Micah's Message
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Introduction
Introduction
Who is Micah?
Who is Micah?
Unlike the book of Jonah, which focused on the prophets story and not his message, the book of Micah tells us little about his life and all about his message.
Micah is a prophet who lived during two of the most righteous kings of Judah. While the nothern Kingdom of Israel was constantly in rebellion, the time period that Micah is a prophet from Judah beginning his ministry in the time of Jotham and ending his ministry in the reign of Hezekiah. This makes Micah a contemporary with the prophet Isaiah, who saw a vision of the Lord after the death of Uzziah and continued to prophcy in the days of Hezekiah. While Micah’s prophecy is both shorter and more focused in its content, there certainly is a coherance between Isaiah and Micah. Specifically, both books focus on two kinds of events: a judgement and a redemption. Isaiah presents these two events in many different ways, using different language and word pictures. His audience is also pretty broad, beginning with the house of Israel and Judah and going to speak to foreign nations as well. The book includes prophecies, stories from Isaiah’s time under Hezekiah and how he encouraged the king during the seige by the Assyrians. Because of Hezekiah’s faithfulness, they would be preserved from the Assyrian army, a fact that is attested to by history and king Sennecurib’s own account. In fact, we are told in Jeremiah 26:18-19 that Hezekiah’s repentant response to Micah’s message of warning is what spared Jerusalem from the same fate that Samariah would have. Isaiah would then specifically prophecy the future defeat of Judah at the hands of Babylon when Babylon was a small and insignificant political entity. But Isaiah would continue to prophecy of a future redemption, going into detail about this servant of the Lord, the coming Christ, that would bring about this redemption and create a new heavens and a new earth.
Micah could almost be seen as a very condensed version of Isaiah’s general message and in both books we see a cycle of judgement and redemption. This cycle is not like the cycle in Judges, which repeated over and over again. This cycle is the last one. The judgement is permenant. It’s not the temporary judgement which would go away when Israel called on the Lord and the Lord raised up a judge to save them from their enemies. The true enemy has revealed itself through that cycle, the true enemy isn’t the Canaanites, the Philistines, the Assyrians or the Babylonians, its the sin that keeps them in God’s judgement rather than in his blessing. So this judgement will be the last. After the return from Babylon, the Judean people will always be under the thumb of another foreign entity, whether it is the Babylonians, the Persians, the Selucids, the Ptolmys, or the Romans, they don’t get saved and they are back in Egypt again so to speak. The judgement is permenant, but so is the redemption. Unlike in the time of the Judges, the salvation will not only last for the lifetime of the judge, it will last for all eternity and establish not only a new Kingdom for God’s people, but a new heavens and a new earth. That is the job of these prophets, not to save God’s people from coming judgement, but to give them hope for the redemptiion to come.
The Cycle
The Cycle
In the book of Micah this cycle goes around about three times, each time describing the same event in different, graphic language. As we go through in the coming weeks we will look at the way Micah describes the abandonment the people will face because of their sins. They have been cut off from God and are right back where they started in Egypt, even during the reign of Judah’s most godly kings since David. The end was certain because these men were the exception, not the rule, and even righteous Hezekiah was not sinless and not able to lead the people of Judah out of their slavery to sin.
The book is addressed to two cities, a true tale of two cities, and we see this at the end of tonight’s text that this prophecy is directly concerning the capital of the northern Kingdom of Israel and the capital of Judah. One of those cities would be gone by the time Hezekiah died and the people of Semeria would become the Semeritans by the time the Messiah came. But it didn’t matter that they had lost their ethnic identity, Jesus was still their Messiah and so the redemption talked about in this book would still apply to the Semeritans. The promise will stand despite the destruction of ethnic identity for the people from Samaria.
The Bleak Future
The Bleak Future
The causes of the coming bleak future are focused on two majour sins in the life of both Kingdoms. Interestingly, Micah addresses both Kingdoms simultaniously despite the kings of Judah in his ministry being generally righteous but the kings of the northern kingdom being evil.
The sin of Idolotry.
The sin of injustice.
These sins go hand in hand and correlate with the two great commandments. Idolotry is a sin against the command to love God, injustice is a sin against the command to love your neighbour.
Judgement through destruction of these cities.
Hope Beyond
Hope Beyond
The remnant will be saved.
God Shepherds his People
God Shepherds his People
The hope to come:
Is for the former occupants of the ruined cities.
Reaches out to the nations around them.
Is focused on coming directly from God’s hand. God will shepherd his people.
Conclusion
Conclusion
This book prepares the readers for the coming of Christ and describes his ministry as a shepherd and leader for his people, one who will call the nations to himself, one who will judge those who resist his kingdom, and one who will have victory for those who trust in him.