The Lord at Their Head
Notes
Transcript
Page 776?, between Jonah and Nahum.
There is nothing new under the sun…
Though this text was written more than 700 years before the birth of Christ - it speaks of people taking advantage of widows and seeking to rob them and their children of their inheritance. And this is unfortunately far too common, maybe some of you have been subject to this - though I hope not - scammers will regularly target older women, especially widows, gain their sympathy and then take their money. Sometimes they pretend to be grandchildren in need of money, other times insurance agents claiming and end of coverage, or debt collectors threatening prison, or tech support claiming that you security is at risk unless you give them money… and though those all sound like today’s problems - they aren’t that different than Micah’s issues.
And then when you want to escape those seeking to take advantage of you, you turn on the TV - and hoping to find some wholesome Christian preaching you turn on TBN and instead you get some charlatan with a million dollar smile and a fancy suit to match. He or she promises you that if you just sow that seed of faith and send in your tithe then God will bless you in return with financial prosperity… and he has a nice suit, a pretty wife, a net worth of $50m, a private jet so he must know what he’s talking about… except he never once opened his Bible… and what he claimed was in it you can’t find when you flip to those references… and whenever the concept of sin, or wrath come up, he says “one should not preach of such things.”
Those two situations have us almost exactly where Micah was. That in short are the two major issues that Micah will respond to.
In the three sections for this text we first read of:
Micah pronouncing a woe on oppressors. (1-5)
2. Micah condemning false teachers. (5-11)
3. Micah promises a Shepherd-King. (12-13)
Woe on the Oppressors (1-5)
As we look to verses 1 through 5 we read of these those who are oppressing the people of Israel, however, the oppressors here are not Assyrians or Philistines, but rather it is people within the people of Israel who are oppressing others.
1 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.
What is a woe?
Woes of this nature are common to the prophets. We see woes like this in Isaiah 5, as well as Jesus pronouncing woes on the Scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23. These exclamations are generally laments and in many cases expressing judgment that is to come upon those who are the subject of the woe.
Reason for the woe?
So Micah begins his woe by identified those who are workers of evil. They lie awake on their beds, they fantasize of committing evil… and when they wake in the morning it is so that they can work the evil that they have lulled themselves to sleep with… and to better demonstrate that look at verse 2, where Micah describes the kind of evil that these devisers of wickedness are committing.
However, to demonstrate the heinousness of what they are doing… Proverbs 6:18
18 a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil,
This is described in the list of “six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him.”
And the specific devised evil that Micah identifies is that they are real estate moguls… well not exactly… they covet other’s property. So here we have the breaking of the 10th Commandment. But it does not end with coveting… they also steal… the 8th commandment.
And Micah in verse 2 repeats his language.
2 They covet fields and seize them, and houses, and take them away; they oppress a man and his house, a man and his inheritance.
They are not only envious of their property - but they are then stealing the property. They are oppressing a man, and his house. They are also ignoring the biblical law. The land ultimately belongs to the Lord, and because of this God has instructed them how they ought to care for the land… and this meant that the land was supposed to stay in the family as an inheritance. This is why the laws of the Jubilee that return land to previous owners.
And the issue at hand here is that these workers of wickedness are cheating people out of the land that God has given them.
An interesting textual comparison to this charge from Micah is found in 1 Kings 21 with Ahab and Naboth’s vineyard.
To summarize that text: Ahab, the king of Samaria, sees that Naboth has a nice vineyard - and he wants it for his vegetable garden, because it is near his house. Naboth refuses because it is the inheritance of his fathers, and the Lord has forbidden that he give it to Ahab - he’s appealing to the Biblical law here - not special revelation (Lev 25:23, Num 36:7). Ahab gets sad, but Jezebel his wife develops this evil plan to kill Naboth so that Ahab may acquire the field. Naboth is killed, and Ahab takes possession of the vineyard. Because of this Ahab is punished by the Lord.
As I began this really isn’t all that different than those who seek to take advantage of the elderly. And often the question that lingers from loved ones, or even the victim, is will they ever face justice for their crimes. In some instances the family doesn’t even care about the money- they just don’t want others to be taken advantage of as well.
For the oppressors in Micah’s day the Lord does promise justice.
And it is in verses 3-5 that the Lord promises to them how he will return the wickedness on these people. He will bring disaster upon this family - and they will not be able to remove it. This language in verse 3 mirrors the language in verse 1. These workers of evil who devise wickedness or disaster, will have that disaster brought on their heads. The word that is used in verse 1 and verse 3 can mean either evil or disaster - so the workers of disaster will have disaster brought upon them from the Lord.
And those who have stolen the land will have the land stolen from them.
In this text, we are given a reminder that the wicked will not get away with their evil plots and schemes.
However, the response that comes is to tell Micah to be silent. As he is preaching this woe against these land owners.
6 “Do not preach”—thus they preach— “one should not preach of such things; disgrace will not overtake us.”
Do not preach they preach… Micah is quoting the chargers of his opponents.
Condemnation of False Preachers (6-11)
Here they are telling Micah, you may have received these words from God, but don’t preach them. These things wont happen. And several cases in the Old Testament, there is this expectation that if the prophets simply kept quiet then their prophesies wouldn’t come true - or that it was the prophets fault that these things happened… as if the prophets controlled God, rather than reported what God had to say.
They told the prophets and the preachers - Do not prophesy do not preach - this is equivalent to the culture telling Christians, and especially pastors, you cannot preach on certain topics.
I’ve been given all sorts of opinions of what pastors should and should not preach about. They shouldn’t preach about politics, or sex, or current events. They shouldn’t preach the Old Testament - they should only preach the New Testament. But not the confusing texts where Paul talks about the roles of men and women in the church and the home.
When someone tells me you cannot preach on this topic because people will not come to church, or you cannot preach on this issue because it’s not nice, or people are not ready for it. Those issues are normally the times it is most important to preach on them.
If I were to listen to everyone about what I should and should not preach - I wouldn’t be able to preach anything. But I also am not in my preaching ministry ultimately liable to men - but rather I, and every other pastor, will give an account of God for the souls over whom I shepherd. So I cannot preach to please men, but I must seek to please God.
And the Bible tells me…
That I should preach the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27), and that the sum of his word is truth (Ps 119:160).
Micah, and the prophets do not get to determine what the word of God is. They preach what God has spoken. And same for the pastor.
I do not get to decide what the word of God is. I open the Bible and that is the Word of God - so far as it faithfully represents what is in the original writing - which I have a high level of confidence in most of our Bible translations - and unless you have the New World Translation or the Passion Translation, you should too.
God does not change, when he inspired the Moses in the writing of the first 5 books of the Bible and when he inspired John in the writing of Revelation he has been the same. He has always been all knowing and his word represents that. The Word of God has no need to change with the times. God is not surprised by the ideologies of modern gender theory, or 3rd wave feminism, or scientific advancement, or critical theology, or whatever other modern and often godless ideologies are en vouge.
So when someone tells me that the Bible is outdated, and the church needs to “get with the times” it tells me that they have a very small view of God. And much like those silencing the prophets here in Micah 2, they have rejected God’s word.
The hearer doesn’t get to determine the message - and yet in many cases, they try to. And I’ve heard stories of pastors being reluctant to preach the word of God faithfully because tithes will go down… if you preach on this doctrine… or if you preach on this people will stop giving. Some commentators have suggested that in this text the defenders of land barons are seeking to silence Micah. It sounds a lot like “if you preach these things” then we wont be able to receive their tithes, or their tax revenue.
7 Should this be said, O house of Jacob? Has the Lord grown impatient? Are these his deeds? Do not my words do good to him who walks uprightly?
Then in verse 7 they begin to question the character of God. How can these judgments be given from God? Is this really how God acts?
We hear the same arguments today in discussions concerning the Biblical ethics and values.
“Can God really be loving and not allow this?” they say. Or “can this word really be from God, if he doesn’t accept what I want him to?” Or to quote the serpent “Did God really say?”
And then God responds, in defense, “Do not my words do good to him who walks uprightly?”
In other words, are not the words of God a blessing to the righteous man? But that’s the kicker… no one is righteous… and God’s makes that charge here toward the people. They are not being righteous and then he continues to demonstrate the sins of the people. They are not just stealing land and silencing prophets. They have become an enemy. My people describes the descendants of Abraham.
And in reading verses 8-11 the Lord continues to bring charges against the people.
They are attacking innocent by standers and stripping them of their clothes, (maybe a violation of Exodus 22:26-27 and Deut 24:10-13), they are forcing women, likely widows, out of their homes, they are robing the fatherless from God’s blessing. This likely connects to the issue of property being stolen at the beginning. So not only are they stealing the property, they are doing it at the expense of those who the Lord cares for… remember what James tells us that pure and undefiled religion is to care for the orphans and widows.
and in verse 10, the Lord tells them that they will have no rest because of the uncleanness that is spreading in the land. One of the promises that God is that if the people would be obedient to God’s commands then he would give them rest in the land, but if they will not be obedient to his commands then he would remove them from the land. And these people were not righteous, they did not keep God’s commands.
However, Jesus did. And those promises will be realized in Christ Jesus, he has brought a sabbath rest, and he will bring the realization and fulfillment of the land promises in his second coming and the ushering in of the New Creation.
11 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!
And this section then concludes with a reminder of the kind of prophets that the section began with. Going from silencing prophets for preaching what God has spoken to ending with preachers who utter lies.
And this is the kind of preaching that people often want… the preacher who Paul warned Timothy of in 2 Tim 4:3-4:
3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
It should be of no surprise to us when preachers on TV, or the radio, or even in churches in our own city abandon sound doctrine to preach messages of health, wealth and prosperity, or social justice, or politics, or anything but the Scriptures when even Micah saw it in his own day.
And the sermons that Micah critiques describe this they are preaching of wine and strong drink… and this isn’t them preaching against it - but rather they are preaching of the blessing of those things. Wine and strong drink come from a healthy harvest. Famine means no grapes, no grapes mean no wine. No wheat means no barley. So if they were preaching of strong drink and wine they are preaching of a prosperity in the land as opposed to exile.
So of course, the preacher for the people, in verse 11, is the one who preaches the cup full of wine, rather than the cup filled to the brim with the wrath of God.
Yet, I know that as a pastor, I am bound by the word of God - and committed to Truth. I cannot just preach what is popular, or what people want to hear. I have to preach what God has spoken.
It wouldn’t be that hard for me to hop on the internet, and find a popular sermon series about and engaging topic - and phone it in every week. I could even having AI create sermons on trendy topics for me.
I could compromise on doctrine, water down the gospel, reduce the amount of theology in my sermons. I could speak less of sin - and more about how we’re all God’s children, and however we come to God is okay. Then push a bunch of money into marketing and ad revenue and graphics. We could start paying musicians to come play here, and do all the trendy things. We could really focus on getting every seat filled…
But what eternal good would it do? If the cost of filling the pews is to teach what people want to hear that what God has said then the cost is too high.
I believe the gospel saves. Jesus is still saving people…
Promise of a Shepherd King?
12 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. 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.
Though they have turned from his word, broken his laws concerning land and inheritance, though they lie, cheat, steal, and silence his prophets, and they will be scattered and sent into exile - God promises a restoration after the exile. After the people are in exile for 70 years they return to the land - but that’s not the fullness of promise. He will gather the remnant like sheep in a pen. The Shepherd will bring them together.
And in verse 13, this breaker who goes before them and breaks open the gate, is the Lord. He will go with them… he will go before them. And this is a significant statement to remember in Numbers. When God goes with the people into battle they are victorious but when he stays behind they fail. This statement from Micah is that they will return from exile, and God will go before them. Their King, the Lord will be at their head.
The Shepherd King who will gather them together, and lead them in paths of righteousness is the Lord Jesus. This passage, like all of Micah, anticipates the coming of Christ.
Jesus is the good shepherd of the sheep.
Jesus laid his life down for the sheep - on the cross. And through Jesus death on the cross, Jesus has opened that breach - he is the breaker who has opened the gate that held us in our prison of sin, death and despair.
Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead… and justice will be serve to those who have taken advantage of others. Those who have stolen money, those who have preached a false gospel so they might profit off of the name of Jesus… they will face the terrifying wrath of God.
We all deserve the wrath of God… either we will be judge for our sins, or Christ will.
There’s grace for those who sit on the beds and devise evil
There’s grace for false teachers.
Those in Christ should seek to protect
