Micah 2: East Freedom Chapel

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Intro:

The book of Micah has become one of my favorite of the Minor Prophets. (We had already chosen Micah as the name for our 3rd son but as I have preached through the book now I am certainly glad that we did) Along with the prophet Joel these two prophets have helped me to see the flow and continuity of the OT to the NT, the promise and fulfilment, the promise of what was coming and seeing those things come to be, better than any other effort that I have made at that in the past, it is admittedly a somewhat confusing and even controversial endeavor to take up as faithful Christians have differed on these matters widely over the years. Never the less I have been very thankful for what these two prophets in particular have done for me in this regard.
Now we aren't going to do much of that today as we only have time this morning to take up Chapter 2 but as we work our way through this chapter we will see at the end one of the important aspects of this transition o the Old to the New as we take up for a moment the language of typology and see one OT King held up as a type of the King of Kings. More on that though in a moment.
First though just a couple of opening remarks about the book itself. It is divided up into three main segments and each segment begins with the cal to hear what the Lord is saying through the prophet, this cal to hear is how we divide up these segments, 1-2, 3-5, 6-7. Each of these segments in turn then contain language of warning, seeking to move the people back toward faithfulness to their covenant Lord and away from the idolatrous worship and associated social ills that had come as they had mingled the worship of YHWH with the pagan worship practices of the nations around them. We then find passages of judgement issued because the people would indeed fail in wide measure to heed the warnings and would experience the fierce judgment of God as proclaimed in the Covenant, particularly in Deuteronomy 28. But lastly each of these cycles ends with passages of hope that are given to the remnant of these people that Go had chosen to preserve through the fierce judgement and would take up again and bring about, through them, the immense promises of blessing and redemption toward which all of the promises of the OT point us toward and key in the book of Micah though we will not see Him much today is this central figure who would bring the realization of all of these promises, One who Micah tells us will be born in Bethlehem!
So today we take up chapter 2 of this book and we will have missed the passages of warning that comprise chapter 1 and we will jump right into the passages of judgement that begin this chapter and two brief but powerful verses of hope that end the chapter.

PRAY & Read

There are two distinct judgments that are levied in this chapter and the first here in verses 1-5 concerns the wealthy, possibly rulers of the people.
We read that these powerful people have become so entrenched in their wickedness that they literally scheme their wicked plans as they lay in their beds.

Woe to those who devise wickedness

and work evil on their beds!

When the morning dawns, they perform it,

because it is in the power of their hand.

While this passage obviously points us to the wickedness and depravity that had filled these wealthy powerful individuals with such a lust for more wealth and power that they laid awake at night scheming what wicked plans to enact the following day it also directs us to the omniscience of the One who is now coming as Judge! The bedroom is a private place, this is why these individuals use this place for their scheming, who will know they might be tempted to ask? Here I am alone in the safety of my room to plan in my heart tomorrows wicked schemes. Oh how disastrously wrong they were! Had they so quickly forgotten that theirs is a God who sees and knows all. The God who sees even into the mind and heart of man and knows each and every thought and imagining? David had told them this in Psalm 139! We see that they had the power to wake and perform these wicked schemes but what they did not have was the power to hide their wicked minds from the all seeing and all knowing eye of YHWH!
We see the kinds of deeds they were carrying out in the following verse. Fields and houses they were taking away from those with less money and power than themselves.
Now on the one hand we can naturally relate to this being a wicked thing to do, to take away a persons inheritance is something I think we can all acknowledge is wrong but we also have to understand a bit of the cultural and theological background of this to understand the full extent of this sin as an affront against not only men but God.
God had given the people of Israel the promised land as an inheritance. When they came into the land they divided it amongst themselves and the land that each family was given was to become their portion, their inheritance, forever! This was an inheritance given not by Joshua or the leaders of Israel but given by God himself to every Israelite family! While a family could, for a time sell off a piece of land that they had inherited eventually all lands and homes would revert back to their original family owners during the year of jubilee.
This is a big part of what it means to be a child of God, to have a perpetual inheritance in His land, to dwell forever in the place that He has provided. Christ, told His disciples, “Behold I go to prepare a place for you.” When you are His, God provides your inheritance. These wicked people where then not just stealing land but in a sense robbing their neighbors of their identity as children of God, taking from them the possession, the inheritance that belonged to them as God’s children. They were not simply wronging their neighbors, they were wronging God!
We see the best example of this in the story of Ahab and Naboth in 1 King 21.
Ahab asks Naboth for His vineyard and when Naboth says no Ahab throws a fit and even goes in and lays down on his bed, and what do you think he was thinking about as he lay there? You likely know the rest of the story! Ahab’s wife, the wicked queen Jezebel, hatches a plan to have Naboth killed and to take his inheritance, the inheritance that had been given by God to his fathers, and give it to her wicked husband!
This type of wickedness causes God to now pronounce the judgement. We read:

3  Therefore thus says the LORD:

behold, against this family I am devising disaster,

from which you cannot remove your necks,

and you shall not walk haughtily,

for it will be a time of disaster.

4  In that day they shall take up a taunt song against you

and moan bitterly,

and say, “We are utterly ruined;

he changes the portion of my people;

how he removes it from me!

To an apostate he allots our fields.”

5  Therefore you will have none to cast the line by lot

in the assembly of the LORD.

We see that these people will be humbled. God is going to remove their portion from them. God had given them their possessions, they had cheated and stolen others possessions and now what they have will be taken from them by God and given to the people who were coming to conquer them. However, I want us to take a moment here and focus on the last line, on verse 5, we see here the most devastating judgement of all!
In Joshua 18 we read about how the land was originally allotted to the people through the casting of lots. Lest you be tempted to think this was a game of luck remember Proverbs 16:33
Proverbs 16:33 ESV
The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.
Implicit in this statement about judgement is that there is going to come a new day when God once again allots a portion to His people, a day beyond the judgment. God is going to call an assembly of His people and lots will be cast, the inheritance will be divided again but what will be the lot of these wicked people in that day? They will have none left to cast the lot, they are to be utterly cut off. There remains no hope for them, they will never again be called God’s people. They have robbed others of their divine inheritance, their identity as children of God and so God is going to utterly cut them off from even the possibility of redemption. There is a promise implicit here but the promise is not for them, they are to receive judgement!

Wicked Preachers

The next judgement falls on the religious leaders of the people. The worst scenario for a land is to have both wicked rulers and crooked preachers. One job of the preacher is to speak the truth and bring the word of God to bear on the actions and ways of those in power. (We would do well to remember that when we are tempted to think that we have no place in the political realm)
In Judah and also Israel though those who were to speak the word of God had likewise been corrupted by the wickedness of the syncretism that the people had embraced. Their relationship with God had been corrupted and so their relationships with their fellow man were also corrupted.
Micah begins:

6  “Do not preach”—thus they preach—

“one should not preach of such things;

disgrace will not overtake us.”

These wicked preachers were telling Micah not to preach. This word for preaching is not good, it is pejorative. It means an incessant dripping like a frustrating water faucet. They do not have a high regard for the words of Micah. They view his preaching like an ever dripping hose, with annoyance. But Micah points out that the light they are casting on his preaching is exactly what they were doing; “Thus they preach.” They, Micah says, are the ever dripping faucets! Their dribble sounds like this:
“One should not preach of such things.”
Meaning judgment, destruction, calling people to account for their wicked deeds. These, they say, are not the types of things we ought to be preaching about.
“Disgrace,” they say, “will not over take us.”
These people have so deluded themselves that even in the midst of the wickedness that surrounded them they still believed as we will see reinforced in the next lines that God was for them, that He would do nothing but pour out blessings. They didn't believe that God would ever do to them the kinds of things that Micah was prophesying. How could he? They were His people, Jerusalem was His city, it was the place where His temple was, how could disgrace ever befall this people?
Micah next asks:

Should this be said, O house of Jacob?

Should what be said? The answer is the things that these false preachers were saying in response to Micah’s prophecies.

Has the LORD grown impatient?

Are these his deeds?

These false preachers placated the people by preaching to them of God’s never ending patience. That the types of deeds that God does are only good, that God is nothing but love unending.
Sounds a lot like the preaching that you hear in many places today. Acceptance, love, and grace, all gutted and meaningless as these wonderful truths of God are twisted beyond recognition so that people can continue on in their in without a twinge of conscience at the thought of God.
Micah’s response?

Do not my words do good

to him who walks uprightly?

Good godly preaching does good to those who have set their hearts to please God, to walk uprightly.
Commentator Richard Philips notes:
Jonah & Micah What Kind of Preaching?

Micah suggests that the most telling indicator of our spiritual condition is revealed by our answer to this question: what kind of preaching does your heart crave: soft and false, or hard and true?

Micah leaves no doubt of the importance of solid biblical preaching in the lives of God’s people. This ought to be a foundational principle for any church that seeks to be a faithful and biblical assembly of God’s people!
Micah’s neighbors though were not being called to account through solid biblical preaching. The result was that they were pressing on farther and farther into their wicked ways and growing ever more callous as they mistreated those around them. They have become enemies of God! As a result they will be judged, they will be destroyed because of their own uncleanliness!
Micah levies one last parting blow for these false preachers:

If a man should go about and utter wind and lies,

saying, “I will preach to you of wine and strong drink,”

he would be the preacher for this people!

All the people wanted to hear was blessing, they wanted no part of the call to righteousness that Micah issued, As a result God had given them preachers full of wind and lies, preachers who spoke of blessing, of coming days of wine and strong drink symbols of blessing and abundance.
There is hardly anything more damning then being reinforced in your wickedness by wicked preaching and this is exactly what was taking place in Judah and for this they would be judged!

Blessing

Now suddenly at verse 12 Micah turns course and utters a blessing. Some have tried to say that the suddenness of this turn means that it was inserted later but it is not odd to find these types of sudden shifts in the prophets and this blessing also meshes well with the last line. You see Micah, in contrast to the windy promises of wine and strong drink preached by these false preachers shows us what a real promise of God looks like.
Micah’s promise is in the first person, it comes directly from God and God says:

I will surely assemble all of you, O Jacob;

I will gather the remnant of Israel;

I will set them together

like sheep in a fold,

like a flock in its pasture,

a noisy multitude of men.

You see true promises of hope do not gloss over the results of sin and the necessity of judgement. This promise is that a remnant would be gathered. The word remnant implies that this promise is only going to take effect after the events of God’s judgement have been brought to pass. Remnant implies that not everyone gets in, this is a limited group of people. Contrary to popular ideas “Love doesn't win” in the sense that modern liberal theologians think that it does. There are those as we have seen in verse 5 who will be cut off from God’s people forever, for these there is no hope left of redemption, there is no rescue, only a fearful expectation of impending judgement!
But for the remnant there will be an ingathering. They will be gathered to safety in the shepherd’s fold. They will be provided for like sheep in a pasture, they will have a shepherd to lead and care for them once again.
The second part of this promise is a post script by Micah, note the switch from the first person, to what this promise is going to look like. God Micah says is going to deliver his people, he will gather them and he will lead them.

13  He who opens the breach goes up before them;

they break through and pass the gate,

going out by it.

Their king passes on before them,

the LORD at their head.

The language of the breach and passing by the gate is the language of victory. To open a breach most specifically speaks of breaking a hole in a wall but it can also more generally speak of a powerful force opening a way of victory. God is powerful and He has turned back towards His people in grace and is now going to lead them out in victory!
Now, these two verses are some of the hardest in the book of Micah to interpret. The main question is timing, when was this promise fulfilled, what events does it speak of?
At first glance, and this is where I was for a long time, this promise seems to be 100% messianic. Words like remnant, and assembling Israel and Judah, all of them, and the language of a King leading them and the Lord at the head, these things just seem to be pointing forward to Jesus. Some even try to tie the one who opens up the breach to John the Baptist and then the King leading the people out to Jesus. I will admit that when I first saw that mentioned as an option I was convinced.
However, there is another line of reasoning. You see the events of the deliverance brought about during the days of Hezekiah fit really well with this promise of hope.
In chapter 1, though we haven't studied it today, we see that that when Sennacherib moved from the Assyrian conquest of Israel down into Judah he had conquered all of the fertile region between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean sea, the location of the cities and towns from a pun poem of chapter 1. His army was at the very gates of Jerusalem, a relief carving on a wall in his palace states that he had shut Hezekiah up in Jerusalem like a bird in a cage. We read that he sent messengers to strike fear into the hearts of the people who had fled the destruction and had been gathered for safety within the walls of Jerusalem. His messenger mocked God and mocked God’s king. You can read about the story in 1st Kings 18, 2nd Chronicles 32, and Isaiah 36 & 37. There we read that Hezekiah turned to the Lord in prayer and that Isaiah prophesied that God would come with a miraculous deliverance for the people. When the people in the city woke up the following day 185,000 Assyrian soldiers lay dead before the city because the Angel of the Lord had gone into their camp and struck them down.
The people who remained in Judah, gathered together for safety in the walls of Jerusalem and experienced a miraculous delivery by God himself as he opened up a breach, powerfully provided a way of deliverance, and Hezekiah leads his people out victoriously with the LORD at their head. It really does fit!
So which is it? Is this messianic or is this a passage of hope that was fulfilled in Micah’s own day?
Well, I don’t think that we have to necessarily choose between the two. As I pondered the options, on one side you have the clearly messianic language of the promise and as we will see the clear alignment of the coming passages of hope with the coming of Christ, and on the other hand we have the historical record of the defeat of Sennacherib that fits so well with what we read here.
The third way is to see Hezekiah and the deliverance promised from Sennacherib as a type of that which we will see accomplished in Christ. My mind went to a new song that we sing at our church, “Christ the True and Better Adam.” Could it be that this promised deliverance spoken of by Micah is couched in such messianic language because that deliverance was to serve as a type of the deliverance that the forthcoming promises of hope in the rest of Micah will speak of.
I truly believe this is the best way to view this passage. In this way what we see happening in Hezekiah’s day drives our minds forward to what Christ will do and when we allow that to happen we can see some truly amazing parallels.
One of my favorite parallels between these verses and the work of christ is found in verse 12 and the language used there. God speaks of gathering together a remnant of Israel and Judah and He sets them together “like sheep in a fold”
In John 10 Jesus describes Himself as the good shepherd, a passage that every follower of Christ ought to be very familiar with and there in that passage in verses 14-16 Jesus says:

14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.

Jesus came as a shepherd to the sheep of the fold of Abraham, the remnant of Israel and Judah and to gather them together and he uses the language of Micah (and Jeremiah) and the sheep fold to describe this ingathering. He also expands the promise of this gathering to sheep that are not of the fold of the remnant of ethnic Israel.
We will see this gathering beyond the bounds of ethnic Israel also alluded to in the coming promises of hope in Micah.
So we have Hezekiah, a faithful king, gathering what remained of his people to safety in Jerusalem and Christ will come to gather those who are His to safety and as we have already seen this language of the fold and the pasture naturally flows into the promises of an inheritance and the permanent provision of a place to dwell with God as Christ promises that He is going to prepare a place for us!
Then in verse 13 we see the imagery of a miraculous provision of victory. God did indeed provide victory for the people of Israel over the Assyrians but we know that when Christ came He won a victory, not over earthly foes, but rather won for us the victory over sin and death. Destroying 185,000 Assyrian soldiers was a great victory but the victory that was won for us by Christ is even greater. The breach that He broke open was a breach through the very curse that bound us to death and separation from God for ever. When Christ died the veil of the temple was torn in two, access to God was restored. And then Christ goes out before us, leading us into victory as we read, as the firstborn of many brothers., the head of His people, our king and our Lord.
As I thought of all of this wonderful typology I wrote a verse that fits well with the New and Better Adam song and we will close with this, allowing this typology to drive our minds to Christ and what He has so wondrously done for us.
Christ the truer Hezekiah
Shepherd King His flock to lead
All the remnant He will gather
Safely in His fold to keep
He a breach has opened wide
Through our sin and cursedness
He our King has gone before us
Leads us out in righteousness
Amen, Amen from beginning to end
Christ the story, His the glory from beginning to end
​
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