remove your necks, neither shall ye go haughtily, for this time is
evil." And I like how God kind of turns it right back on them.
You sit there and you devise evil?
Okay, I'm gonna devise evil against you.
And who can, that's why I love, know, when you look at a passage in Romans 12, vengeance
is mine, says the Lord.
Jesus says the same thing in the Sermon on the Mount, that we shouldn't be seeking
vengeance but peace and that sort of thing.
God can do that which we cannot do.
And so he says, I'll take vengeance.
You guys do the love, the peace, the forgiving.
I'll take vengeance because nobody can pay back like God.
Right, for sure.
And I think too, like this is a reminder, because with Micah, you're starting to get into,
for the Southern Kingdom, you're starting to get into, it's almost like the lot has been
cast, right?
Like once you get into Micah, the first 40 chapters of Isaiah, for sure Jeremiah is like,
hey, y'all are going into captivity.
yeah.
And you could repent and get right with me, but y'all are still going into captivity.
yeah.
There comes a point in our lives too where the temporal consequences are the temporal
consequences, right?
Like you could get arrested for some crime and go to jail and repent and get baptized.
You still got to serve your sentence.
Now you can be saved and you can have fellowship and communion with God, but you know, the
sheriffs are going to keep you in there.
That's it.
The Assyrian kingdom is coming.
They're coming.
There's nothing they can do about the judgment that's going to be coming to them.
Babylon, they're going to come and get Judah.
It's going to happen.
But the only thing they can do, like you said, is turn back to God.
I once gave an analogy, and I don't know if this is the greatest analogy, but I was
talking to a particular guy.
And he was saying, man, you know, I wanna get right with God, but man, you know, I got all
these problems first.
And he was warning, like, I repent on Monday and Tuesday, man, I want things to be right.
And I'm like, look, think about it like this.
If you are spending, spending, spending, on a credit card, and you stop, you still gotta
pay.
There's no way they're just gonna say, oh, you know what, bless your heart, you stopped,
we're gonna erase the debt.
You gotta pay it off.
But eventually, that credit card is going to be paid off.
You will have learned some discipline, you will have learned some.
positive spending habits and those sorts of things, but there's still a sense in which
there's debt to pay sometimes for our consequence, for our actions, as consequences.
And so like you were just noting, you may be able to have fellowship with God, but there's
still gonna be a carrying away.
You still have to pay for the things that you've done as a people.
And the reaping never happens when you're sowing.
Exactly.
There's always a delay.
know what I mean?
It's like, okay, for good and bad.
For good stuff too.
You could minister for people for 30 years maybe before you see some of these things grow.
But so it's like, okay, y'all, and that's the thing too really, especially young people,
like, hey, you think, oh, you're young, I wanna play around, I wanna mess around, I wanna,
and then I'll come back to God later.
You might sow some stuff while you're young.
that you'll still be reaping at 50 even if you come back to the Lord.
You know what mean?
And it's like you could avoid that.
And it's not always easy stuff.
You might be thinking in the moment, well, whatever comes back, it's okay.
But think about Cain.
said, this is too great for me.
Imagine some consequences you think like, for what?
When I was 18, 19, 20, all I got was a week's worth of fun.
Now I have 30 years worth of suffering.
That's just how it goes.
A handful of seed can make a whole harvest of trouble if we're not careful.
So they were...
They were guilty, they were guilty of idolatry, they were misusing the people, the leaders
were corrupt.
In Micah chapter three, he begins by saying the leaders were abusing the people, he says,
and I said, here I pray you, heads of Jacob, and ye princes of the house of Israel, is it
not for you to know judgment, who hate the good and love the evil, who pluck off the skin
from their, or from them,
and their flesh from off their bones, who also eat the flesh of my people and flay their
skin from off of them and they break their bones and chop them in pieces as for the pot
and as for flesh within the cauldron.
Here is this, as it's described, just this unnecessary cruelty.
And this isn't coming from the outside.
This is not the nations.
This is not the Canaanites and the Syrians, the Philistines.
These are...
God's leaders supposed to be guiding the people in ways of righteousness and they are
taking their position and they are completely taking advantage of the people completely
just grinding the people seem like into powder
Yeah, and that's a great reminder about leadership that really Jesus teaches us more than
anything.
You're there to serve, not to lord it over.
You know, it's not like, what can I get out of this?
If you ask yourself that question, you're not qualified to be a leader.
oh
Exactly and poor leadership has a consequence in many ways in chapter five or excuse me
verse five rather He says thus says the Lord concerning the prophets that make the people
err That bite with their teeth and cry and peace and he that put it not in their mouths
They even prepare war against him here these people who are causing The the the prophets
are causing rather the people to turn away from God
Yeah.
Poor leadership has a lot of great consequences.
Sometimes we might think whether we're thinking socially, politically, but especially
religiously.
People in certain positions can really, really cause a great deal of harm on the Lord's
people, the church.
So the leadership is corrupt.
uh In verses nine and following, it's still in chapter three, he says, hear this, pray
you, you heads of the house of Jacob, the princes of the house of Israel.
that abhor judgment and pervert all equity.
So there is like no goodness at all in these people.
Can you imagine being a group of people and the ones that you would turn to to say, look,
this is going wrong in my life, I need you to help figure this out, I need you to be the
ones to judge between me and this person, and then they are so corrupt, they completely
take advantage of the situation.
So it's almost better to not even seek them out.
To just, I guess, go at it on your own.
ah
Just rotten.
yet completely rotten.
says, they build up Zion with blood and Jerusalem with iniquity.
The heads thereof judge for reward and the priests thereof teach for hire and the prophets
thereof divine for money.
And there's just this crazy amount of greed.
We'll do it, but you got to agree to our problem first.
And so their judgment has zero value.
Right.
You know, it's all going to be who can give them the biggest reward.
And so all the way around you have the head, so these are your uh leaders.
You have the priests who are supposed to be standing between you and God.
You have the prophets who are supposed to be speaking on behalf of God.
All of these people are only doing what they're doing for money.
This is complete and utter corruption.
Yeah, and I think that goes back like chapter one verse nine says her wounds are incurable
and like you get to the point where it's like dude if you even like try to fix this like
you and that's where you get to the point it's almost like this inverse point where the
exile almost becomes an act of mercy where it's like that's the only way for y'all to get
right and to get purified is there's got to be like a huge shakeup
Absolutely.
I think we talked about that in an earlier season.
I can't remember if was season two or three or what have you.
ah It was one of the seasons we had George on and we were talking about the purpose of
suffering and those sorts of things.
It absolutely has value and so, absolutely.
And you think of these carings away, oh, these were so terrible.
perhaps God saw, and not perhaps, well of course God knows all.
But this was the only way to get them to wake up.
And to get rid of, mean, think about the wandering in the wilderness.
There had to be a whole generation that is gone because their hearts were just completely
corrupt.
ah And so that reminds me of what you read in Isaiah, which maybe we'll cover in a future
season, about they're sick from the head to the toe.
You have this wound that's incurable.
You think about if you had this festering wound that you just couldn't cure.
and you know eventually it's just gonna completely overtake you.
This group of people, have a wound that's incured.
There's nothing that they can do rather that's gonna fix the problem.
But of course we know that God will bring remedy, but as it relates to them being able to
do something, there was nothing they're gonna be able to do.
The leadership was corrupt.
Everything they were doing was completely just wicked.
In chapter four, you have almost direct
parallel to what you'll read as it begins, chapter four, verses one and two, and Isaiah
two, chapter two, verses two through four.
And intermixed in the book of Micah are these kind of glimpses of hope.
And so he wants the people to know that there is hope.
in chapter two, I might have passed by these, but in chapter two, there's going to be,
you know, a glimpse, it's kind of like, how would you say, like a candy cane where you
kind of have the white in the red.
And Micah, sometimes there's like this hope kind of intermingled with the judgment that's
coming in chapter four, he says, but in the last days it shall come to pass that the
mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established on the top of the mountains and
shall be exalted above the hills and the people shall flow into it.
And many nations shall come and say, come, let's go to the house, or to the mountain
rather, of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob.
And he will teach us of his ways and we will walk in his paths for the law shall go forth
of Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." And so this is directly what you can
read in Isaiah chapter two, verses two through four.
This is reminding us that there's gonna be a day that hope will be found among God's
people.
And so even with this great judgment, God is letting us know that he is not going to be
out for complete and utter destruction.
He's going to be faithful to them, but more importantly, he's faithful to himself and that
he made a promise.
And so he's going to keep his word, which is...
which is just an awesome demonstration of God's long suffering with mankind.
And how horrible things have to be for God to do stuff like this.
He's like, listen, I'm gonna bring forth the one that's gonna bless the entire world.
I'm going to bless the world, I'm going to save the world, I'm gonna do these great
things.
But for God to look at the world in certain points in time, Genesis 6 and throughout these
minor prophets, and the major prophets talking about these judgments coming,
various other places.
How evil, how evil can we get?
It's almost like a contest.
Let's see how before God, yeah, pours out his wrath.
We look at uh occasions like this and it kind of reminds me of sometimes how we can be, or
how children may have been at various times.
Dad or mom says, stop running.
we'll say, and they will keep running until they get up.
Right.
And now we're trouble.
When in reality, all we had to do was sit down in the first place and we would not have
had the trouble.
Right.
Yeah, just obey.
just obey him, yeah, so there's wickedness amongst them.
The people, have empty, empty and vain religion, just jumping over real quick to chapter
six.
They have this sort of attitude with them.
He says in chapter six, we mentioned this a little bit earlier, chapter six, verses six
and following.
Here's this attitude from the people.
say, wherewith shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before the high God?
Should I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams or 10,000s of rivers of oil?
Should I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my
soul?
And you think about this statement, I read it in a way, I did ask some inflection in
various places.
Yeah, like a preacher
Yeah, right, yeah, the tone was a little smug in the way I presented it because it's
almost as though that's how the people are presenting this.
And it's as though they're saying God is never satisfied.
He's never gonna be happy, so what use is there to please him?
And the way that they ask the question, it starts in verse six, how should I come before
the Lord?
Should I bow myself before the high God?
And though he is a high God, how are they using that terminology?
You know, it's almost like they're
looking down on God because he's holy ah and trying to justify their own behavior.
He's so high and he's
There's nothing I could ever do.
uh Offerings and calves, well you already knew what he asked you.
It's in the of Moses, it's already there.
And then there's this hyperbolic sort of a response in verse number seven.
Is you gonna be pleased with a thousand rams and 10,000 rivers of oil and then give my
firstborn?
You know, there was a sense in which the firstborn was to be set aside for God.
Absolutely, he demanded that.
But that was gonna be done by way of the Levites being set aside, not an actual physical,
literal sacrifice.
God was absolutely gonna take the firstborn, but that was done by way of the Levites being
set apart for his service.
So they knew that already.
But to ask, like, am I gonna give my firstborn child for God?
And it's like, you know that was already done, but in what way are they asking?
Yeah, and the crazy thing too is the false gods who aren't even exalted would require that
of you and there's fake gods, you know, I mean so like so like it's like, okay the true
and living God, what does he really want?
You know
Absolutely, what is he really looking for from you?
And has God ever asked us anything that is unreasonable?
And I love what John says in 1 John is like, look, God's commands are not grievous.
I love that phrasing in King James.
It's nothing that vexes your soul to that degree.
God has never said, I want you to climb to Mount Everest, to the top of Mount Everest.
I want you to swim down to the Mariana Trench.
I want you to run across the Sahara Desert.
Nothing that's like crazy.
I want you to a perfect, flawless, sinful life for the first 35 years.
It's nothing like that.
It's just like, just want you to love me.
I know you're gonna mess up.
That's why I sent Jesus.
And when you mess up, just repent.
And when you do, I'm gonna love you and forgive you.
That's what God has always said.
sure and the crazy thing is it's actually oftentimes I think in our culture a lot of times
false religion is viewed as like loosening where God isn't loosed but a lot of false
religions add stuff like the Pharisees that was their problem right they like Jesus said
you added all these commandments you're not even willing to lift with your pinky and you
go put them on other people and there's a lot of false religions out there like hey if you
really want to get right you got to jump through these hopes you got to do these things
you got to and I can name names or some
even like denominations out there that are popular that you think, well, they loose where
God hasn't loosed maybe, but actually what they're saying is like, y'all can't be saved.
Like you gotta get through all the right stuff and then maybe, only, you know, and it's
like, okay, Jesus said, come to me, I'll give you rest.
Now you have to take his yoke upon you, right?
There is something to do, but he says it's light and easy for your sake, you know, for my
sake.
I think that's a good reminder.
Yeah, either way, to take away or to add, a person demonstrates, don't respect God as he's
presented himself.
I don't like it, so I need to change it in one way or another.
Make it looser, make it tighter.
And God has the perfect plan because he's the perfect being.
So he's like, I don't need you to add or take away.
I just need you to do what I've asked you to do.
And they have completely kind of run amok here.
And so he says in verse eight,
in response to kind of like the smug question in verses six and seven, he has showed you,
man, what is good.
And I love how he begins, because he doesn't just give the answer, but it's like one of
those uh rhetorical kind of statements that Jesus would almost ask sometimes, have you not
read?
You know, you already know this, he's saying to them, he showed you what is good.
What hath the, or what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, to love mercy, and
to walk humbly with thy God?
And so,
This fixes, those three fix everything that they have been doing.
They were not just toward their fellow man.
They've been stealing their property and taking their money for false prophecy.
ah They have been uh cruel.
And so if you do justly, it takes care of all that.
If you love mercy, it takes care of all that.
And then, walk humbly with God.
That fixes their false worship.
Because any false worship and all false worship is a product of arrogance.
because it says, I know better than God.
No matter what.
I mean, it's something as simple as, well, I want add instruments of music, mechanical
instruments of music in my worship.
That's arrogance, because he says, well, I know what sounds better than what God says.
And so all of what they're doing is a product as it relates to their worship, and really
all of it is a product of self, and so they're being arrogant.
Yeah.
And I think too, it's it's simultaneously easier and harder than what they think.
Right?
It's easier because you don't have to do these grandiose things, but it's harder because
you can't just go through the motions.
You have to really mean it.
Right?
To really give God your heart, to really walk humbly with him, to do justice, to love
mercy.
You can't fake that.
You can't just, there's no checklist, right?
There's no checklist.
Like, Oh, I did all the things.
Therefore I love mercy.
Not necessarily like that's internal.
And it kind of reminds me of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, where he gets
to the heart of the matter.
The issues are not, I'm not jumping to the right hoops, the issues are your heart is
messed up.
And I think that's what God revealed to Micah, but this wasn't news for them.
He has shown you, man, what is good.
Like, you've already had this.
funny you should say that because right now I'm preaching through the Sermon on the Mount
and each one is the heart of the matter.
And we didn't even talk about that before.
No, So the case has been thoroughly made that they are guilty.
So there's really no way to get out of what they got.
They can't say, well, we're not culpable.
No, yes you are because God has laid out the case plainly.
Not only so, but they know that judgment is coming.
the destruction of the city in chapter 1.
They will be completely plowed over.
Chapter 3 verse number 12 says, shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and
Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the
forest.
And so there's going to be complete destruction.
There's going to be a national collapse.
There's going be captivity.
So they know what's coming to them.
But again, as I mentioned, there's hope interspersed.
throughout this text.
ah I mentioned earlier in chapter two, verses 12 and 13, where it says, I will surely
assemble, O Jacob, all of thee.
I will surely gather the remnant of Israel.
I will put them together as a sheep of Basrah, as a flock in the midst of their foal.
They shall make great noise by the reason of the multitude of men.
The breaker has come up before them.
They have broken up, they have passed through the gate, and they are gone out of it.
The king shall pass before them, and the Lord
on the head of them.
There is, even in the destruction, God is saying, I'm gonna be able to gather his people.
But here's another thing.
You have this hope, chapter four, as we read a little bit earlier, God is going to restore
his people.
They will be back in Jerusalem.
The truth is gonna be pouring out from there.
Not only so, but I jumped over it as we were kinda going through, but chapter five, verses
one and two, there's a promise of one that's going to come.
the one that's going to bring restoration.
He says in chapter 5 verses 1 and 2, and now gather thyself in troops, O daughter of
troops.
He hath laid siege against us.
They shall smite the judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek.
But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, or though thou be little among thousands of Judah, yet out
of thee shall he come forth unto me, that is to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth
have been from old.
from everlasting, so those words have absolute direct connection to the Lord.
And so as they're looking forward to what's coming from them, they can know that there's
gonna be one who is gonna be everlasting, he's gonna be ruler in Israel again.
So that means if there's gonna be a ruler in Israel, and Israel will be, there'll be
people to be ruled.
me when you come from is going to be a best friend and there's going to be a there's a lot
of hope in that
And which is almost, I don't know if you've ever like, you you've got kids, sometimes you
fuss with the kids for this reason, that reason.
Usually in that fuss, the parental fuss, you don't give hope immediately.
You may say, hey, you didn't do your homework, you you acted out when we were outside, and
you you said a bad word, you know, whatever.
You know, for that, your own punishment, and you're this, you're that, you you give the
consequences.
At least I don't recall times where I'm like, hey, you're be on punishment and this and
the other, and then, and then, one day we're gonna be at the park again, flying kites
again.
But with them, God has let them know, yes, listen, yes, I'm gonna judge you, you're not
gonna get away with sin.
However, my love for you is so great that even in this punishment that you're gonna
receive, you can look forward to a day that things will be different.
You can look forward to a day that the hope that you've always been reminded of from the
days of Abraham is still coming.
There's still going be compassion and restoration and God will keep his promises.
gonna be faithful.
So even in judgment, God is faithful, which is so hopeful to know that, I'm in trouble, he
still loves me.
I'm gonna get it, but he's still gonna bless me.
And even in captivity, God blessed and kept his people.
It wasn't as though God said, y'all go over there into captivity and I'm gonna stay here.
Even when they were scattered around the world, we can read in various places how God was
still with them, even in captivity.
Yeah.
And so that's one of the great things about as we were talking about in a previous episode
with Jonah when he references the God of heaven that made the land and sea.
This is a God of everything.
He's not the God of only Jerusalem or only Samaria or only this place or that place.
He's the God of the universe.
So no matter where you get carried away, He's there.
No what torment you endure, He's there.
there, For sure.
um When you close out, when the book of Micah kind of comes to a close, these last, like
in chapter seven, there's this great reminder of God.
Like beginning at verse number seven, he says, therefore I will look into the Lord, I will
wait for the Lord, for the God rather, of my salvation, my God will hear me.
I love that because man, sometimes for some people who go through hardships, prayer may
seem like just an academic exercise, but it's God really hearing me.
Though my circumstances don't change immediately, like you mentioned, like sometimes the
hope is, you know, down the line.
Like they hadn't even had the captivity yet.
So the hope is on the other side of that.
You gotta go through this stuff, But God is still saying he's gonna bless them.
ah
He's going to do all the things he said he's going to do in terms of keeping his promise,
being faithful to them, protecting them, and those sorts of things.
But with the judgment that's coming and the hardship that they're going to endure, he
closes out like this in chapter seven, starting in verse 18.
Who is a God like under thee that pardons iniquity and passes by the transgression of the
remnant of his heritage?
He retains not his anger forever because he delights in mercy.
So even right there, when I read it, I read it slow because in my mind, that's how it's
being said and presented.
Like, yes, he's like, the judgment is gonna be real.
It's not the guy's gonna say, you guys have done all this stuff.
Now, I'm gonna just pat you on the bottom.
Now, don't do it anymore.
No, his wrath is gonna pour out on them.
They're gonna endure.
A terrible time.
I mean, when Assyria comes through, they're not going to just come and put handcuffs on
people and carry you away.
It's going to be brutal.
And lots of people are going to die horribly.
But God is saying, listen, even in that, he still loves his people.
Who could compare to Jehovah?
And I love that question.
Who is a God like unto you?
And then he tells why.
He doesn't, basically he doesn't stay angry forever unjustly.
He's going to pardon iniquity, pass by transgression of the remnant of his heritage.
He doesn't stay angry forever.
Why doesn't he stay angry forever?
Because his true joy is in extending mercy.
uh That's what God really loves to do.
He doesn't delight in the death of the wicked, as Ezekiel was saying.
God's not over there high-fiving the angels, like, look at this, guys, I'm gonna get him.
It would be more the opposite.
Watch this, I'm gonna be merciful to this group of people.
Watch this, I'm gonna be gracious toward these people who don't deserve it, by the way.
Verse 19, he says, I will turn again.
He will have compassion on us.
He will subdue our iniquities and thou will cast all their sins into the depths of the
sea.
That is a verse, man, that is just, it is soaked with richness.
to think how deep the sea is.
mentioned earlier the Mariana Trench, God doesn't ask us to swim down there.
And I think, hasn't there been some vessel that got down to the bottom of there or
something like
Kirk Cameron or somebody try to get one down there James Cameron that's yeah, yeah Kirk
not to be confused.
Yeah
But anyway one of those Cameron guys
then he made Avatar 2 so he must have saw something down there
He saw the blue people.
But the idea is that as far down as that is, God said, I'm throwing whatever it seems you
committed, when there's contrition, I'm gonna just forget it.
It's gonna be virtually unreachable.
God says, I'm gonna throw it down there.
Yeah, I purchased from her one time title.
Where are your sins?
And just like when you get into Christ, what are some images that God uses about where
your sins are right like here?
Down to the depths of the sea the Psalms talk about remove it as far as the East is from
the West, know Talks about you know throwing it behind his back talks about trampling them
under foot and the minor prophets other places so like this idea of like and That's crazy.
Like there's no middle ground like either your sins are like on you.
Oh,
or in the bottom of the ocean, right?
Like there's no like, I just want them like 30,000 feet away.
Like I want to like over there, like, you know, yeah, exactly.
It's like, no, they're either on you or they're gone.
Right.
There's no, there's no third one.
Yeah, though your sins be ascarad as be one.
So it's either scarlet or snow.
There's nothing in between.
And then verse 20, man, the way this book ends is just so beautiful, man.
Those first verses that we just read, 18 and 19, but then he says in verse 20, thou will
perform the truth to Jacob and the mercy to Abraham, which thou has sworn unto our fathers
from the days of old.
So they're both looking forward and backwards.
They're saying, I know
that God will be faithful to me in the future.
How do you know that?
I can look back to Abraham and Jacob, to the promise that he made to them.
He made a promise to Abraham.
Abraham had issues with believing.
The kid, you know, this age of mine, know, how is this gonna happen?
God was faithful to him.
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and so on through the tribes.
And so these people who were the direct descendants of those people.
They could look back to the faithfulness that God had toward them and then turn and look
forward to the faithfulness that was going to come for them.
And that's just like one of the most, kind of like their, what do you call it?
Like sandwiched in with grace and goodness.
They can look behind and in front.
There's grace on both sides.
There's love on both sides.
And the expectation has always been the exact same.
God is not expecting anything different from his people from Abraham to today.
Love him and trust him.
The just shall live by their faith.
That's what God wants.
He wants us to put our complete and utter faith and trust in him and he will always do
that which is good and right for us.
um Encouragement, you know, as we look at this book of Micah, I guess for me, a takeaway
is like,
No matter how dark life may appear to be, no matter how bleak things may seem, God is
always faithful, no matter what.
know, man, I've gone through some very, very difficult times and mine may not be as bad as
yours and yours may not be as bad as the next person.
For me, those are darkest days I've ever experienced.
But even in those moments, God was faithful.
Now you and I talked earlier today off camera or off microphone.
And I was telling you about some of my former lifestyle.
And even in those moments, though I may have had moments of happiness because I was
blinded by sin, God was still faithful.
And he was still loving me and he was still merciful.
Why didn't God come back then?
Man, he's long suffering and he was giving me opportunities.
And today we look at the world around us, say, man, look at the world, it's so terrible
and all that kind of stuff.
Sometimes, and I've probably said this before,
that some days man, for us, feel like Lord Jesus come quickly.
I'm gonna you this stuff.
But there's probably another Steven out there that needs to repent.
oh If there's a person out there who is on the brink wondering what can I do?
What should I do?
Man, turn to the Lord because he's merciful and he's faithful.
He's kind.
He's gracious.
He wants to forgive.
God wants to be merciful towards you.
ah He loves mercy.
And so he wants to be forgiving to all that are in the world.
And so if we would just do our part,
We can be fully faithful to him.
He will be absolutely as he always has been and always will be faithful to You have any
closing thoughts?
I get out of that.
We will just let Micah's chapter 7 verses 18 through 20 give us kind of a closing thought
of the mercy, the goodness and gracious nature of our Father in heaven.
Yeah, so that's I forgot I was hosting this one man.
I awesome sauce.
This is good stuff.
But uh book of Micah as we are majoring in the minors minor profits That is on the
harvester podcast.
We hope to catch you in the next episode.