Sermon Tone Analysis

This Journey of Hope

Dr. Ron Dunn

Micah 3:12-4:4

 

        I want you to open your Bibles to the Book of Micah, chapter 3.  I'm going to read beginning in the last verse...verse 12 of that third chapter and we'll read through the fourth verse of the fourth chapter.

Micah 3:12:

 

        Therefore because of you, Zion will be plowed like a field,

        Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble, the temple hill

        a mound overgrown with thickets.

In the last days the

        mountain of the LORD'S temple will be established as

        chief among the mountains; it will be raised above the

        hills, and peoples will stream to it.

Many nations will come and say, "Come, let us

 go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house

 of the God of Jacob.

He will teach us his ways, so

 that we may walk in His paths."

The law will go out from Zion, the word of the LORD

from Jerusalem.

He will judge between many peoples

and will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide.

They will beat their swords into plowshares and their

spears into pruning hooks.

Nation will not take up sword

against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.

Every man will sit under his own vine and under his own

        vine and under his own fig tree, and no one will make them

        afraid, for the LORD Almighty has spoken."

Welcome to Utopia.

They will beat their swords into plowshares and they will study war no more.

Every man will sit under his own vine, under his own fig tree and no one shall be afraid of anything.

That's what everybody is hoping for.

When they have these meetings of the heads of state, the summit conferences...that's what they're all aiming for...for the day when nation will no longer war against nation, and when the weapons of war will be turned into weapons of commerce or agriculture as Micah says they will be beaten into plowshares.

When every man will have security...he shall sit under his own vine and under his own fig tree...and there will be peace...they shall not be afraid of anything.

That's what we all hope for, isn't it?

It is the hope of that kind of world that keeps people going.

I don't see how a man can live without hope.

It seems to me that hope...the expectation...the anticipation that in the future things are going to be right, or things are going to be better.

Hope is the spark that keeps the human spirit alive.

One of the saddest statements the Bible makes is found in Paul's epistle to the Ephesians, where he is describing those who do not have Christ...

He says, "...they are without God and without hope in the world."

One of my dearest friends in the ministry told me about his first wife who was in a very serious automobile accident and he was called to the hospital.

When he got there they were working on her in the emergency room and he spoke of standing outside the emergency room door, which were doors where he could watch through the windows, and he said that he watched in fascination as half a dozen or so medical personnel worked in a frenzied manner over the body of his wife and they were running here and there...getting this instrument and getting this hypodermic and there was a frenzy of activity as he watched that going on.

And it was that frenzy of activity that let him know she was still alive.

But, he said, "Suddenly all that activity ceased...just like that.

And everybody stopped moving around and running around and they began to remove their masks and they just stood there and did nothing..."  and he said he knew that she was dead.

And he said, "To me that has always been the picture of the despair that comes when all hope is gone.

I've never forgotten that scene.

While there was all that activity, they were hoping to keep her alive, but when it ceased and everybody stopped doing what they were doing, I knew then that there was no hope."

It is hope that keeps us going, isn't it?

Hope that things will get better...hope that God perhaps will heal us...hope perhaps that finances will straighten out...hope for the children...hope for your own life...that things will get better.

It's hope that keeps us going.

It seems to be that it's only when a person has lost all hope that he comes to the point where he would take his own life.

The airman that was shot down a few days ago over Bosnia...what do you think kept him going for six days?

Hope!

Hope of survival...hope of being rescued...hope of seeing his family again.

That's what keeps a man going in the jungles and when they picked up his survival signal there was hope given to the rescuers and his rescue has done what?

It means that any others who perhaps are shot down, there is hope for them.

Most of us had given him up.

We said, "Well, he's gone, he's dead."

But, when he came back and stepped down from that plane, why was everybody cheering so much?

It was because that meant that there was hope that even in the worse conditions a person can survive.

And as Christians we are on a journey of hope.

That's what Micah is talking about.

We set out in our lives, especially in the Christian life...it is a journey of hope that ends in fulfillment.

But as Micah describes this journey, and as our own experience teaches...this journey is an up and down affair.

There are those times when you're riding high on the crest of hope and you have no doubt that that hope will turn to reality and suddenly around the bend you're plunged down to the deepest pits of despair because it seems that hope has gone into an eclipse and you can barely make out that it is there.

And as Micah begins this fourth chapter and tailing off in the third chapter and moving into that fourth chapter...he is dealing with our journey of hope.

You know, there is a glaring contradiction between verse 12 of chapter 3 and verse 1 of chapter 4.  Did you notice it?

In verse 12 of chapter 3, he is describing the desolation of God's judgment.

He says, "Therefore, because of you, Zion will be ploweed like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble, the temple hill a mound overgrown with thickets."

It's as though he has taken away all hope from these people and I've had the feeling that sometimes after we've been going through the Book of Micah, we might say, "My goodness, this is the most depressing book I've read," because all he's been talking about so far is the sins of God's people and God's judgment upon them.

And so, that third chapter ends with this terrible picture of desolation!

And he said it's like it's overgrown with thickets!

But notice verse 1 of chapter 4... "In the last days the mountain of the LORD'S temple will be established as chief among the mountains; it will be raised above the hills, and peoples will stream to it."

What a contrast!

What a contrast!

That same mountain which is destroyed in one moment is going to be raised up in another moment and chapter 4 will go on and chapter 5 and others...and you'll see that it all ends in great expectation and great hope.

So, I want to talk to you this morning about this journey that all of us are on...this journey of hope.

And there are several things that I think we need to be aware of.

It's always good to know what to look for on a trip...not to be surprised...not to be taken unawares...so there are some things along the way on this journey of hope that I think it would be helpful for us to know.

 

1) At times, God destroys in order to build up.

God Himself will destroy that which He has created, that which He has built in order to build it up again.

In that twelfth verse he is saying that it is God who is going to reduce Zion to rubble.

As a matter of fact, Jeremiah the prophet, in his Lamentations, describes this same situation and in Lamentations 5:18, he says, "Mt.

Zion lies desolate and jackals prowl around it."

And it reminds me as I've seen through the years as you drive through the countryside, you sometimes will come to one of those little off roads and you'll come across a burned out house or a house that's still standing, but it has long since been abandoned.

It's always fascinated me.

And when I see one of those homes...maybe just a little clapboard home, and the chimney perhaps is hardly standing, and the porch has collapsed and the windows are all broken out and there are thickets and brush growing up around it and field mice and animals are living in it...I always wonder about the day that house was built.

I wonder what great expectations the people had who built that house...and with what hope they entered that house.

And I wonder about the times of joy that were there and the times of sorrow that were there...the children that were born in that house and grew up in that house and that house came to mean home to them and a place of joy.

I think about those things!

And I wonder what happened.

I look how sad it is now...this house falling down...long since abandoned...the echoes of any laughter long since lost.

It's a sad spectacle to me.

And that is the way the Bible portrays Zion...marvelous place of God's presence...marvelous temple...but now it lies in ruins and it's overgrown with thickets and the foxes and the jackals prowl around it.

Who has done this?  God!

We make a big mistake if we think Christian institutions and organizations and such as that are run by history or run by rules and regulations!

Their fate lies in the hands of God!

And sometimes He tears down in order that He might build up.