Intro to Micah

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Game Night

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Lord, here we go again!

Pray.

Think myself empty.

Read myself full.

Write myself clear.

Pray myself haught.

Be myself.

Forget myself.

Lord, let this message be a beacon for you. Let me be forgotten and invisible. Let them see and know you, only you. “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” Psalm 19:14

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The word Gospel means “good news”. It’s pretty important to understand that. The Bible is not a book that tells us what we have to do to earn salvation, it is a book that tells us what God did to earn our salvation. What he did was send Jesus. Jesus did for us what we could never do for ourselves and he paid for what we had done in his body on the cross. God created human beings and intended for them to be ruling creatures. We were supposed to be under God but over everything else. We were supposed to rule over creation under the guidance and authority of God’s Word and to function as conduits for all the blessings of heaven. That’s how it was supposed to be, but unfortunately, the Bible tells the story of how our first parents, Adam and Eve, fell into sin by choosing to rebel against God’s Word in order to become autonomous ruling creatures. Basically, they wanted to be gods unto themselves, deciding good and evil. From that point on, humanity has been on a downward spiral moving further and further away from God and our original design and glory. The heart of the Gospel is the Good News that Jesus has come as God in the flesh and has obeyed God perfectly and has therefore won the right to all the blessings God originally intended to give to men and women. Furthermore, through his sacrificial death on the cross, he has paid the debt that we owed to God for disobeying his commands. There is therefore no need anymore for us to hide from God. In Jesus, we can come home and we can be restored. The climax of the Gospel is the great news that he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven where he now intercedes on our behalf. He gives the Holy Spirit to all his people and he slowly but surely, changes our hearts, reforms our desires and teaches us how to be the children of God we were always intended to be. For now, Jesus remains in heaven, changing the world one person at a time, but one day he will return and judge the world in righteousness. He will remove from this world all sin and all causes of sin and he will restore the cosmos to a state of peace, prosperity and flourishing and all those who have received him as their Lord and Savior will participate in his rule and enjoy his goodness forever.

The gospel is the good news that God, the loving Creator, sovereign King, and holy Judge of all, has looked upon men and women wonderfully and uniquely made in His image who have rebelled against Him, are separated from Him, and deserve death before Him, and He has sent His Son, Jesus, God in the flesh, the long-awaited King, to live a perfect and powerful life, to die a sacrificial and substitutionary death, and to rise from the grave in victory over sin, Satan, and death. The gospel is a summons from God for all people in all nations to repent and believe in Jesus for the forgiveness of sins, turning from all idols to declare allegiance to Jesus alone as King and trust in Jesus alone as Lord. All who turn from Jesus will experience everlasting, horrifying suffering in hell, while all who trust in Jesus will experience everlasting, satisfying communion with God in heaven. (Secret Church 2020, David Platt, Radical.net)

For now, Jesus remains in heaven, changing the world one person at a time, but one day he will return and judge the world in righteousness. He will remove from this world all sin and all causes of sin and he will restore the cosmos to a state of peace, prosperity and flourishing and all those who have received him as their Lord and Savior will participate in his rule and enjoy his goodness forever.

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PRAY

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Bible Genres

Law

Leviticus, Deuteronomy

History

Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, 1 & 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Acts

Wisdom

Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes

Poetry

Song of Solomon, Lamentations, Psalms

Narrative

The Gospels, Ruth, Esther, Jonah

Epistles

21 Letters in the NT

Prophecy and Apocalyptic

Isaiah through Malachi, Revelation

Ezekiel, Zechariah, Revelation

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Prophecy

Major Prophets

-Isaiah

-Jeremiah

-Ezekiel

-Daniel

Minor Prophets

-8th Century BC—Hosea, Amos, Jonah, Micah

-7th Century BC—Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah

-6th Century BC—Joel, Obadiah, Haggai, Zechariah

-5th Century BC—Malachi

Prophet--

“a mediator who claims to receive messages directly from a divinity, by various means, and communicates those messages to recipients.”

Redditt, Paul L. Introduction to the Prophets. Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008. Print.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.”

So begins Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, considered by some to be the finest novel ever written in English. Dickens sought to chronicle the spirit of the French Revolution in the late eighteenth century a.d., but he could just as well have been writing of another time long before: the late eighth century b.c. in Israel and Judea. For what Dickens wrote about the cities of London and Paris is similar to what the prophet Micah had to say to Samaria and Jerusalem. The themes of Micah are precisely those cited by Dickens: wisdom and folly, belief and unbelief, light and darkness, hope and despair, heaven and hell.

Phillips, Richard D. Jonah & Micah. Ed. Richard D. Phillips, Philip Graham Ryken, and Iain M. Duguid. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2010. Print. Reformed Expository Commentary.

Even today...

“Political scandal is a daily affair. While many are prospering, there seems to be great inequality and heartache among the poor and disenfranchised. The darkness of sin seems rampant in our society, and for many, hope seems like a distant memory. Does this sound like what you may been reading, living, or watching? It actually forms the backdrop to the Old Testament book of Micah.” What is wild is that as we study Micah, and realize how far removed he is from us personally, God had given him the insight and message that rings true in our wold today.

Even with all the doom and gloom, there’s still the message of the Messiah that rings out. “Above all, Micah is a book of hope. God shows himself to be a God kind enough to warn us, patient enough to plead with us, and gracious enough to redeem us.”

https://www.9marks.org/article/micah/ Mark Livingston 2.21.2019

I though Eugene Patterson’s introduction to Micah was fitting:

Prophets use words to remake the world. The world—heaven and earth, men and women, animals and birds—was made in the first place by God’s Word. Prophets, arriving on the scene and finding that world in ruins, finding a world of moral rubble and spiritual disorder, take up the work of words again to rebuild what human disobedience and mistrust demolished. These prophets learn their speech from God. Their words are God-grounded, God-energized, God-passionate. As their words enter the language of our communities, men and women find themselves in the presence of God, who enters the mess of human sin to rebuke and renew.

Left to ourselves we turn God into an object, something we can deal with, some thing we can use to our benefit, whether that thing is a feeling or an idea or an image. Prophets scorn all such stuff. They train us to respond to God’s presence and voice.

Micah, the final member of that powerful quartet of writing prophets who burst on the world scene in the eighth century b.c. (Isaiah, Hosea, and Amos were the others), like virtually all his fellow prophets—those charged with keeping people alive to God and alert to listening to the voice of God—was a master of metaphor. This means that he used words not simply to define or identify what can be seen, touched, smelled, heard, or tasted, but to plunge us into a world of presence. To experience presence is to enter that far larger world of reality that our sensory experiences point to but cannot describe—the realities of love and compassion, justice and faithfulness, sin and evil … and God. Mostly God. The realities that are Word-evoked are where most of the world’s action takes place. There are no “mere words.”

Peterson, Eugene H. The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language. Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2005. Print.

The implied audience of the book is people with a conscience who want to be saved and work toward a righteous society. The implied purpose of Micah the prophet is to warn all people, especially God’s people, that God does not tolerate sin and, along with that, to instill an attitude of repentance. Micah assumes that the information that the human race most needs is a double message—the bad news that the human race is headed for disaster if left to its own inclinations and the good news that God offers salvation.

Crossway Bibles. ESV Literary Study Bible. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019. Print.

-Who is Micah?

He’s really a no body. He was an outsider to the capitals.

Common name-14 men in the bible are named Micah, but only 2 biblical references to this Micah who prophesied in Jerusalem

His name means-- “Mi-ca-iah” is a sentence name, meaning “Who [Heb. mi] is like [k] Yah [iah]?” מיכה

By this naming his parents constantly praised I AM as being incomparable to any other deity. It also portends the prophet’s message. By artfully inserting his name in the people’s hymn of praise at the end of his book, their prophet-son added luster to I AM’s glory: Who like I AM forgives his guilty people to be true to his covenant promises to the patriarchs?

Waltke, Bruce K. A Commentary on Micah. Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2007. Print.

Contemporary of Isaiah, Hosea and Amos

He’s a profesional prophet

-When is this taking place?

8th century BC during the reigns of Jotham (742-735 BC), Ahaz (735-715 BC) and Hezekiah (715-686 BC)

Period of the divided kingdoms

-Where does Micah take place? Where is Moresheth?

Message delivered to Samaria and Jerusalem

Moresheth- Moresheth-Gath--village located in the Shephelah region of Judah some 20-25 miles southwest of Jerusalem between the central hill country of Judah and the coastal plain controlled by the Philistines.

This was an agricultural town in the lower lands to the west of Jerusalem, about halfway to the sea. It was the kind of place whose traditional values were being undermined by the decadent rich from the capital city, and therefore an ideal place to produce a reforming prophet like Micah. David Prior writes: “His instinctive empathies were with the farmers, shepherds and small holders of the [agricultural region].… He was not lured away by the glittering façade of the new culture—fine houses, advanced fashions, get-rich-quickly businesses—but kept a firm grip on the moral realities that make for true national greatness.”1

Phillips, Richard D. Jonah & Micah. Ed. Richard D. Phillips, Philip Graham Ryken, and Iain M. Duguid. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2010. Print. Reformed Expository Commentary.

-Why is Micah being written?

-How does this fit in the Bible?

Micah as a Chapter in the Master Story of the Bible

The master story of the Bible is the story of how God deals with the sinfulness of the human race. The book of Micah shows God acting in judgment against sin but also as having a plan to save those who believe in his promised Messiah.

Crossway Bibles. ESV Literary Study Bible. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019. Print.

-Who is the book of Micah for?

The implied audience of the book is people with a conscience who want to be saved and work toward a righteous society.

Crossway Bibles. ESV Literary Study Bible. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019. Print.

-What is the message of Micah?

Throughout Micah, we’ll look at three different theological themes

Sin and Judgment: the book shows that God takes sin very seriously and teaches that people must reflect his priorities by dealing justly with each one another and the opposed.

God’s Sovereignty: God has the power to judge sinners and also to save them through his promised Messiah

Eschatology: the book contains apocalyptic visions of a future golden age

Crossway Bibles. ESV Literary Study Bible. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019. Print.

The implied purpose of Micah the prophet is to warn all people, especially God’s people, that God does not tolerate sin and, along with that, to instill an attitude of repentance. Micah assumes that the information that the human race most needs is a double message—the bad news that the human race is headed for disaster if left to its own inclinations and the good news that God offers salvation.

Crossway Bibles. ESV Literary Study Bible. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019. Print.

milestones of the Literature

Israel Indicted

Corrupt Leaders

Hope and Restoration

Messianic Kingdom

Future Hope in God

Micah 1 ESV

1 The word of the Lord that came to Micah of Moresheth in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem. 2 Hear, you peoples, all of you; pay attention, O earth, and all that is in it, and let the Lord God be a witness against you, the Lord from his holy temple. 3 For behold, the Lord is coming out of his place, and will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth. 4 And the mountains will melt under him, and the valleys will split open, like wax before the fire, like waters poured down a steep place. 5 All this is for the transgression of Jacob and for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the transgression of Jacob? Is it not Samaria? And what is the high place of Judah? Is it not Jerusalem? 6 Therefore I will make Samaria a heap in the open country, a place for planting vineyards, and I will pour down her stones into the valley and uncover her foundations. 7 All her carved images shall be beaten to pieces, all her wages shall be burned with fire, and all her idols I will lay waste, for from the fee of a prostitute she gathered them, and to the fee of a prostitute they shall return. 8 For this I will lament and wail; I will go stripped and naked; I will make lamentation like the jackals, and mourning like the ostriches. 9 For her wound is incurable, and it has come to Judah; it has reached to the gate of my people, to Jerusalem. 10 Tell it not in Gath; weep not at all; in Beth-le-aphrah roll yourselves in the dust. 11 Pass on your way, inhabitants of Shaphir, in nakedness and shame; the inhabitants of Zaanan do not come out; the lamentation of Beth-ezel shall take away from you its standing place. 12 For the inhabitants of Maroth wait anxiously for good, because disaster has come down from the Lord to the gate of Jerusalem. 13 Harness the steeds to the chariots, inhabitants of Lachish; it was the beginning of sin to the daughter of Zion, for in you were found the transgressions of Israel. 14 Therefore you shall give parting gifts to Moresheth-gath; the houses of Achzib shall be a deceitful thing to the kings of Israel. 15 I will again bring a conqueror to you, inhabitants of Mareshah; the glory of Israel shall come to Adullam. 16 Make yourselves bald and cut off your hair, for the children of your delight; make yourselves as bald as the eagle, for they shall go from you into exile.