Princeton Presbyterian Church

Princeton Presbyterian Church (EPC) Sermon # 1651

August 25, 2024

Micah 1.1-7; 6.6-8; 7.18-20                 Click here for audio worship

Dr. Ed Pettus

(This is an extended outline, not a verbatim transcript.)

 

“The Grace Filled Character of God”

 

• The Prophetic Judgment

 

Micah 1.1-7, ¹The word of the Lord that came to Micah of Moresheth in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem. ²Hear, you peoples, all of you; pay attention, O earth, and all that is in it, and let the Lord God be a witness against you, the Lord from his holy temple. ³For behold, the Lord is coming out of his place, and will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth. ⁴And the mountains will melt under him, and the valleys will split open, like wax before the fire, like waters poured down a steep place. ⁵All this is for the transgression of Jacob and for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the transgression of Jacob? Is it not Samaria? And what is the high place of Judah? Is it not Jerusalem? ⁶Therefore I will make Samaria a heap in the open country, a place for planting vineyards, and I will pour down her stones into the valley and uncover her foundations. ⁷All her carved images shall be beaten to pieces, all her wages shall be burned with fire, and all her idols I will lay waste, for from the fee of a prostitute she gathered them, and to the fee of a prostitute they shall return.

 

 

The indictments from the Lord in the mouth of Micah are harsh and, let’s say, use colorful language. Like the other minor prophets, Micah first comes to Jacob and Israel with words of judgment. They have sinned against God and for their sin God will come down and execute devastation upon the land. Mountains will melt, valleys split open, idols beaten into pieces, and earnings burned with fire.

Verse 2 opens the trial with the summons to hear and pay attention. Hear, shema, the call to hear and obey. Famously, this is the term of Deuteronomy 6.4, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” The repetition of hearing and paying attention is a powerful emphasis that this is a serious situation. There is a strong voice calling to really hear what is being brought before the court. Like a father calling the attention of a son or one spouse to the other (I won’t say which way!). The sense is, “you really better be listening.”

Then the “uh-oh” moment comes with the first witness is called, the only witness. “Let the Lord God be a witness against you.” I believe the case is closed at this point. It’s over. Israel has no defense. You might as well plead guilty and hear the sentence. God is coming from His holy temple to bear witness and to judge. This reminds me of a scene from the Andy Griffith Show when a woman gets a ticket for speeding by Sheriff Taylor and wants to appeal her case to the Justice of the Peace. Andy says okay and in the office he picks the desk sign that says Sheriff and turns it around to the side that says Justice of the Peace. God comes as witness and is able to turn that identification around to judge. Israel is “as guilty as sin”

 

One thing we know is that Jesus is coming to judge all things when He comes again. But I want to connect Micah with something about Jesus that has a touch of judgment with it, and that is that Jesus came already, as the this text will tell us, not to bring peace, but a sword. In other words, Jesus brings a message and indictments and judgments in His Word that have consequences like that of judgment. Because some will believe in Jesus and others will reject Jesus, there will be consequences or judgments upon them in this world as well. Hear this alarming text from Matthew 10.34-39, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. ³⁵For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. ³⁶And a person's enemies will be those of his own household. ³⁷Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. ³⁸And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. ³⁹Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

The problem in Micah’s day was that the people of God began worshiping other gods, little “g”. They loved other things more than God. They set themselves against God and refused to submit to God’s Law. They failed to remember God’s deliverance out of Egypt. Jesus calls us to submit to God’s commandments by taking up the cross and following Him. We are required to give up our lives for the sake of Christ. The Bible teaches us what that means, things like: to offer ourselves as a living sacrifice, to abide in Jesus, to humbly walk with God. In Matthew 10 it is about taking up the cross to follow, losing our lives in order that we might be saved. As in Matthew, so it is with Micah, life is in God and Christ and the Holy Spirit and setting our hearts on anything or anyone else is idolatry. Idolatry leads to death, spiritual death. It leads to judgment. But, thank God, there is hope.

 

 

• What is Good and Required

 

Micah 6.6-8, “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? ⁷Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” ⁸He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

 

So then, what might we do to please the Lord? Take up our cross and follow. Submit our life to Christ. Micah helps us understand how to live out those requirements. What is good and required is to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. It is not about offering rams or oil or our firstborn; it is not about that kind of offering. It is not about what we do in the sense of outward acts of sacrifice but about an inward disposition of devotion to God, about attitudes of life that will bring glory to God. With such a disposition, we will desire to give to God, to offer our lives and a portion of our resources in tithes and offerings, but most of all – to give our whole being, spirit, soul, mind, body, all to God.

Micah offers three attributes: to act justly, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God. This might be one of the greatest expressions of true discipleship.

To act justly is related to righteousness and involves bringing people into a right relationship with God. This is a just thing, a right thing to do with people, to lead them to God that they too may practice justice, kindness, and walk with God. Justice is doing the right thing all the time. Justice is doing God’s work God’s way. Righteousness is treating others with respect and integrity, practicing God’s way in life and doing all we can to make things right in any given situation.

To love kindness is the Hebrew word hesed which is most often translated as steadfast love but also includes mercy. Of course, mercy is an expression of love. Hesed is a dense heavy word with many meanings – kindness, lovingkindness, mercy, goodness, faithfulness, and steadfast love. All of these attributes are connected to this one word – hesed. It is a good Hebrew word for us to know and fun to pronounce as well! Chesed. When this word is used of God’s action it denotes His great loyalty and faithfulness in covenant. It is a word of action, a word expressing the multifaceted expressions of love. The ESV translates it as to love kindness but it could also mean to love mercy, goodness, love, faithfulness. It is a word and characteristic of genuine character.

To walk humbly with God means to do that which pleases God and to yield to God’s will and not walk in our own. It is to live in God’s ways, to practice faith, hope, and love. It is to follow Jesus with all our heart and mind and strength. It is to learn and follow everything in God’s Word from Genesis to Revelation. We totally rely on God for all things and give Him thanks for all things.

When we look to Jesus, we see the same requirements expressed in a variety of ways. To follow Jesus is to do these things as well. Jesus was also about the heart and not about meaningless outward sacrifices. Jesus is not about going through the motions, but about living the faith in dependence upon God alone. Jesus calls us to the same way of life as Micah called Israel long ago. Jesus calls us to give ourselves to Him and whoever loses his life for Christ’s sake will find it. There is no greater life than this, no better life, in fact there is no life at all apart from our God in Christ Jesus.

 

In the New Testament a corresponding text is James 1.22-27, But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. ²³For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. ²⁴For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. ²⁵But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. ²⁶If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless. ²⁷Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

A key here is the command to do the Word. That is what it means to do justice, love kindness, and walk with God. Do His Word, live His Word, and James highlights what a couple of those things are that we do, that reflect doing justice, such as visiting orphans and widows. What that means is to pay attention and give care to the marginalized. What we are to be about is doing all that God commands. It is as simple as that. We cannot practice or be something like a cultural Christian that is empty of devotion and sacrifice, Christian in name only. We cannot be like Israel in the time of Micah living only by going through the motions as they were doing with offering rams and oil.

The last part of James 1.27 is about keeping unstained from the world. That stain is sin and the world wants to lead us in that direction every day. To live unstained we must focus on what is right, doing justice, what is kind, loving others, and what is humble, walking with God. To live unstained we must do the Word and not just hear it. We cannot live as a Christian in name only, where worship is not genuine devotion or true praise of God, but an empty presence taking up a spot on a pew.

 

 

• The Grace Filled Character of God

 

Micah 7.18-20, “Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love. ¹⁹He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. ²⁰You will show faithfulness to Jacob and steadfast love to Abraham, as you have sworn to our fathers from the days of old.

 

To summarize the first two points: Judgment comes upon Israel for their sins and if we seek to follow anything or anyone more than Jesus, we will also receive the consequences at judgment. Second, there is a way of life that it good and required of those who believe and place their trust in Jesus Christ. Third, Micah 7.18 begins with a rhetorical question, who is like God? The answer is a quick, there is none like our God! Micah brings us a Word of hope. The minor prophets thus far have all brought us a Word of hope. God is like no other because He delights in steadfast love. He forgives our sins. His anger dissipates at the right time. God is faithful, loving, and keeps His promises. In this case, as in the case of the New Testament as well, God is the One who promises to save and that is a promise He has kept completely.

That promise is realized in the person and work of Jesus Christ who died for us for the forgiveness of sin. The Bible calls all who believe to have these same characteristics as God in Christ. Philippians 2.5-8, “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, ⁶who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. ⁸And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

 

I want to emphasize two points about Philippians 2. The first is when we think on the mind in verse 5, we might think about the thought process in which we engage. What makes our minds tick? To have the mind of Christ is to think like the Bible thinks. The Bible “thinks” in specific ways about itself, about God, about us, about evil, and everything else on which it speaks. We cannot think beyond Christ, we do not know that much. That’s what got Adam and Eve in trouble, thinking that they could be like God knowing good and evil as God does. But we do have the ability in the Holy Spirit to think like the Scripture. 1 Corinthians 2.16 - “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.” Paul claims that we have the mind of Christ! I think that means we have the Words of Christ on which to think. We have the Spirit of Christ who teaches us. We have the fellowship of the Church and a rich Church tradition and confession to help us think more clearly.

Second, verse 5 could also read this way, to have an attitude among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus. And the attitude was one of humility, like Micah points out, an attitude that thinks about and does what is just and an attitude that loves to walk humbly with God.

We need to nurture the ability to think like the Bible, think like Jesus, but we also need to live with a certain attitude or disposition. Jesus lived in the joy, hope, faith, confidence, and in the will of God the Father. Jesus lived displaying grace and truth. Jesus lived as a servant. Jesus lived with compassion but also with warnings to those who failed to uphold God’s ways. Jesus expressed love and anger and sadness and joy and, finally humility, humbling Himself in obedience all the way to His death, even death on a cross. Paul writes it that way because the cross was the most humiliating way to die.

The prophet and the Savior tell us what is good and required, that we develop a mindset and an attitude that reflects the mind and attitude of Jesus Christ. Sounds like a tall order, but if we pursue His Word and trust the Holy Spirit, we are helped along our way. In this we are seeking to know and reflect the grace filled character of God. Amen.