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Our scripture reading today is in Micah chapter 7. Please open your Bibles to the book of Micah. Chapter 7, our sermon text today will just be verses 18 through 20. However, for some context, I will begin the reading of God's word in verse 14. Micah 7, verse 14 through 20. As I read and as you listen, remember this is the word of God. Shepherd your people with your staff, the flock of your inheritance, who dwell alone in a forest in the midst of a garden land. Let them graze in Bashan and Gilead, as in the days of old. As in the days when you came out of the land of Egypt, I will show them marvelous things. The nations shall see and be ashamed of all their might. They shall lay their hands on their mouths. Their ears shall be deaf. They shall lick the dust like a serpent, like the crawling things of the earth. They shall come trembling out of their strongholds. They shall turn in dread to the Lord our God, and they shall be in fear of you. 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. He will again have compassion on us. He will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. You will show faithfulness to Jacob and steadfast love to Abraham, as you have sworn to our fathers from the days of old. Amen. You may be seated. There is a proverb that the world likes to use today that goes something like this. You got yourself into this problem, and now you can get yourself out. Well, brothers and sisters, that proverb is false if it's applied to our problem of salvation. The teaching of scripture is that once we have sin, especially having fallen in Adam, possessing sin, original and actual, we have crimes against God. So to speak, we have a debt against the Father that we can never pay off. There's nothing that we could ever do through our good works to regain such favor with God. Because of this sinfulness that we have in us, even the good works that we do are only so good that they would be tainted with sin. They can never achieve that level. And the gavel of God must come down upon all of us at the final judgment to decree damned. All of us would be doomed to an eternity in hell if we were simply left to our own efforts to redeem ourselves, to get ourselves out of this trouble, out of this pit that we have fallen into because of sin. And therefore, brothers and sisters, this solution cannot be reliant on our own works, upon our own merit. The solution must be God himself. Whereas we cannot reach ourselves out of this pit that we have dug ourselves into, that we have fallen into, God himself must reach and stoop down and draw us out of that. And this is the teaching of scripture. Scripture teaches us the gospel, salvation by God himself. And as for our part, All we did was mess it up. In the words of Jonathan Edwards, you contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary. There are so many great texts of scripture that present the gospel to us. The text here today, Micah 7, 18 through 20, I believe is one of the most glorious, one of the richest, most beautiful presentations of this good news in the entire Bible. Here at the end of this Minor Prophet book, we have this short yet really concise, densely packed poem of praise as the book kind of flowers in this glorious triumph of really this worshipful poem of God's salvation. I think the main thing that we see here in these verses is that salvation is of the Lord. The text here is teaching that salvation is of the Lord. And it does so, I think, in a very rich and complete way. Because the text not only tells us what the salvation is, the text also tells us who it is. who is doing the salvation and why he is doing it. In other words, that this text answers the question of the who and salvation, then also the what and the why. So we can approach the text with these three words, these three questions in mind. Salvation and who God is. Salvation and what God does. Lastly, salvation and why God does it. We see, first of all, salvation and who God is. Right here at the beginning of the text, we are struck with this rhetorical question. In these few densely packed words, who is a God like you? Of course, this is a question which is very short, yet it is pregnant with meaning, and there is so much that is packed in here. It's going to give birth to the rest of what we see in the rest of this text. We see here salvation, who God is, and this short question, who is a God like you? Now, the identity of God is actually very important here in the book of Micah itself. Perhaps you don't know this, you haven't been taught all the meanings of the names in scripture. What's very interesting is that the name of Micah itself is the question, who is like Yahweh? It is as if God has named this prophet after the message that he has commissioned him to give. So the prophet who is named, who is like Yahweh, is going to give his book a conclusion with this very question. We also see throughout Micah's book a real focus on God himself. What's interesting, if I'm not mistaken, the people are never called to repentance in the book of Micah. Now, I'm not saying that Micah was exempt from preaching repentance, unlike some of the other prophets. Far from the case. I believe, in all likelihood, Micah was preaching repentance all the time. perhaps in many, if not all, of his sermons. But in God's wisdom, he decided not to include that in this book. I think that there's a focus there. What it's trying to tell us is that this solution that's being presented to this problem of sin, this exile that is coming to God's people, is not a solution that is to be found in the people themselves. It's really a solution ultimately grounded in God himself. And so we have this really focused emphasis on God in the book. We also see in the prophets in general and really throughout the entire Old Testament this great focus on the nature of God. The fact that there is only one God and there is no one else like him. You probably have passages in Isaiah or other books of the prophets in mind that really hammer again and again the fact that there is no other God. Now, why do the prophets do this? Really, why does the entire Old Testament do this? Isn't this such a basic fact of our religion? Perhaps, if not, it's the first thing that we believe. In our theological conversations, don't we go on to talk about so many other doctrines, and don't we seldom speak about the fact that there is only one God? all the other gods that the pagan nation served that many other religions today worship are false gods. I think the reason for that is partly because it is such a basic fact, because it is the first thing that the people of God needed to know, but especially because they struggled so hard to get it. As we're reading through scripture, we come across the golden calf incident. This grievous example of idolatry that we see in scripture. God had just done a wonderful thing for the people of Israel and right after that they worship an idol made by their own hands. We think as well of the book of Judges as the people fell into idolatry in that book. Then we have King Solomon. We have the nation who is at its height of its physical prosperity, its outward glory. And a king that God appointed and spoke to directly, who authored books of scripture, was led astray in his heart to worship idols. Ahab made things worse, and by the time that we come to Ezekiel and his vision, his prophecy, we read of people actually worshiping idols in the temple of God. So grievous and so heinous had become this sin. Scripture hammers this because the people just didn't get it, so it seems. They had fallen back, had relapsed so many times in worshiping other gods. A question we can ask ourselves is, do we worship the true God? There are many today who don't, those even who say that they do. You're probably familiar with the doctrines of Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses who claim to be Christian in some kind of form to hold to the doctrine of Scripture, to hold to the God of Scripture. We need to realize that groups such as these do not worship the true God. We realize that, at least partly, because they do not worship the Son. What does Jesus say? John 5, 23, he says, whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. There are many hypocrites today, people who parade and who pretend, present themselves as the true messengers of God, as those who are truly presenting His Word. However, that's false. Such groups really are messengers and servants of their Father, the Devil, and they are those whom we should seek to evangelize, to give the truth to in love. Because if you do not worship the Son, if you do not see Jesus Christ as God, then you do not have the true God in mind. You are not serving the God of Scripture. We can think of the Jews as well, those who follow the Jewish religion but reject Jesus Christ as being God, who reject the New Testament Scriptures. They have a false god in mind because they have rejected the Son. But we can also have false gods that we serve even in a church such as this. Perhaps in your heart you have idols. This is a struggle for so many, even for Christians. We can have idols that we serve such as a marriage, a career, projects that we're working on. All these things are good things. These are good pursuits. There is a problem if we place him above God. We must have him and worship him alone. As for our God, we believe, and I touched on this briefly in regards to Christ, and Christianity, our doctrine of the Trinity. We confess as classic Christians, the ancient creeds, that there is one God and that this God subsists in three persons. There is one being, there are three persons. And these things are not contradictory terms. These are things that we have to keep in mind as we teach, as we seek to worship the true God. we see salvation here and who God is. And then we move into salvation and what God does. God's uniqueness here is going to be explained not only in terms of his singularity, the fact that there is only one of him, but also in his acts. There is no one, and there is especially no God, who does the things that our God does. And we see this in the rest of verse 18 and in verse 19, which I'm going to read again. Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity, passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever because he delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us. He will tread our iniquities underfoot. He will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. There are two main ideas that I want to bring out here. I think that Micah here, this text is presenting to us the body of salvation, what it is, its essence, its substance. And it is also presenting to us this in its clothing or certain covering. Let me illustrate this. There is a very famous and remarkable man named Teddy Roosevelt. Of course, you know he was the president of our country at one point. He was remarkable partly because he was so good and so famous, well known at doing several different things so proficiently. You can imagine presenting, doing a presentation on Teddy Roosevelt as an administrator. You can dress him up in a suit and a tie, give him a pen and a piece of paper in his hand. You can do a presentation of Teddy Roosevelt as a soldier, kind of picture him in his soldier's warrior's uniform, or even as a boxer from his younger days, seeing him in his boxing outfit, getting ready to face his opponent. Another illustration that is more related to our text here is that of salvation in the New Testament. Sometimes the reality of salvation is presented in terms of a justification. We have the idea, we have the language of God declaring us righteous, free from sin. We also have the idea of salvation presented in terms of a redemption, the idea, the language of God buying us back. Now, these are different terms, different imagery. You almost have different economies that are being used that are approaching salvation here from these different angles that are highlighting some specific aspect of it. That's what I'm getting at here when I think Micah presents to us the body of salvation, the reality of what it is, and then a certain covering, a certain clothing over it that is highlighting a certain aspect of it. I think, and I'll just tip you on this here, that salvation is presented to us as an exodus. That is the covering, that is the clothing that is presented to us. But going back here to the first idea, we have this body of salvation. Now let's zoom in, let's zero in on what this salvation is here that's being presented to us. Continuing with the analogy of the body, I think we can even see a distinction between a frame and a core. So you can think of our skin, which is like a frame, which helps to keep things in. And we have our inner organs, which are perhaps or certainly the most important things that our body, such as our heart. Let's start with the frame, which I think is presenting to us the acts of salvation. Now, I call this a frame because I think we see it here at the beginning of this section and at the end. This morning, your pastor, when preaching on Genesis chapter 9, used the idea of a chiasm. Now, imagine a chiasm as a triangle, a pyramid-shaped triangle, where you have something at the beginning which mirrors and reflects something that's at the end of the passage. And then move a step inward. What comes right after the beginning and right before the end, those things also mirror each other. And then you have something right in the middle. In the Old Testament, this is a common structure that is used to present and describe truths of Scripture and its text. I think that's what we see here. That's what I mean here by the frame and the acts of salvation that's being presented to us. Now, the first statement here at the beginning goes like this. A God who is a God like you who pardons iniquity and passes over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance. Now this is very important. We have this idea of our iniquities being pardoned, being forgiven, and then that's followed up by this almost parallel statement that God is passing over our transgression. But then, the second statement at the end, the second half of the frame, I think, even takes these ideas and seems to surpass them, to go beyond them. So, whereas verse 18 says that God pardons iniquity, verse 19 says that He treads our iniquities underfoot. Whereas God says in verse 18 that he passes over our transgression. In verse 19 he says that he casts all our sins into the depths of the sea. I want to make a note about verse 18. Verse 18, when it says God pardons iniquity, if I'm not mistaken here, there's a certain Hebrew term which normally means to lift up. The idea, at least to me, appears to be that God is taking our burden of sin and lifting it from off of us. You children here are probably familiar with the pilgrim's progress. You have Pilgrim, who has exited his city of destruction and is headed for the celestial city. Before his conversion, he is burdened down by sin, literally. There is a great burden that is on his back. You can imagine here, as you read this text, this great burden of iniquity being lifted up from off of him. In verse 19, we have what appears to be, at least to me, a contrasting image. We have God treading iniquity underfoot. It is as if with these contrasting images, Micah is presenting to us, as best he can, using his poetic toolbox, how God deals with our sin. Whereas in verse 18, God takes up our iniquities from us. In verse 19, he treads them under his feet. In verse 18 as well, we have the idea of transgression, which is being passed over. It is as if God simply is not looking at the transgression, at these sins that are being committed. Then I think at the end of this frame, which I'm calling it, the end of verse 19, you have this contrasting image of God taking that sin, looking at it dead in the eye, he waddles it up in a ball, and he casts it, he hurls it, and it sinks down into the depths of the sea. So we have here this frame of the Acts of Salvation, what God is doing here, and I think that we see these contrasting images, and especially in the second half of this frame and exceeding of the first statement as we are being told about what God does. And then between that frame we move to the core. Now remember our triangle. Here we're coming towards the middle. If the ends, the beginning and the end here, talk about the acts of salvation, this middle expresses these acts as the attributes of God. We see this beginning in verse 18, that God does not retain his anger forever because he delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us. And these words here tell us something about God's character. Who he is. These, we have three attributes I'm going to point out. And you can summarize these if you're taking notes in the terms of contempt, kindness, and compassion. Contempt here in verse 18, God does not retain his anger forever. And kindness, God delights in steadfast love. Compassion, of course, he will again have compassion on us. But then we have what I think is the core of the core, this statement right in the middle, God delights in steadfast love. I think that the phrases on either side of this actually mirror each other. We have one that presents God's kindness, God's compassion, I should say, in negative terms. And then at the end, we have it turned around to present it to us in positive terms. It is almost as if, Here's the way I see it. When it says, God does not retain his anger forever, that's a negative way of saying he will again have compassion on us. Now, why does Micah do this? Why does Micah first, why does Micah say this same thing in different ways? Why does he negate something that is bad in order to present to us something that is good? Let me illustrate this. Children, imagine you're playing outside. You're playing baseball in the yard and you take a big swing and then the ball hurls through the air and crashes through a window. You're afraid that you're in trouble. And this fear, I'm in trouble for breaking this window, is plugging you. Then your father comes to you. He doesn't present the good news first and say, I'm going to pay for this window. He's going to comfort you. He's going to confront the negative thoughts and say, you're fine. You're not in trouble. You don't have to pay for this. This is on me. I think that's similar, that's akin to what we have presented here. We have the people who are troubled, who are indicted, as it were, with their sin. They have the guilt and the stain of sin upon them, and God first comes to them, he confronts that problem, and then he provides the reason, the solution behind that. Right in the middle, though, of those two sentences, we have the glorious phrase, he delights in his steadfast love. I usually don't like to give certain Hebrew words, but this one here is very important. If you've heard the word hesed, which is translated here, steadfast love, it's because it's a very important word. It's a word that is used centrally to describe God's faithfulness, his great kindness. And there are many ways of translating this word throughout the various versions of scripture that you use. And as we're going to see later here, I'm giving you a tip off for what's going to happen. This plays the central role. This loving kindness of God plays the central role in why God does what he does. So remember that. There's more about that later. We have here this body of salvation, the reality of what God is doing, these acts of salvation, which are expressions of His attributes, what He is. And then I think we also can see the covering of salvation, it being presented to us in the terms of an exodus. Now, I can't necessarily break down this text and say, OK, these three verses here or these two verses here are about the body of salvation. And then afterwards, you have this verse, which is about the covering of it. I think this is really presented throughout the text. It's woven throughout this passage really seamlessly in order to present the realities of salvation to us. As we saw in our scripture reading, what God promises to do is very much like the historical exodus. I began our scripture reading in verse 14, which talks about shepherding God's people with a staff which says in verse 15, as in the days when you came out of the land of Egypt. So we have actually some precedence in this text for this. And this is where Micah is building up to. There are many similarities actually here with what's called the Song of the Sea. Now if you remember the story of the Exodus in Exodus chapter 14, the people of Israel are miraculously delivered through the walls of the sea and they pass through. Such a fantastic miracle of God in the Old Testament to display His glory in saving His people. Then the next chapter, Exodus 15, we have the Song of Praise, often called the Song of the Sea. And there are allusions from this text to that one that are woven throughout that. And I'm not going to go into too much depth here, but I will give you a taste of some of the things that are mentioned. For example, the very first phrase here, who is a God like you, echoes Exodus 1511. Who is like you among the gods? And if you're familiar with the story of the Exodus, perhaps you'll remember the infamous question of the Pharaoh in his defiance and his rebellion. He says to Moses, who is this God? Here we have an answer. This is the God. We have that there, and when we come to verse 19, we have this imagery of God treading our iniquities underfoot. And certainly, this is military imagery. The idea of sin representing the enemies of God now being conquested, being subdued. And then, of course, this becomes very explicit and absolutely unmistakable when we read that you will cast all of our sins into the depths of the sea. So we have salvation presented to us here in the terms of an exodus. People are being delivered from sin into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. These are some of the similarities that are being presented to us. What I think, though, might be even more striking are the differences. Now, this exodus here is being used as an analogy. With all analogies, there are similarities and there are differences. I find the differences here very striking. In the historical exodus, the problem is physical, and the solution is also physical. Here though we have a spiritual problem and what Micah is presenting to us is a spiritual solution. Micah talks about the bondage of the people in terms of bondage to sin and of course this is language that we're all familiar with. Of course the solution is a spiritual salvation. Now this is interesting because If you're familiar with the flow and the content of the book of Micah, it seems entirely unnecessary. Now, why do I say that? Why do I say that it seems entirely unnecessary that this deliverance that is being spoken of is spoken of in spiritual terms? Throughout the book, we have a physical problem and a physical solution that's being presented. For example, the people are going out into exile and there are certain times in the book where a physical solution is presented. For example, Micah 2.13, Micah 4.6, Micah 5.3 all talk about a solution of God restoring his people from the exile in Babylon to the land. That's the context here. And so we have almost every reason to think that this is what Mike is going to present to us here. But the fact that he does something different, that he far exceeds that and surpasses that, and it gives a solution to this problem that is beyond their expectations should really strike us. What Micah is doing is not going to the symptoms. He's going to the root of the disease. The very reason the people here are going into exile or have the threat of going into exile is because of their sin. God here is saying, I'm going to get to the root of the problem and deal with your sin. Micah sees sin as the great enemy, but do you? If I were asked before preparing this sermon, who or what do you see as your greatest enemy, you can name one, two, three. I might not have mentioned sin, but that's what Micah says here. Sin is a serious enemy. John Owen once said, be killing sin or sin will be killing you. Sin should be an enemy of the believer because it is an enemy of Christ. Christ became incarnate and died for us in order to free us from our sin. So it is a very serious thing. Sin is not something that we should take lightly. Oftentimes, it is the human nature when we're approached with a problem, when someone tries to point out a moral flaw in us, for us to kind of deflect that or to give rationalizing excuses. And perhaps, and certainly there is a good time for defending yourself if you really have been sinned. But there are so many times when that's just a sinful desire to try to shirk away blame from when we truly do deserve it. It's a problem that needs to be addressed. We can study scripture, read good books by Puritans and others, to try to search our hearts, purge ourselves, be purged with the help of God's Spirit from the sin which seeks to ensnare us. All of these things that are being said about God's salvation are said in terms of us. The name of Jesus Christ does not appear in this text, but you can't read it without thinking about him. I think the name of Christ is written between every line. What we can do is we can see these things that are said about us, then we can invert them, look at the opposite, and see how those apply to Christ. For example, Micah here says, God pardons our iniquity. But God condemned Christ. God passes over our transgression, but God visited our transgression on Christ, did not pass over him, but we saw the death of God's firstborn. God does not retain his anger forever against his elect people. But God poured out his anger, his wrath on Christ upon the cross. God delights in steadfast love for us, his people. But it pleased the Lord to bruise him. Micah says, God will again have compassion on us. This is because God forsake the son who cried, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? God will tread all our iniquities underfoot because Christ was trodden underfoot. at the cross. God will cast all of our sins into the depths of the sea because Christ, as it were, was cast into the lake of fire for those few hours upon the cross. Brothers and sisters, let us not take our salvation lightly. Let us never be glib as we speak about the wonderful things that God has done for us. We partly shouldn't take them for granted because of what it costs Christ. Salvation may be free for us. It wasn't free for Christ. He had to purchase it. And what a somber truth this is. Shouldn't this cause us to reflect and meditate upon his glorious love? How he humbled himself as no other man has ever humbled himself. Who suffered as no other man has suffered for our salvation. Certainly, this is a very healthy thing for us to meditate upon. We only have salvation because of our substitute in Jesus Christ. But also think, you may not have this salvation. And I say that because I don't know the hearts of each and every one here. As we read scripture, as we study church history, perhaps, we see that there are so many hypocrites, there are so many imposters who profess the name of Christ, who appear to hold to outward religion, but who truly do not have Christ in their heart. And if that is you here today, then these promises, these words don't necessarily apply to you. You can't take it for granted that you are in Christ because you are in church today, because you are raised by Christian parents. Everything that we just said about Christ being the one who takes the brunt of God's wrath will one day be applied to you. you will be cast into the lake of fire. If you do not trust upon the Christ who bore God's wrath, if you do not truly repent of your sins. So if you have not repented of your sins today, if you are sitting here, harden in your heart because of your unbelief. Repent. Paul says today is the day of salvation. You are sitting here in church. You are hearing Christ preached. The means of grace, as it were, are being showered upon you from above. What better time is it to look upon Christ and to love him and to accept him as your own? Flee your sin. Repent of this serious enemy that is seeking to slay you and to drag you down to the pits of hell with it. Look upon Christ. Let Him raise you up into the glories of heaven. This is what God does for us. and salvation. We have seen, as we have gone through this text, salvation in who God is, salvation in what God does, and finally and more briefly in verse 20, salvation and why God does it. I'll go ahead and read this verse one more time. You will show faithfulness to Jacob and steadfast love to Abraham as you have sworn to our fathers from the days of old. There are two aspects of why God is doing this, why God does this salvation, that I think we can draw out here from the text. The first of these is God's covenant. We have God's covenant promise. This is in view, I think, very obviously as we see the names of Jacob and Abraham. And when it says that God swore to our fathers, namely to those fathers, we have God's covenant faithfulness. As you read Genesis, that's where you're going to see God makes a covenant with the fathers to be faithful and to have steadfast love to them. And this is what is invoked here. There are a few things I want to note about God's covenant promise. Back in Genesis 15, there actually is a prophecy about the Exodus. the entire course of this portion of history is laid out centuries before it would begin to take place. God tells Abraham that his ancestors, excuse me, his descendants would be in bondage in Egypt for 400 years and then he would bring them out, he would bring them back to the land. This is exactly what happened. This historical exodus happened because of God's promise to Abraham. So it makes sense here that this spiritual exodus is invoking God's promise to Abraham as well. A second thing I want you to note is that the Abrahamic promise, this covenant with the fathers, was not purely a physical covenant. We need to recognize there's physical aspects for sure. We have circumcision, we have the promise of inheriting the land of Canaan, but even in the book of Genesis we can see that the covenant has a spiritual nature. Genesis 17-7 we have this covenant promise that God will be a God to him and to his descendants. In Galatians 3.14 we have this word that the promise of the Spirit comes to us because of the Abrahamic Covenant. And if the promise of the Spirit isn't spiritual, then I don't know what is. We have clearly the Abrahamic Covenant as one that has the spiritual dimensions to it as well. I have several texts here that are written down about the New Testament, which give more information on how we see the spiritual dimensions of the Abrahamic Covenant. I'm not necessarily going to labor those now, but we have a spiritual exodus because we have a spiritual covenant, and that's mainly the point that I want to bring out here. Not only do we have God's covenant promise, but we also have God's character. What stands behind God's covenant in the first place is His character. It's His very nature. God cannot deny Himself. 2 Timothy 2.13 says that it is impossible for Him to deny Himself. Hebrews 6 says it is impossible for God to lie. And that really puts the focus on God here, doesn't it? The fact that these acts of salvation are coming from this covenant, and that the formation of this covenant wasn't on the basis of man's actions. It's on the basis of God. It's simply because He gave His word. Because God gave His word, to save his people out of the abundant love that is in his heart. We see the great salvation historically in the Exodus and spiritually as God delivers us from our sin. As I noted, there's the phrase, steadfast love, that rich Hebrew word in verse 19. It resurfaces here. What I think Micah is doing, as I mentioned, that triangular-shaped chiasm earlier has as its core, its center, the idea of God's steadfast love. But it's just a seed there, it's just a word. But it's as if you have that kernel in that core that shoots forth in verse 20 and really flowers and blossoms and we see so much more about God's character which is unfolded in His covenant faithfulness to His people from the days of old. God makes a promise. Do you trust God's promises though? Perhaps you're here today and you struggle with assurance. You struggle to believe that God really loves you or anything else that God has promised in scripture. The testimony of the word of God is that he is always faithful. If you truly look to Jesus Christ, if you have saving faith, if you repent of your sins, if you have true love for him, the assurance and the promise is there that you are his. You should look to Christ, you should come to Him, and you should accept that you are His, if indeed you have believed and repented. We have seen in this text a beautiful and full, rich description of salvation. We have seen salvation and who God is, salvation and what God does, and then finally salvation and why God does it. And the way that this is given to us really highlights God's nature. God does what He does because He is who He is, as one of my professors loves to say. And this here is given to us, this is presented to us in a way that highlights God's glory. Because everything that God is doing in salvation is rooted in Himself. He is not doing it for us primarily. He's doing it for Him. really highlights the fact that God is all in all. Everything has come from him and everything is going to return to him. So we perhaps could respond and praise the way that Micah Hiz is here at the end of the book. What a marvelous God we serve, don't we? We as Christians should be able to be like Micah and ask the question, who is a God like you? Who is a God like you who is one in being and three in person and infinite in power and glory? Who is a God like you who simply spoke a word and the world came into existence? Who is a God like you who looked upon fallen man and decided to have pity and compassion on him? and to plan to save and to redeem him. Who is a God like you who has designed this brilliant plan of redemption? As we read, Old Testament knew how God was working all things in its time so that when the fullness of time had come, God would come as a man. Who is a God like you who would become incarnate and live his whole life in complete righteousness to die for our sin? Who is a God like you who would atone for sin on the cross, who would bear the weight of the sins of God's elect in order to save them? And who is a God like you, as we heard today, who bears patiently, who endures against the sin of wicked men for thousands and thousands of years, who forbears and forestalls his judgment, inviting people to come to repentance so that they can repent even now. before he comes again. And who is a God like you who is working to restore all things to himself in heaven and on earth? Who is a God like you who pardons iniquity, who passes over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance, who does not hold his anger forever, but delights in steadfast love and will again have compassion on us? Christian, this is our God, the God that we serve today, the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. And we are all blessed to serve and to hear about the one living and true God. And even as Micah here breaks forth and concludes his little book with this magnificent, rich description, this poem of God's great, rich, full salvation, shouldn't we much more, having a fuller description and picture of God's salvation, be able to erupt in a symphony of praise? Amen. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word, for who you are, for what you do, for why you do it. May this humble us, oh Father. May we see that you are acting out of your own character. May we serve you all of our days. not doing actions for our own attention, but simply to reflect what you have done for us. Help us to appreciate and wonder at the glories of our salvation. Help us to live lives of gratitude for the conquest of sin that you have done in our lives. Now to live as free men unto you, serving you as free men the rest of our days, until you receive us in glory. And then we will have such a better picture of who you are. There is no one like you. All this we pray in the name of our Savior, Christ Jesus. Amen. Brothers and sisters, let's respond to God's word and to our glorious God who is gracious and forgiving. Let's sing together number 551 in your red hymnal. Blessed is he who's trespassed. 551, let's stand together and let's sing together.
Salvation Is of the Lord
Series Guest Preachers
Sermon ID | 61223356392097 |
Duration | 50:09 |
Date | |
Category | Sunday - PM |
Bible Text | Micah 7:18-20 |
Language | English |
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