In the word of God this afternoon to the book of Micah. Micah, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah. One of the prophets. Chapter seven. The prophecy of Micah. Chapter seven. We'll begin reading in verse 1, Micah 7, the first verse. This is God's word. Woe is me, for I am as when they have gathered the summer fruits as the grape gleanings of the vintage. There is no cluster to eat. My soul desired the first ripe fruit. The good man is perished out of the earth, and there is none upright among men. They all lie and wait for blood. They hunt every man his brother with a net. That they may do evil with both hands earnestly, the prince asketh and the judge asketh for a reward. And the great man, he uttereth his mischievous desire. So they wrap it up. The best of them is as a briar. The most upright is sharper than a thorn hedge. The day of thy watchman and thy visitation cometh. now shall be their perplexity. Trust ye not in a friend, put ye not confidence in a guide. Keep the doors of thy mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom, for the son dishonoreth the father, and the daughter riseth up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man's enemies are the men of his own house. Therefore, I will look unto the Lord, I will wait for the God of my salvation. My God will hear me. Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy. When I fall, I shall arise. When I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me. I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him until he plead my cause. and execute judgment for me. He will bring me forth to the light, and I shall behold his righteousness. Amen. God bless the reading of his word for his name's sake. Let's bow our heads in a brief word of prayer. Let's all pray. Father, e'er we take up the preaching and hearing of thy word, We'd be careful to ask for the Spirit's power, His leading, His work to be done. Thou dost know right well how much we need His help. We don't want to engage in something that will be nothing more than the works of the flesh, because the flesh never profits, but thy Spirit does. And I ask for his grace now, his fullness. Give a hearing to thy truth this day. Take the tiredness, the weariness, the sleepiness from our bodies, we pray. Even more than that, take any of that away from the inner man. May we all be refreshed this afternoon. and leave this place saying it was good for me to be in God's house today. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. My text is found in verse 8. Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy. When I fall, I shall arise. When I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me. From that verse, I want to speak to you this afternoon on dealing biblically with our falls and our fears. Dealing biblically with our falls and our fears. The prophet Micah was a contemporary with Isaiah and like that more well-known prophet, his ministry was primarily focused on the Southern Kingdom of Israel, of Judah. And like Isaiah, Micah was called to sound the trumpet and show God's people, whether they wanted to hear it or not, their transgressions. Both men had been raised up by God to expose the guilt of the people for their idolatry, for their rebellion, their immorality, and their failure to heed his oft-repeated warnings about how they were living. The opening verses of the chapter we read give us a stark view of how bad things actually were in the land of Judah. In verse 1, Micah, using this imagery of the vineyard, says he looked for spiritual fruit, which would have been expected in light of all the goodness that God had shown them, but he found none. In verse 2, he laments that there is an abysmal lack of good and godly men. And because of that, evil men were flourishing. Any semblance of morality and an orderly society had suffered an awful breakdown. In verse 3, you discover that there has also been a breakdown in the leadership. Those who should uphold the law, the princes and the judges, were easily bribed. Sound familiar? As Isaiah described them in his times, in Isaiah 59, he writes, judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off, for truth has fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter. In verse four, we even find that the best of them were like thorns, harmful, painful, injurious to others, anything but a benefit and a blessing to others. If that's what it was, it could be said about the best of them, what does it say about the rest of them? If the best were like that. Micah then goes on to show how there was also a breakdown in human relationships, especially in the home, in the families. Micah indicates verse 5 that not only could you trust your neighbor, but you couldn't even trust your spouse. It was a time when, verse six, a man's enemies are the men of his own house. Things were bad and sin was rampant. It looked like all was lost, that it was over. There was no hope. The only expectation, it seemed, was one of actual destruction at the hand of God. But in verse 7, Micah says, therefore, because sin had come in like a flood and seemed unstoppable, he says, I will look unto the Lord. Things are so bad. I will look unto the Lord. It's after he does that, that he utters the words of our text. Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy. When I fall, I shall arise, and when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me. Notice carefully how Micah has now brought this whole national situation that he's facing in the land into a very personal level. You get that? He does not say, when thy people fall, they shall arise. He says, when I fall, I shall rise. The very next verse shows what he means by this fall. I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him. Micah's saying this. I have sinned against him. He is identifying with the people. Pleading as if these sins were his own. It's a wonderful thing how the prophets did that, you know. He did exactly what Daniel did when he sought the Lord for the sins of his people. We have sinned, and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled. We've done this. Not they have. We have done this. I would submit to you that there's much that you and I can glean from how Micah dealt with his sin, false, show against how to deal with our sin, our false. not only with the falls and the failures, but the fears that often arise because of our sins and our faults. I speak of our fears because of what he says in the last part of the text, when I sit in darkness. That's a fearful place to be, sitting in darkness. So, let's dig down. First thing I want us to see is that we deal biblically with our falls and our fears when we realize that falling into sin is a common experience of all of God's people, bar none. Micah says, when I fall, not if I fall. In saying this, I am not, for a moment, I trust you would know this, I am not speaking lightly of sin in the lives of God's people. Sin is something that God hates. We can't begin to understand the depth of his hatred, his condemnation, how abhorrent sin is to him. He's the exact opposite. We can't even begin to grasp what the angels and the saints in glory understand about the holiness of God. Kim and Tanya understand something now about the holiness of God that we've never even come close to. They see it. Much less understand what God understands about his complete separateness from sin. I mean, sin required the death of his only begotten son. That's how you get a sight of how much he hates sin. I will put my son to death and I will punish sin that's not his because that sin has got to be punished in order to save my people. That tells you how dreadful sin must be to God. But when I say the falls and sinful failures are common experience of all of God's people, I'm only stating what is clearly set down in Scripture. The Word of God shows plainly that the strongest of God's people, the most eminent of saints, were not only liable to falling into sin, but they actually did fall into sin, and they did it more than once. Noah, he found grace in the eyes of the Lord. He was a great preacher. I mean, can you imagine your congregation for a hundred years is so unreceptive to your message? They don't want to hear it. The nutcase Noah, a hundred years, a preacher of righteousness. He built the ark, but Noah was found one day, passed out in his tent, drunk from wine. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They all lied. It was, you know, it wasn't hereditary, but they all lied. Jacob particularly, he was a conniver. How about David? Not just with Bathsheba, numerous times. Solomon and his many wives building temples for pagan gods? Solomon? You talk about a fall? And what about Samson? This man is listed in the Hall of Faith in Hebrews 11. But Samson? He had a real weakness for women. What about Christ's disciples? They all forsook him and fled. They had pledged such loyalty to him. When the crunch came, they forsook him, their master. And Peter denied him. He was the worst, not once, twice, but three times. John Mark, when things got tough on the mission field, he forsook Paul and Barnabas, went back home. What about the Christians who didn't come to stand with Paul when he first appeared before Caesar? I was the only one there. No one came to stand with me. Where were they? That was a failure. And out of those seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3, only two of them did not receive condemnation from the Lord. Only two. I have somewhat against thee five times that came up. So our larger catechism raises the question, 149, is any man able perfectly to keep the commandments of God? Answer, no man is able either of himself or by any grace received in this life perfectly to keep the commandments of God, but doth daily break them in thought and word and deed. Daily. Surely we understand that. That's why we go to the Lord daily and many times throughout the day. Forgive me. I shouldn't have said that. I shouldn't have thought that. Forgive me. We understand that when we don't do that, it creates a distance between us until we fess up. Isn't that how it is in your marriage? You've had a little falling out, maybe a big one. If you live with me, it'll be a big one. That's how things go. But it's not right until someone comes and says, honey, I'm sorry. That was wrong. Will you forgive me? Now you can enjoy it. But that's what happens on the level of Christ. We know what happens when we don't keep a short list. But what I'm stressing now is how to deal with those falls that go beyond those daily sins in word and thought and deed. There are sins that are greater than others. The Bible clearly teaches that. They're not all on the same level. greater in their affront to God, greater in the damage that they do, not only to you, but to others. Sometimes there are sins that it's really, I'm the one really feeling the brunt of this one, but others not so. It goes, it gets beyond you. You know, it's one thing to allow a lustful thought to linger in your mind, that's one. It is something altogether different to sit down and look at pornography. Altogether different. It's one thing to feel sinful anger rise up in your heart against someone. I'd like to clean their clock. But when you break out in a rage toward them with language and behavior that is so grieving to the Holy Spirit, that is different. They didn't know about your rage. They didn't know about your anger until you broke out. We all have to fight the sin of pride that's ever ready to raise up its ugly head, always there. It was Spurgeon who said that pride is the last sin that dies in a believer because it doesn't die until he's dead. That's what we have to live with. But when that pride reaches a state where God must take severe measures to humble us, it shows that we have fallen into sinful pride. We have fallen. Christians, and I mean honest to goodness Christians, have fallen into drugs and drink. I did it for three years of my life, three years, three years. They have fallen into sexual immorality. Christians have fallen into stealing, fallen into a lifestyle that denies the very existence of God. And the reality is that the Christian, he will find himself sitting in darkness. Sitting in darkness is, it's imagery that speaks of the fear and the anxiety and the captivity and even perhaps the despair. And it'll result in, when you're sitting in darkness, it's going to result in shame and guilt and sorrow, none of which we want. And none of that's beneficial to our walk with the Lord and our worship of God. I'll say it again unapologetically, the falls and failures are a common experience of all God's people. You have fallen. You've fallen into sin. It's true, and you know it. And you found yourself sitting in darkness. My second thought, however. According to this text, Satan's plans for our destruction will be defeated. They will be defeated. Micah speaks of his enemy. While there's no doubt it's a reference in context to Babylon and to Edom, the real enemy behind it all is Satan. It was his hatred for Jesus Christ. Satan works incessantly for the destruction of God's people in any day. As much then as now. So this warfare, we're seeing it played out on the stage of this world. It's not about Ukraine or Russia or Canada. It's not about that. Get this, who was it, Dr. Bob? Get it straight, young person. It's not about that. The devil would have us to believe that. It's not about some war between the Republicans and Democrats. It is not about that. So please don't talk like it is. Don't act like it is. Don't think like it is. This is not the war. It's not between conservatives and liberals. It's not between the woke and the unwoke culture. From the moment that God redeemed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, it's all about a war between Christ and Satan. That's what it is. This is all about a war between Christ and Satan. Between the seed that would destroy the head of the serpent. That's what it's all about. That was the first gospel promise. That's why there's warfare going on. It shows itself in all stages of time and history and word and the world, but it still goes back down to that. What we're seeing now on a scale, in some ways it is breathtaking, is this attack of Satan on the word of God, upon the work of God, and upon the people of God. It's Christ's people and Satan's people. It's Christ and his army, Satan and his army. His name is what? Apollyon. What does that mean? Destroyer. He strives to destroy and really everything that God has established and upholds, including the lives of God's people. I'm sure you've thought about it, but it becomes so relevant. It's amazing, you know. So in the beginning, He made them male and female. So now we have men that can get pregnant. It's bizarre, but you want to know what it is? In the beginning, he made them male and female. Monogamous marriage. Now it's no longer monogamous. Men marrying men, women marrying women. In fact, he'll go further. they'll marry their pet. You read that? Some woman married a dog, or whatever it was. What happened when Adam and Eve were found naked? What did God do? He covered them up. What's Satan doing? Undress them. Get them to show as much flesh as possible. It's an old, old story. One of the primary methods of trying to destroy believers, by that I mean their testimony, their happiness, their holiness, their usefulness, is his craft of tempting to sin. He wants you to fall. And you are already duped by him if you think you're above falling. What he wants is your total destruction. because he always views that as triumphing over God. That's what he's always wanted. He wants God's name to be blasphemed through the falls and the failures of his people so his name can be uplifted. Remember, he wants people to obey him. Look at what Micah says about the enemy as he looks upon his fall. Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy. That means that he knows the enemy is taunting him, laughing at his failure, mocking his profession of being a child of God. And the enemy is seen rejoicing over his apparent triumph over Micah. And he saw him fall and he was delighted. Not only was he taunting God, sir, but he was often terrorizing him. That's the darkness that comes into the heart and into the mind when a believer falls into sin. And Satan just looks upon him. See, folks, Satan looks upon your heart, your mind, as a playground. I'm going to have fun here. But never forget, he is at war. On the playground, he's not playing around. He comes to terrorize the child of God when that child of God has fallen. What do you think was going through Peter's mind when the Lord looked at him after denying him a third time? Here's a cock crow. He went out and wept bitterly. I think I know what Peter was feeling. It's over. I'm done as a disciple. I've denied my master, and I was so boasting I would never deny him. I'd die with him. The devil was having a field day, and he'll have a field day with you when you fall into sin. You're not a Christian. You're a phony. You're deceived. Because the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately. God has cast you away. He's done with you. It's over. You'll never have victory over that sin. Never, never, never. But after looking to the Lord, Micah says, rejoice not against me, O mine enemy, for when I fall, when I do, I shall arise. I will not stay down. Because my God will deliver me. It's as if he's saying to Satan, you're laughing at me now. You think you've conquered me. But I want you to know that I am going to have the last laugh. You're not. I one day will put my heel through Jesus Christ on your neck. The victory is ours. It's not yours. Every attempt that Satan makes to destroy the child of God will ultimately end defeat. Third thought this afternoon. We overcome Satan, our sins, and our fears through believing the gospel of God's grace. You try anything else. And you're going to be found sitting in darkness. Listen carefully again to this confidence, this note of assurity. Verse 7, I will look unto the Lord. I will wait for the God of my salvation. My God will hear me. He's still my God, and he will hear me. I will arise. The Lord shall be light unto me in my darkness. I have fallen, but I am not going to stay down. I sit in darkness, but it will not be everlasting darkness. Why is Micah so sure about that? Why is he so sure he's going to overcome? But the devil's not going to get the last word. because he believed that his God was a God of infinite grace and grace will always triumph over sin. Grace is the goodness, it's the kindness, it's the love of God shown to sinners who are totally unable to do anything to get his favor and who are in fact really deserving of being cast away into outer darkness. But Micah believed something I'm going to fall. I don't want to, but I know my heart too well. I will fall and I will fail, but I believe in God's grace. What does that mean? You know, I guess I could stop right there, right? Preachers often assume a lot. They expect, they get this, and they don't take the time to unpack something. Just believe in God's grace, and all will be fine. What does that look like in real time, though? What am I supposed to believe about God's grace, that I can have this confidence? Well, in the first place, believing in God's grace means that you believe in your need of God's grace. We'll start there. Immediately after declaring he will rise again from his fall, he says in verse 9, I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him. Micah doesn't make any attempt to excuse or to rationalize his sin. He doesn't try to ignore it, to rename it, or put the blame for it on anyone but himself. So he is just owning up to it. I did this. This is on me. I'm not blaming God. I'm not blaming my circumstances. I'm not blaming I had a bad day. Satan tempts, yeah, but Satan can't make me sin. He can just tempt me, but he can't make me sin. That's my choice. I decided to do this. And when you do that, not only do you own up to the sin, but you're saying, whatever the consequences are, that's what they are, however painful they might be. You see, we're never going to rise above these falls, these failures, if we don't agree with God about them. We have to agree with him. Can't lighten it. Can't say it's, well, it's really minor. I can move on. We'll continue to sit in darkness until we say, Lord, I need you. That's what it means you believe you need grace and nothing but grace is going to work. You're not going to try by your own willpower, your own effort to get up out of that place where you've fallen, because you can't. Believing in God's grace means that you believe in the gospel of electing grace. If Satan is our enemy, that means that God is our friend. And if we sincerely look upon sin as our enemy, it means that we belong to the family of God. And we belong to the family of God because God, before the foundation of the world, chose us to be in that family. It was his decision. It was his choice. In grace, we're in the family of God, not because of anything good he saw in us. So that means, you know, when the Lord chose you in Christ before the foundation of the world, he did it, being omniscient that he is, knew everything about you. Every sin you would ever commit, every fall, every backsliding, every expression of unbelief, every lie, every deceit, you just name it. He knew it all. And yet he chose you. It was a choice that was in grace. I choose you because I chose to. I loved you because I loved you. Whatever he saw, none of that prevented him to keep you from being one of his chosen people. That's grace. How that needs to be sounded more and more. Believing in God's grace means that you believe also in the gospel of God's regenerating grace. That means that you are dead in sin, and the Holy Ghost, by His own power, by an act, by an act, not a process, by an act of the Holy Spirit, You were brought from death unto life by being united to the life of Jesus Christ, born again, made a new creation in Christ Jesus. So that means that you now have Christ's life in you. And Christ's life in you means you have eternal life in you. And if it's eternal life, it can't ever end. If it's everlasting life, it can't ever end. There's nothing that Satan can do to make that life cease. If he can do that, he can kill eternal life. He can actually take Christ from you. He can take the Holy Spirit from you, because he is the one who lives. It's the Spirit of Christ living in us. And that means he's got more power than God, but he can't touch that life. That life is untouchable. It's Christ living in us. The life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. That's how we live. But it's his life. It's not I am living. It's Christ in me that's living. And he can't touch that life. Never. Untouchable. Praise the Lord. We are untouchable. He doesn't want you to believe that. I'll tell you why there's so much war against the Reformed faith. It's a death knell to him. You get people believing the doctrines of grace. Blows him out of the water. It is the foil. It's this gospel of grace that answers every lie of Satan. Of course, that would mean that believing in God's grace, you believe in the gospel of God's justifying grace. Being justified freely, freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. declared righteous freely by this, again, this irreversible act of God. Those who are unrighteous are declared righteous in his eyes. It's the holiness of Christ himself imputed to us. Well, the term is double imputation. All of our iniquities imputed to Christ, charged to his account. His righteousness imputed to us, put on our account. That's this transfer. And now here's the old, old story. One who was born in sin, conceived in iniquity, who practiced sin, an enemy of God, a servant of Satan, has been, by a declaration of the Almighty God, I will justify you. I will make you righteous, and you're forever righteous. You will never be unjust. You will always be righteous in my sight. I will always treat you as I treat my son, because you are in him. And whatever I do to the head, I will do to the body. Whatever I do to the body, I will do to the head. This is one in Christ. And we are now justified freely by his grace. So who can condemn us? Can our faults actually reverse what God has done? Did David when he sinned with Bathsheba? Did Solomon with his many wives? Peter is the Nile of Jesus Christ. Did he lose that righteousness? Not on your life. Oh God, justify him knowing he would do that. It's grace. It's not performance-based. It's not works-based. Only on Christ's work, that's what it's based on. It's on His obedience, His perfection. You know, that's how can it be that God should love a soul like me? Oh, how can it be? How? It's only through Christ and His obedience, because I can't do it. I can't keep the law like I want to, like I should. I fall and I fail. But I have a standing in Christ that will never be taken away from me. That's what you are saying, you know, when you sing the hymn, Jesus paid it all. Either he did or he didn't. In order to put it like this, payment God cannot twice demand, once at my bleeding shirt, his hand, and then again at mine. Once payment's made, it's done. That's why Bonner put it like this, upon a life I did not live, upon a death I did not die, another's life, another's death, I stake my whole eternity, not on the tears which I have shed, not on the sorrows I have known, Another's tears, another's griefs, on them I rest, on them alone. That's good to know. Believing in God's grace means that you believe in the gospel of God's sanctifying grace. He which hath begun a good work in you shall perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. He never, never stops working, even when we fall. He's still working in us, still sanctifying us. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son. We are predestined to be conformed. Oh, it is little by little. It's from glory to glory, little by little, we're being changed. And there's ups and there's downs, and there's downs and there's ups. But all the while, here's what I know about you folk. If you've been saved, if you've truly been saved, you're not who you were a year ago. If you are, if there's been no change, are you telling me that God has stopped working? You might not like the rate of the progress. And there are things that you can do about that. You can hurt it or you can help it. But you're still not going to stop God in finishing the work he's begun. But you know what else it means? It means that you believe in God's pardoning grace. Look at verse eight, this is how he ends it, it's wonderful. 18, who is a God like unto thee that pardoneth iniquity and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? He retaineth not his anger forever because he delighteth in mercy. He will turn again. He will have compassion upon us. He will subdue our iniquities and now will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. That is grace. What he's been doing all along in your life and mine is subduing our iniquities, putting them down, putting them down. Things that used to bother you at one time, they don't bother you now. You've grown. They're not troubling. Don't mean they're all going away, but no. The things that once were wild alarms cannot now disturb my rest. And that is so true of the child of God. Things that would have rocked your world now. God's got this. It's OK. The unbelief isn't so wild, so strong. The repentance is deeper. Your sensitivity to sin is greater. That's how it's supposed to be. All the while, he's subduing your sins. Final thing you believe about the grace of God, you believe it's covenant grace. Last verse of this chapter. Thou wilt perform the truth to Jacob, and the mercy to Abraham, which thou hast sworn unto our fathers from the days of old. That's covenant talk. And God is sworn by himself. He's actually sworn by his holiness. He's sworn by his holiness that he will carry out what he's sworn to carry out. He's gonna do this. So that means there's no fall, there's no failure, there's no backsliding, no sin that we will ever commit that will separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. That's what's at the heart of Romans 8. It's the covenant. their sins and iniquities, I will remember no more. Because that's what I said I would do. And I don't lie. I keep my word. I wonder how many of the Lord's people, maybe you even, maybe me, will die and immediately wake up and breathing the air of heaven, I made it. And shocked. I want for one to have a glorious entrance into the kingdom. To take Peter's words, 2 Peter chapter 1, verse 8 or 9. Home. Hallelujah. Waiting for this day. So whether or not you wake up shocked, or whether it's joyful, glorious, I knew this was going to happen. You'll still be there. You'll still be there. Because God doesn't lie. Revelation 17 verse 14 speaks of the time when this war is coming to a close between God and Christ. The angel tells John that Satan, the great harlot and the beast, shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and they that are with him are called and chosen and faithful. There is no better way to deal with our falls and our failures and our fears than this. This is the gospel of grace. Always has been and always will be. We'll be in heaven. Not because we were separated, fundamentalists, Presbyterian, Calvinistic. I'll be there because of Christ and His grace and no other reason. No other reason. You know what I'm going to be shocked at? When he says to me, well done, thou good and faithful servant. That's what's going to shock me. What a wonderful Savior. our heads in prayer and we'll turn to the Lord's table in a moment. Let's ask the Lord for His grace. Lord, we thank Thee for the time we've had in Thy word. We thank Thee for Thy grace, which is omnipotent grace. How we pray that Thou would encourage us all and use the truths today to give us that weaponry to fight the devil's lies All of his tricks in the bag. May we know today afresh this grace of God filling and flooding our souls. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen.