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We are coming to the close of
this prophet, Micah, whose ministry spanned 50 years. And I have
a chart here. Maybe you have this chart because
I passed it out before. If you don't, I can certainly
get you one. It is a record of from Tilly's book, Mysteries
of the Hebrew King. which gives a chronology. We're
not saying that it's the right chronology, definitely, but we're
just using it as a tool to get a handle on the flow of the kings
in the northern and southern kingdoms. And the prophets ministered
during these kings. We're studying the prophet Micah,
who if you see on the left side here, he ministered in the southern
kingdom of Judah. And so everybody in this line
is of the Davidic dynasty. That is, they're all descendants
of David who sat on the throne. And in Micah, chapter one, verse
one, we learn that he ministered during the reign of Jotham, Ahaz
and Hezekiah. And you want to remember that
these kings often had co-regents or vice regents. And so in the
historical setting of Micah, chapter seven, we want to isolate
when Micah is walking about the land in verses one and two in
this historical situation. So most of these kings were absolute
disasters. OK, the only thing the only one
we know that was not a disaster was Hezekiah. Hezekiah brought
in a series of reforms during his reign, and because of his
obedience to the Lord, this staved off the judgment on Jerusalem
for over 100 years. And it did not come until 586,
because judgment came right up to the door of Jerusalem in 701
B.C., right to the gates with the Assyrian warlord Sennacherib.
But the Lord answered Hezekiah's prayer and struck down 185,000
Assyrian soldiers in a single night. So Sennacherib went home
with his tail between his legs. And it tells us what just a little
bit of faithfulness can do. God is ready to pour out blessing
on anyone that will respond positively to him. Now, after Sennacherib
went home defeated, Isaiah tells us in his book that Hezekiah
became mortally ill in 701 B.C. And it looked like he was going
to go to the grave. But Hezekiah offered another prayer to the
Lord, and the Lord extended his life for 15 years. So from 701
B.C. down to 686 B.C. OK, because
Hezekiah is going to die in 686. So from 701 to 686, he was the king formally, but
he took on his son Manasseh to be the vice regent. And to be
a vice regent meant that the son ruled with his father in
a subordinate position. So while Hezekiah is formally
the king, really it's Manasseh who is running the kingdom. And
what Manasseh did was basically he took everything, every reform
that his father Hezekiah had made, and he just systematically,
one by one, point by point, dismantled the whole thing. And so in verses
one through six of chapter seven, it's Manasseh who is reigning.
OK, so if it helps you to write Manasseh there. OK. And Micah
is having to walk around the mess that's been caused by Manasseh
because Hezekiah is ill. He can't really reign. So that's the situation, verse
one, woe is me, for I am like the fruit pickers, like the grape
gatherers. There's not a cluster of grapes to eat or a first ripe
fig, which I crave. OK, who's me? Who's I? Well,
it's Micah the prophet and Micah is walking around Judah and everywhere
he goes, it's like a barren orchard. And we don't mean physically.
I mean, it may be barren physically. I don't know agriculturally,
but what he means is spiritually. He means spiritually, the land
is destitute. It's like an orchard after the harvest. It's like
a vineyard after the vintage. It's barren. But spiritually
speaking, woe is me for I'm like the fruit pickers, like the great
gatherers. There is not a cluster of grapes to eat or a first ripe
fig, which I crave. You know, in other words, I walk
out here and all the godly people are gone. I mean, there's no
one righteous. No, no, no, not one. The godly
have perished. And that's what in verse two
he is putting into plain words. He's telling us the plain meaning
of verse one. The godly person has perished
from the land. There's no there's no upright person among them.
All of them lie in wait for bloodshed. Each of them hunts the other
with a net. So let's look at the Hebrew for godly person,
because this is probably not the best translation, though
it could give you a similar type idea. The godly person has perished
from the land. The Hebrew for godly is Kessed,
C H E S E D. OK, C-H-E-S-E-D pronounced Chesed. And that's our word for loyal.
And it always usually relates to a covenant. So he's saying
there are no loyal people in the land. The loyal people have
all perished from the land. All right, so who are the who
are loyal people? Well, that's a legal term. It's actually a
French word from which we get loyalty, but it is a legal term
that refers to a person who is loyal or obedient to a standard
of law. So what's the law or standard
Micah is referring to in the case of Israel? What was the
law or standard that they were to obey? It's the Mosaic law. The Mosaic law is a standard
that reveals the nature of the lawgiver. Since the lawgiver
was God and he is righteous, then the law, the Mosaic law,
reveals the righteousness of God. It was a revelation of who
God is. And it was God's will that they
learn this law. that they meditate upon it day
and night and not swerve to it from to the right or to the left,
but to be very careful to do everything that's written in
it. And that is that God's goal for the nation, his will for
their life, is that they would learn loyalty to him, to be obedient
to this standard, this law. Now, when did they get this law?
When did the law originate? It came in Mount Sinai. So let's
bring in our framework here. And the nation had been enslaved
in Egypt for 400 years, and God delivered them out of Egypt at
the exodus. OK, what did the nation have to do to be delivered
out of exit out of Egypt? They didn't have to do nothing.
They didn't have to lift a finger. OK, it was all grace. And that's
what God's trying to teach to that event. God took and enslaved,
beaten, run down people, and he set them free from the greatest
superpower on Earth. OK, God systematically dismantled
Egypt. He left it in total desolation
so Egypt doesn't even appear on the scene for another 500
years. And Israel walked out totally free and with the Egyptian
Fort Knox. So think of that great event.
And what God did for him, it was all grace. Israel didn't
do any works. God didn't ask him to do any
works. So the exodus is a great picture of God's grace. Then
they marched to Mount Sinai. In fact, God led them there by
pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day. And again, this
is all God's grace leading the nation. Why did he bring him
to Mount Sinai? Well, because there he's going
to reveal the law, he's going to tell them what his will is
for their life as a nation and what his mission is for them
as a nation. OK, so now we can talk about obedience. Now we
can talk about works. We can talk about learning loyalty
to him. But we don't ever start off talking
about that. We start off talking about grace.
God always does something for us first before he ever asked
us to do anything for him. So it's always grace first, then
law. And then even then, when he gives
us law, he gives us grace to help us fulfill the law because
we can't do it in our flesh alone. So turn to Exodus chapter 20,
verse one, when you come to the foot of Mount Sinai. OK, having
brought them out of Egypt, does God have the right to now ask
this nation to obey his law? Yeah, you bet he does. God did
a great thing for this nation. I mean, he set them free from
an evil, oppressive power. Now, in that situation, is it
really too much for God to ask them to obey him? I mean, look
at the argument that God is going to make with the first commandment.
OK, this is the Ten Commandments. And the first commandment does
not begin with verse three. OK, the first commandment for
all the Jewish people in real life begins with verse one. Then
God spoke all these words. That's a part of the Ten Commandments.
In fact, it's that word word, they're words. Debar in the Hebrew,
which indicates that properly they're not known as the Ten
Commandments. They're known properly as the Ten Words. And then God
spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord, your God, who
brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of
slavery. You shall have no other gods
before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol. OK, now,
having looked at that. And knowing what those people
just came through. You see the argument that God is making when
he speaks the 10 words. He's not saying, you know, you
obey me or else. I mean, he could say that he's
God. He can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants to. He doesn't
need your permission. He doesn't need mine, but he doesn't frame
it that way. How does he frame it? He says,
this is who I am. I am the Lord, your God. This
is what I did for you. I brought you out of the house
of slavery. Now, don't you think that you should obey me? So do
you see how it's an appeal? God is giving them a motive to
obey. He doesn't just say obey me or
else, you know, he says, I did this for you. I did that for
you. Now you should obey me. You should learn loyalty to me.
And this is what Mike is referring to when he is in Micah, chapter
seven, verse one, and he's walking around, Judy, he's walking around,
he's looking for somebody, anybody that's obedient to this law,
anyone that has learned loyalty. And he can't find anyone. So
God had a program for the nation that he elected in Abraham, Isaac,
Jacob, the 12 tribes. They went down to Egypt. Right
now, after he saved them out of Egypt, he gave them the law
at Mount Sinai and he wanted them to grow spiritually. He
wanted the whole nation to learn loyalty to him. So let's do a
little historical review. OK, in other words, how did the
nation do with their task of learning loyalty to him? Because
Moses got the law and while he was because the people said,
well, we can't stand this. I mean, you go up there and get
the law. And so then you come back and tell us what God says.
So Moses goes up there and God gives him the law. And while
he was up getting the law on Mount Sinai, what's going on
down beneath? See, they're breaking the law. God's while he there,
the law is being given, they're breaking the law at the foot
of the hill. OK, so God says you better get
down there, Moses, the people have lost it. So he goes down
there and when he gets down to the base, he's got this big drunken
orgy going on. And the center of it all is this
worship of the golden bull that they've identified as Yahweh
is the one who delivered him out of Egypt. So they were breaking
which commandment? They're breaking the very first
commandment. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. So to
illustrate this, what did Moses do? Moses comes down, he's holding
the Ten Commandments, right? Apparently they fit in one hand.
So it's not this big, huge thing that Charlton Heston is holding.
But anyway, that's another story. He cast down this small set of
Ten Commandments, and they'd shatter it into pieces. Why did
he do that? To show them visually what they had done. See? It was
an object lesson. The prophets always do this,
right? They use these big, crazy object lessons. That's why I
never can figure out why so many people want to be a prophet.
I mean, you know, Isaiah ran around naked for a while. I mean,
how would you like to be a prophet? You run around in your nation
naked for a little while. See how you like that. Hosea had
to go marry a prostitute. Okay? That's the prophet. Okay?
So do you want to be a prophet now? Okay? Not many people want
to be a prophet once they really realize who the prophets were
and the kind of things they had to do. But anyway, that's another
story, too. So to show them visually what
they had done, Moses comes down to the foot of the hill with
the Ten Commandments. And what's the first thing he
does? He shatters them on the ground to show them that their hearts
were shattered, that they had shattered the law, broken in themselves,
and they needed new hearts. And so God says, that's it. I've had it with these people.
I'm going to destroy them. And he says, I'm going to start
over with you, Moses. I'll build a nation from you. And Moses,
Moses prays. Moses actually goes head to head
with the God of the universe. And he actually argues with God
in prayer. Why? This is why you shouldn't destroy
him, God, which is a model for for prayer. And people think,
well, that's kind of a gutsy prayer. Well, if you want to
learn how to barter with God, you need to go look at Moses
and see how he prayed to God, because Moses is a creature.
And yet he goes head to head with the creator of the universe.
And he got an answer to prayer. God respected the prayer of Moses,
the creature, and he answered it. And so it's a marvelous prayer
of scripture. But needless to say, at Mount
Sinai, the nation was not loyal to God. OK, we're sketching their
loyalty path. It was not loyalty at all. So
that generation did not learn loyalty. And what did they do?
They wandered about in the wilderness for 40 years and they died off
like flies. Then you come to the conquest and settlement period
under Joshua. And here's a generation that
learns partial loyalty to God. OK, God gives them military victory
in the land. OK, they don't know they don't
take all the land. They take large portions of the
land. They learn partial loyalty to God. He gives them part of
the land. It all fits. By the time you
come to the end of the judges period, all the tribes are in
disarray. There are warring factions between
the tribes and the people are tired of the chaos. OK, so. They asked for a king. The last
verse of Judges and over in 1st Samuel 8. Now, God graciously
gives them a king. They want a king, of course,
like all the other nations. And God says, I'll give you a
king, but I'm not going to give you one like all the other nations. So he's
going to be the king that I choose and I'm going to put limits on
the office of the king. So he he chooses Saul and Saul turned
out to be a moron. The people expected the king
was going to solve all their problems, right? You know, but that shows
you that during the judges period, democracy didn't work. During
the king's period, the totalitarian government didn't work. OK, why
not? Why can neither system work?
Well, because they're both run by fallen people. OK, so, you
know, you can't expect a fallen king to run a nation any better
than a whole group of fallen people. OK, so they're all fallen. Then God chooses David. The nation
builds some loyalty to God, don't they? Here's where the nation
really gets going as far as building loyalty to God. There were pockets
of loyalty. In earlier generations, you know with David, his father
Jesse and his father, Jesse's father. And what happened was
that these pockets in the nation were growing because they were
building loyalty around the family, not just the individual. So you
can have individual loyalty, but you can't get anything significant
going with just individual loyalty because the individual is not
the basic unit of society in God's way of thinking. The basic
unit of society in God's thinking is the family. So to get anything
significant going, you have to build family loyalty. So far
as building a if you want to build a high biblical culture.
And it was David's generation that really began to produce
and see the effects of two or three generations building loyalty
to God. And then it came to Solomon and
it was his job to continue to build family loyalty. And he
started out really well, didn't he? He started off tremendous. The culture became highly developed
and biblical. They were stretching out into
every arena of life, music, art, science, all the way down to
botany and ichthyology, entomology, architecture. They were bringing
the Bible in to apply to every area of life so that they could
think God's thoughts after him. They were applying the law comprehensively
And they produced the greatest culture the world has ever seen.
OK, but Solomon, Solomon then blew it. And he started, the
way he blew it, is he started to import these foreign girls.
And whenever you do that, you don't just import the girls.
You import the pagan baggage that comes with the girls. And
this set a rot in that high biblical culture. And it was very quickly
destroyed. It shows you how quickly you can destroy a great culture.
OK, you really can wipe it out very, very, very quickly. It
will take generations to build. You can knock it down in one
generation. So by one or two generations, there was not even
a vestige of biblical culture in Israel. The kingdoms collapsed. They go into spiritual decline.
Both kingdoms declined spiritually very rapidly. God sends them
prophets to try to correct them. They don't listen to the prophets.
They decline more. They decline more. They decline
more. Now we come to Micah's day in chapter seven and you
get the historical situation described right in these verses.
Now, what is God basically upset with in Micah's day? The nation has not learned loyalty
to his law that he gave at Mount Sinai. God had done so many great
things for him. You know, it's just like any
believer, okay? The moment they became a believer
in Christ, something like 40 things happened to that individual.
40 things that God did initially at that very moment of faith
for that individual. And then you can look at some
Christians 40 years later. And this is what their life looks
like. It's total chaos. And you think, what happened
to this person? God had done all those things
for him. And guess what happened? They didn't learn loyalty to
him. See, that's what happened. And that's what had happened
to the nation over this period of about seven to eight centuries. He
had led them out of Egypt with an uplifted arm. He destroyed
nations in the conquest. He gave them judges to solve
their problems. He sent them prophets. He gave
them a king. He gave them David. And he promised
through David, you know what? David wasn't perfect, but David
was pretty good. He's the only guy in the Old Testament that
I can say was a man after my own heart. The only one I can
say that followed the Lord fully. But he's not perfect. And so
God promised through David is going to come the ideal king.
And that's the Messiah. All this was grace, grace, grace,
grace, grace to the nation. Did the nation respond with thankfulness
and learn loyalty to him? No, they blew it. Now, Mike is
running around the land. He can't find anybody that's
loyal on the whole land. OK, before so before we we look
at what he does, just the last observation in verse two, notice
the mention of the land. See, that should strike you because
that's one of the promises, right? God promised them a land, a seed,
a worldwide blessing. And this should strike you, because
if you can't find any loyalty in the land and the nation has
divine title to the land, but you don't have any loyalty in
the land. And her enjoyment of that land was conditioned upon
loyalty. Well, what do you think is going to happen next? They'll
still have the divine right or divine title to the land, but
they won't be enjoying it because where will they be kicked out
of the land in exile? So that's what's on the horizon
now in verse two. OK, if Micah didn't find any
loyal people in the land, what did he find? Well, all of them
lie in wait for bloodshed. Each of them hunts the other
with a net. And it's a description of the general chaos. In that
society, I mean, every man, he doesn't just mean males, by the
way, he means every person in Israeli society, man, woman,
youth, they plot, they conspire, they murder. That's what he means,
all of them lie in wait for bloodshed, that's murder. But what's the
sin underlying murder? See, people don't just wake up
one day and walk out the door and go murder somebody. That's not
the way it works. OK, people don't just wake up
one day and go commit fornication. That's not the way it works.
If murder is the overt sin and somebody is acting on it, what's
the what's the covert sin? John tells in his first epistle
that it is it's hatred. Hatred. If we hate our brother,
then what we're saying is, you know what, I'd rather than not
even hear. Just get rid of him. So the next step is when I hate
in my heart as well, act out on it and murder them. So all
of these overt sins that you see in verse two are betraying
covert sins in the heart. See, it's not true that the law
just addressed external behavior. I mean, the Pharisees reduced
it to that. And sometimes Christians get in on their idea that the
Pharisees were right about the Old Testament law. No, they were
not right about the Old Testament law. Jesus Christ insists on
the Sermon on the Mount that the law reached down to the depths
of the human heart. OK, because underlying each one of these
external sins like murder or fornication is an internal heart
issue. So if all of them lie in wait for bloodshed, it's an
indictment of their hearts. Their hearts were full of hatred
for their fellow countrymen. So all of them lie in wait for
bloodshed, each of them hunts the other with a net. OK, the
net was what you go out, you hunt and you fish with, right?
It's a tool to capture prey. So they always picture, the net
always pictures a destruction of freedom. It destroys the freedom
for a creature to move. It isolates it. And when you
get in a society that is so rampant with crime, all freedom, real
freedom, has really been destroyed. Because everybody's running around
doing whatever's right in their own eyes, and society turns into
chaos. And it's really not safe to go outside of your place of
safety when it's chaos outside. And so to knock people off, if
you're one of these corrupt individuals, you have to use complex crimes.
to lure people out of their safety so you can trap them and murder
them, which is what they were doing. So verse three concerning
evil, both hands do it well. You know, the law said that both
hands were to do what to do good. Both hands were to take care
of the orphan and the widow and the poor. And yet both their
hands did evil, and not only did they do evil, but they did
it well. And that's significant because what it means is they
have trained their hands to do evil. I mean, it's one thing
to do evil. It is another thing to do it well. We all do evil,
but we do not all do it well. OK, to do it well requires that
we have trained our sinful flesh in evil ways. So how do we train
ourselves in evil ways? Well, what we do is we we we
do evil and we some sin and then we don't confess it and we get
we don't get restored to fellowship. Then we do it again and we don't
confess it and then we do it again. And we don't confess,
and then we do it again and we don't confess. And what we're
doing is we're training our sinful flesh in a pattern. And the more
we do it, the better we get at it. And this is what we mean
when we say someone is developing or has developed a habitual sin
problem. That is, every time you do evil,
you're training your flesh in a direction. And the more you
do that, the more deeply embedded becomes a habitual sin pattern.
And what that means in the long run, it's a devastating thing. And it means that it becomes
more and more difficult to get out of these patterns. I mean,
you just can't a person in that situation can't just confess
their sin and that's it. Everything will be hunky dory
because every time we sin, what happens to our mind is it's darkened. And then you sin again and your
mind gets darker and you sin again and it gets darker. And
it's a subtle loss. of eyesight, spiritual eyesight,
so to speak, every time we sin. It's very subtle. So while you
think you may be seeing clearly because it's just like your physical
eyes, if they decayed like mine did and you can't see anything
without your contacts on, it's a very slow process. It didn't
just all happen in one day and all of a sudden I was a minus
six in my right eye and a minus 5.75 in my left eye. It was like minus 0.5. It was a gradual thing and it's
subtle. But you don't realize you're
not saying clearly you think you are. And that's what these
people are doing. They think they're saying clearly,
but sin has gradually darkened their rational faculties and
they're actually blinding them to reality. And in that situation,
it's really hard for a person in case, in fact, in Hebrews
chapter six, it talks about it can get so bad that it becomes
impossible to confess, impossible to get restored. And that's how
I take you were 64 for all of you who want to know. OK, and
that's where the nation had come to. Then it's not that they. Couldn't confess their sin is
that they're not going to. They wouldn't. Their minds were
so dark to the point they couldn't. They would never do it. OK, they
not only did evil, they did it well. They had trained their
sinful flesh. They were experts in evil. They
could have multiple. complex crimes going on simultaneously
in their society, and everybody was involved in it. Then he gives
one example of a complex evil crime committed up in the upper
echelons of Israeli society. He says, the prince asks also
the judge for a bribe, and the great man speaks the desire of
his soul, so they weave it together. See, it's a complex crime. It's
a tapestry of people involved. You have the prince. The prince
is a government official. He goes down to the judge, he
pays the judge off because he wants a judgment against some
citizen. And the great man, the great
man is the rich man in society. He has certain interests in it
as well. And they put it all together
into a grand scheme to defraud people. And this was in the court
system. And you know from the law, it
was illegal for a judge to take a bribe because what would that
do? What did God say it would do? If a judge takes a bribe,
it blinds the eyes of the judge to justice. OK, that's what I'm
talking about. Sin, blinding your eyes, destroying
your ability to see reality correctly. And that's what it did to the
judge. And this is going on. You know, the judges, I mean,
the men who are supposed to know the law inside and out, they
were, you know, Ivy League school lawyers, that kind of equality.
And they were supposed to apply it equally to everybody in Israeli
society. And they were taking bribes. They were especially
to take care of the poor, the widow and the orphan, right?
But they were taking bribes from the prince, from the great rich
man in society, and this blinded them what the truth was. And
guess what they started to do? They started in the court system
to redefine what is right and what is wrong. Now, that's the
real evil. I mean, that is the real perversity
when you're legislating from the bench that what is wrong
is right and what is right is wrong. I mean, you know, your
society has had it. It has reached the most perverse
kind of evil when it's doing this kind of thing. When the
courts are rewriting the standards of the law, and whenever you
do that in Israeli society, since God is the law giver, once you
rewrite the law, you rewrite the nature of who God is. You
redefine God. And that is the most perverse
kind of evil in society. A society that redefines the
nature of God, and out of that, Out of that theological idolatry
in the heart, they redefine laws that govern society, man's relationship
to man. And in a society like that, once
it has reached this point, you can never get true justice. I
mean, the whole thing becomes one big cauldron of corruption.
So think in this society, if this was your society, and it
may very well be, what can you do? OK, if somebody gets ripped
off and they take you to court, the people in the court are the
grandmaster ripoff artists. So do you think you're going
to get justice there? For them to give you justice is to condemn
their own actions. And you work your way into a
situation where it's impossible to get straight a crooked society.
The whole system has gone kaput. OK, when right has been redefined
as wrong and wrong has been redefined as right. That's it. OK, verse
four. The best of them is like a briar,
the most upright, like a thorn hedge. I mean, this is the best
people. The best people in society will
rip you off. They don't care about you. They don't care about
they only care about themselves. And once you observe that in
your society, I mean, all the best people in your country totally
ripping you off, you're in big trouble. You are in big, big
trouble. It's a completely selfish culture,
self-seeking, individualistic. Everyone does what's right in
his own eyes, joins up with other people in their own little interest
group to argue, you know, plot against every other little interest
group. It's chaos. And this is the best people in
society. I mean, we're not even talking about the worst. This
is the best folks, the people you thought you could trust.
You could trust them yesterday. You can't trust them today. Micah
says, the day will come when you post your watchman, your
punishment will come. So we want to understand the
watchman, OK? The watchman refers to two men
in the scriptures. The first man it referred to
was the man who would keep watch over him physically. And the
second man is the one who would keep watch over him spiritually.
The man who kept watch over Israel physically was the soldier. He
was a member of the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces. And his
job would be to sit up high on the walls of Jerusalem and keep
watch over the city. And if he saw danger approaching,
he would alert the authorities. So their job was to watch over
the city. And if some danger approached,
a military threat was approaching, they would notify the high command.
Then you had the other kind of watchman, and he was a spiritual
watchman. It was his job to keep watch
over the people spiritually. He was the prophet. And so he
would keep watch. And when God spoke to him or
he gave him a vision or gave him a dream or spoke to him,
he would warn the people. And sometimes he would use the
lawsuit format, like we saw last week in chapter six. Other times
he would go directly to the king and he would just deliver the
message. But the whole point was that God appointed these
watchmen to watch over people's souls, to call them back to the
law, to call them back to the standard, because they had failed
to learn loyalty. And it was their job to correct
the nation and get them back on track to learning loyalty.
Now, one of the characteristics of the watchmen, a key characteristic,
whether they be keeping physical watch or spiritual watch over
the nation, is that they be alert. I mean, it doesn't do any good
to have a soldier sitting up there on the wall asleep. I mean, the only
good that might come of it is, you know, maybe maybe he falls
off the wall and kills himself. OK, that way does everybody else
a favor and we can get a real soldier up on the wall who will
keep watch. And it doesn't do any good to have a prophet who
does not genuinely hear the voice of God, some self-proclaimer.
Just like it doesn't do any good at all to have a pastor who doesn't
study the word of God. I mean, how can you keep watch
over the spiritual well-being of people if he's asleep spiritually?
You know, he's not paying attention to the voice of God in the scriptures.
And so one of the key characteristics of a good watchman is that he
is alert. He's got to be paying attention.
I mean, he has to know what the threats are. He has to know the
enemy. He has to know what kinds of enemies that weapons the enemy
has at its disposal. He has to know the lines of supply.
He has to know the size of the enemy army. He has to know what
the vulnerability abilities are of the city. He has to know a
whole series of things. And you can't just stand up there
and watch him. No, he has to be trained to be a watchman if
he's going to actually watch over men. And that goes for spiritually
or physically. And the thing about this period,
and that's why you don't get past the teachers who aren't
trained. I mean, it's just a stupid thing to do. Just like it's a stupid
thing to put people out in battle that have never had any training.
What a dumb thing. What a terrible thing for those
people to put them out in front of bullets. What a terrible thing
to put a pastor up in front of Satan's schemes. It's going to
get wiped out. The thing about this period of
Israel's history, OK, in the 8th century when Micah was prophet
and Isaiah was a prophet with him, right? You can see him there.
And Hosea is up in the north. This period is called the kingdoms
in decline. Remember, there's no loyalty
in the land. They're both decaying spiritually very rapidly. And
in that scenario, you had true prophets and you had false prophets.
OK, Micah is obviously the true prophet. He was alert. He actually
did watch over the spiritual well-being of Israel because
he actually did hear the voice of God and he had the boldness
and the courage to warn this people. But then you also had
a whole lot of false prophets. I mean, there was a whole lot
of them because there were nobody, no people in the land that knew
the law. So what it did was it created a vacuum to be filled
by all these false prophets. It's the same thing in the church
today. They'll accept anybody who wants to get up there and say it, tell
a story. OK, because these people have no idea what the Word of
God teaches. We've been far too many generations. I mean, you're
talking about back to the modernist, fundamentalist controversy. You're
talking about four generations where we haven't had good Bible
teaching in this country. And that scenario, I mean, do you
really expect the person in the pew to have a really solid biblical
foundation? You can forget it. If it hadn't been for the Schofield
reference Bible in 1909, it would be worse off than it is now.
I mean, that that Bible, whether you were a reformed or dispensational
scholar, didn't make a difference. OK. What it did is it put a little
armor in the people, in the pew, so they could sit there and listen
to Mr. Liberal, you know, talk about the resurrection and flowers
and spring and all that, and realize, hey, this guy doesn't
even believe it for one second. Okay? But if it hadn't been for
that Bible, a lot of people out there wouldn't have known. They'd have just
sucked it and gone right along. Well, that's where most people
are today. And it had the same effect here, is that when you
have a nation, Israel is so stupid spiritually. Anybody can come
in and say, I got a voice. I got a word from God. You know,
I had a whole slew of these false prophets want to be. They're
just trying to make a buck. And since they didn't have any revelation
from God, they couldn't possibly be alert to the dangers that
were facing that society at all. So they just made stuff up and
they wanted to line their pockets like most people do. So what
did they do? Well, they did what every self proclaimer does to
line his pockets. And here it is. It's just real.
This is real profound, you know, promise blessing, blessing, blessing,
blessing. Tell everyone in the nation what
they want to hear. Oh, you're going to have prosperity. Your
economy is going to come back booming. Your agriculture is
just going to keep on prospering. And it's nothing but blue skies.
And the people, oh, they like to hear this. Oh, this sounds
good. And they're getting rich. And as long as you donated to him,
he told you all the good things. And if you don't donate him,
donate to him, then what's he going to say? Well, your family
is going to be cursed. So everyone wanted to hear the good. And so they lined the false prophets'
pockets. And so you had true prophets
and false prophets during this period, but you had a lot more
false prophets because that was lucrative business. You had only
a few true prophets because it's not so lucrative when you tell
the truth, which is just another reason, okay, to add, why not
to follow all these people who claim to be prophets today? I
mean, watch out what these people do. All you have to do is watch
them for about 10 minutes. It doesn't take that long, okay?
They're going to ask for money, money, money, money, money, They
say, you give me money and God's going to bless you. He's going
to make you prosperous. It's all the prosperity gospel. And it's all
the sad thing is the terrible thing about it all. It's all
the poor people they give to because they're always in a pinch
and they're trying to get out. They'll do anything to get out. And you
can tell they're false prophets simply by the fact that they're
trying to line their pockets with money. And the pattern in
Scripture is that the guys that are getting filthy rich and trying
to line their pockets with money are always the guys who are the
false prophets. And it's the true prophets that can't get
a hearing. I mean, nobody like these guys. I mean, it's tomatoes
at Amos. I mean, who wants to be that
guy? Now, look at the middle of verse four. What they do to
all the apostles, I mean, this is not too hard to see these
patterns. They killed all the apostles, killed them all. What
they do to the Lord Jesus Christ, they love him. Give him a bunch
of kisses. Kill them. You tell the truth, you might
get yourself killed. Okay, just know that. Doesn't mean don't
tell the truth. Just know. Now, look at the middle
of verse 4. See if it doesn't make more sense
to you now. Okay, the day is going to come when you post your
watchman. In other words, this is not the true prophet of God,
see? This is... These people have no spirituality
posting their own watchman. Okay? This is the false prophet
that's been authorized by the state of Israel. And he is in
alert, see? He's asleep. He's sitting up
in the tower asleep. And so when the destruction comes,
they're not going to give a warning. Then you have the true prophets
like Micah and Isaiah, and they're alert. See, they actually did
get the voice of God, and they're warning the nation, you're on
a path of spiritual destruction. And so they would send a warning
down to the authorities, and the authorities would say, well,
you're not state authorized. I mean, you don't work for the government
here, so you just better get out of here. You're just trying
to stir everybody up. We don't like your message. Doom
and gloom. But see, they were all setting
themselves up. Because Micah says in verse 4,
your punishment will come. In other words, you didn't pay
attention to the true prophets. I sent them to you, but you listened
to all these false people who have no idea what the true standard
is. They don't know the law. You failed to learn loyalty to
me, so guess what? Your physical destruction will
come. And you won't have any idea when
it comes that it was coming. It's going to be a total surprise
attack. That's why he says, Their confusion will occur. And it
just means they'll be standing around in utter astonishment. How could this happen to our
country? All the state authorized profits that is nothing but blue
skies, prosperity, abundance, agricultural freedom, economic
development. What is all this destruction?
And people will just be standing around totally dazed and confused.
How could it happen? So let's go back to verse two
and we'll show all the connections here. A verse to theological
evil. OK, this is where it all starts.
The loyal person has perished from the land. That is, they
they totally disregarded the first table of the law. They
totally disregarded the first three commandments. Theological evil, where does
that lead to social evil disregard for the second tablet of the
law, commandments four through ten described when he says there's
no upright person among men. OK, it's just bloodshed. So that's
social evil. The theological evil is underneath,
the social evil is breaking out and now it can't be contained.
I mean, the moment that theological evil really gets going in a country.
Inevitably, this social evil is going to be breaking out and
it's going to be all chaos, as he describes. All of them lie
in wait for bloodshed. Each of them hunts the other
with a net. That's murder. Verse three, concerning
evil, both hands do it well. What does that mean? That means
they've trained their sinful natures in evil, right? So that they
not only know how to do evil, they're really good at it. Verse
3, the prince asks also the judge for a bribe, and a great man
speaks of the desire of his soul, so they weave it together. Complex
crime involving secret planning, bribery in the courts, manipulation,
deception. It's chaos on a societal level
that destroys standards of right and wrong, redefines everything.
Till finally, verse 4, the best person in your whole society
is like a briar. The most upright people are like
a thorn hedge. Now, in that kind of a society,
when the best people will rip you off without thinking twice
about it, I mean, what kind of a condition do you think their
heart is in? I mean, they're dark. They are
black places. I mean, these people couldn't
perceive anything correctly anymore. And so it was a perfect vacuum.
for false prophets to come in. They could tell them anything
they wanted to hear. They'd believe it. And they were telling them
everything they wanted to hear. They were doing it. They were
telling them, oh, all kinds of blessings coming, because that's
what the people wanted to hear. And if they told them cursing
is coming, they'd say, oh, I just can't believe it. And if you tell them
their society's on the brink of collapse, you know what? They'd
just write you off. And the reason they'd write you
off is because they don't want to believe it. It's like in this
country. And if you tell people we're
on the brink of economic collapse, they'll laugh at you. They don't
believe you. I mean, you can show them all
the statistics, you can show them pretty fuzzy graphs, but
people won't believe it. Why not? Well, because they don't
want to believe it. I mean, you could have all the evidence,
all of it pointing in one direction. And people wouldn't do a single
thing to prepare. They just sit there and pray,
Oh, God bless America. Oh God, pour out your spirit on us, give
us a revival or something. God say, what's wrong with you people?
I gave you every sign in the book. I gave you every opportunity in the book
and you've rejected me. You kicked me out of the schools. You kicked
me out of everything. You redefined right and wrong. What's wrong
with you? Do you think I'm going to bless you? No. He says, you better
wake up. You better get right with me.
Now, that's the way it was for Israel. And that's why it says
at the end of verse four, confusion is going to occur, because when
the whole society collapses, people are going to be standing
there in the wake of a national disaster. They just can't believe it. How
could this happen? How can we fall as a nation?
What went wrong? It shows you. It shows you. How dark their
hearts were spiritually, how stupid they were spiritually,
we saw that two weeks ago, Micah, Chapter six. So it's nothing
new to say that they were stupid spiritually. We've already seen
that report. So now the true prophet, OK,
the true watchman gives his warning in verse any verse five. Anyone
who will pay attention, Micah proclaims, do not trust in a
neighbor. Do not have a confidence in a
friend from her who lies in your bosom, guard your lips for son
treats father contemptuously. Daughter rises up against mother,
daughter in law against mother in law. A man's enemies are the
men of his own house. Now, if you if you go slow through
that, you'll see. That there's an ascending scale
of intimacy, I mean, in other words, It starts with someone
who's as distant as just your neighbor. And then it moves into
the circle of those who are your friends. And then it moves into
a closer circle, even to your own wife. And your own family. OK. So relationships on every
level. Are breaking down between. Men. And but what is he saying on
a deeper level? That's that's easy enough to
see, because you may remember that Jesus picks this up, right?
And he quotes this in Matthew, chapter 10. OK, verse six is
loosely quoted by Jesus in Matthew 10, and it is applied. To. The first century nation of Israel,
so. We can say, look, these are very
close relationships here that are being broken up. Why? Well, ultimately, it's because
of theological issues. We can't get people's hearts
straightened out with God because we're not allowed to talk about
that in our society. That's no-no. You don't talk
about that. But until we can talk about that, you can't get
the problems fixed, see, because that's the root. I mean, the
rest of it, the social stuff, that's just fruit. OK. People do want to get along with
other people. And here you see they can't. But people want to
be close to other people. There's inside each one of us
a desire to have peace with every one of us, to get close to people.
That's why there's a cry for world peace. I mean, can't we
just all get along? Yes, we can. We can. There's a way. But what is the way? See, how
can we ever get to world peace? Answer? People have to get right
with God first. The God of the Bible, not just
whoever they choose to be God. OK, the God who is the creator,
the sustainer and the redeemer of man. It's the only way. And if people don't get right
with this God first, then they can never get right with people.
OK, so the vertical relationship comes first. Then the horizontal
relationships can come and blossom, but only in that order. OK, I'll
quote Jacques Hulot again. I quoted this on Sunday in another
lesson, but here it is again, the same idea here in verses
five and six. So let's look at it. From the beginning, man worked
desperately to have his own little world independent of all that
God desired. OK, he's talking about the beginning
of the new civilization that began with Noah. OK, not with
Adam, but he's talking about the new civilization that began
with Noah and his family. When did men try to build their
own world independent from God? After the flood. Tower of Babel. OK, remember the history. OK,
God said after the flood, he said, I want you to subdue. I
want you to multiply. I want you to scatter over the
face of the whole earth. You catch the third one scatter over
the face of the whole earth. Is that what they did? No, I
mean, that would require trusting God. I mean, it's a harsh world
out there. It's dangerous. We don't want to go out there
and build a new civilization that glorifies God. I mean, that means
I have to trust him that he's going to take care of me in that
dangerous environment. I mean, who knows what's out there? All
I know is I've got a I've got a I've got to insulate myself
against this God. I mean, I've got to get together
with some other people and together we'll build a kingdom of man
and we'll protect ourself from this intervening God. So Ewell
goes on to say, man wanted to build a city from which God would
be absent, but he never managed to do it. What's his point? OK,
at the Tower of Babel, I mean, it's an attempt to build. It's
an attempt by man to build an autonomous kingdom of man. And
most of you have seen this picture before. What does that mean? I don't want to hear what God
has to say. I don't want to hear the Bible. I don't want to listen
to the scriptures. You know, we we we want to dictate what
reality is. We want to legislate our own
kingdom independent of any so-called God that might interfere in our
business. We want God out of the picture.
Man is self-sufficient. Now, that's man's fleshly desire
right there always has been. Always will be. It's exactly
what Israel is trying to do in this chapter in the 8th century.
They're trying to build a prosperous kingdom of man. Look what it
developed. Total social chaos. The whole
national disaster. The whole thing went to pieces.
And this is where we'll always end. And this is where the world
is headed right now. Okay? At this very moment. I mean, I can teach you the text.
You know, I taught you the text, I executed the text, you know,
I did. I just told you what it said. And you can look at our
world right now and you say, yeah, so many parallels. I didn't
have to manipulate the text to show you the parallels. It's
right on the face of it. And apparently what God is saying
is you can never, ever build an autonomous kingdom of man.
Only when people get in a right relationship with God through
the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross can they have a
right relationship with one another. When we are OK, then God will
realize it among us. OK, but not before. So that's
the end of Israel's attempt to build a kingdom of man. They
had become like all the other nations. It failed. And next
week we'll see what God has in store for the believing remnant
of Israel. That is, once they come into a right relationship
with God, what will it be for the world but blessing? Well,
we have five minutes, so If anybody has any questions, I'll gladly
try to redirect you to the scriptures.
Micah 7:1-6, The Loyal Have Perished
Series Micah
| Sermon ID | 1018212149302082 |
| Duration | 50:06 |
| Date | |
| Category | Midweek Service |
| Bible Text | Micah 7:1-6 |
| Language | English |
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