Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro:

We are going to wrap up our time in Micah 4 today.

We will see one last example of how this passage served to give hope and comfort to the faithful in the days of Hezekiah even as the situation around them seemed grim.

We will get some more practice in seeing how these types and shadows direct our eyes to the fulfilment of these very prophecies in our day and see the way in which prophets like Micah often zoom back and forth between the present realities and the future promises they were delivering to the people.

As we start it is good just to have a bit of a reminder of how we have gotten here.

We have seen that while Micah has prophesied impending judgement and destruction for the sins of the people and their syncretistic idolatry he has now in this chapter begun to hold before them, and will continue through chapter 5 to hold before them this grand hope for a restored future.

Particularly we saw last week how this restored future is a reversal and restoration of some of the sinful and wicked circumstances that were the occasion for God’s judgement.

We saw that while the leaders of the people had despised and perverted justice and right judgment that in these coming days of promise God himself would be their ruler and that he would judge rightly and bring justice to bear for His people.

We saw that whole the religions leaders, the priests and prophets, had failed to rightly teach the people to walk in God’s ways that in this coming time of hope the people would gather together and be taught God’s ways and learn to walk in them.

We saw that the mountain of the house of the lord, the temple and the city of Jerusalem which would be destroyed would once again be lifted up but that this lifting up really would show that Jerusalem and its temple had always been ment to serve as a type of a future fulfilment that we can see actively transpiring today.

That this mountain signified the place where men might be, through grace, called up to come into God’s presence and worship Him; and that the temple had stood for a sanctified place where God himself could come and dwell with His people and we saw that these types and shadows are indeed being fulfilled today in God’s church, the Body of which the Lord Jesus Christ is the head where we find that people from all nations may come and worship God and may find that their very hearts are, through the grace of God in the cross of Jesus Christ, sanctified so that we ourselves become the temple, we ourselves becoming the dwelling place of God.

Again, it is so exciting to look at these things and realize that these aren't just grand promises for some idealistic future but that because Christ has come, the one who we will learn about in Chapter 5, the one born in Bethlehem, because He has come we now are privileged to be a part of the realization of these very promises!

So lets take a moment to pray once more and then jump into our text.

PRAY & READ (6-13)

Micah begins these verses with “In that day.”

This clearly references back to the opening of chapter 4 and Micah’s statement about the coming latter days.

It could be that Micah here is drawing the focus of these people to what specifically it is that God is going to do for the remnant of His people Israel in this time.

We have seen much about the nations and the great peace that God is going to bring across various people groups and nations as the gospel goes forth and God’s kingdom expands across the globe but now Micah, in a sense, says that in that day, as those things are being fulfilled or as those things are beginning to be realized here is what God is going to do for you oh Israel.

This thing that God is going to do is:

I will assemble the lame

and gather those who have been driven away

and those whom I have afflicted;

7  and the lame I will make the remnant,

and those who were cast off, a strong nation;

and the LORD will reign over them in Mount Zion

from this time forth and forevermore.

Now it is interesting to note that Micah uses a very different word for lame here than what is typically used, especially in prophecies like those from Isaiah.

Micah’s use here seems to point us back to a well known story from Israel’s history.

We read in Genesis 32 an account of Jacob wrestling with God.

As he is going back to meet his brother after leaving his uncle Laban he prepares to meet his brother who he had fled from years earlier because of the animosity that had been built up between them as Jacob had stolen all of the inheritance that Esau his brother was to receive as the older brother.

There the night before Jacob is to meet his brother we read this story:

22 The same night he arose and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok.

23 He took them and sent them across the stream, and everything else that he had.

24 And Jacob was left alone.

And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day.

25 When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.

26 Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.”

But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” 27 And he said to him, “What is your name?”

And he said, “Jacob.”

28 Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.”

29 Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.”

But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?”

And there he blessed him.

30 So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.”

31 The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.

32 Therefore to this day the people of Israel do not eat the sinew of the thigh that is on the hip socket, because he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip on the sinew of the thigh.

This is an interesting story and it is right to ask why it was that God touched Jacobs hip and made him walk from that day forth with a limp.

Was God punishing Jacob for wrestling with him?

The answer to that question is no.

God does indeed bless Jacob, He gives him a new name and assures him of his position as the chosen family through which God was going to carry out the promises made to his grandfather Abraham.

Now, Jacob was being blessed by God but at the same time Jacob had to learn a lesson and that lesson came a a cost, when Jacob thought of his limp, a limp that would follow him through life he would always remember the night that he wrestled with God but in that remembrance he would not only remember his wrestling but also that as God had taught him a lesson he had also assured him of his blessing.

God had restored Jacob but he had left Jacob with a reminder for always of the cost of striving with God.

It seems as though Micah intentionally reaches back into this moment in his peoples history to teach them the same lesson.

God is, in the future, going to wound this people.

They have striven with Him.

The have not followed Him as they ought and they are going to be wounded but as with Jacob this wound is going to be, as one commentator put it, remedial.

This would would remind them forever of the cost of not following God but also of the blessing of being renewed.

They are not to be cast off forever, the pain of God’s chastisement would be great but as we have said before, there was to be a blessing beyond the judgement.

We see in this passage a lot of “I wills” and “I haves.”

The central actor here is God.

The people have been the central actor in their sinful ways and wanderings but now God take the stage as the central actor in their judgement and renewal.

He is going to drive them away, He is going to afflict them, but He is going to gather them again.

He is going to make them lame, to wound them but that wound will forever remind them that He only wounded them, He did not destroy them forever but saw fit to restore them.

Us or them?

Now as we consider what God is going to do here for Israel it is important for us to remember that even as we have been making the case for these promises being fulfilled here in now in this time of the church this doesn't preclude God saying and doing something specific for and to those ethnic Israelites who would follow Him in grace enabled faith.

Paul tells us in Romans 9 that:

4 They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises.

5 To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever.

Amen.

This is why, while I don't believe in the dispensational division of the peoples of God into jew and gentile I also don't believe that it is right to say that God has nothing left to do with ethnic Israelites.

Theirs are the promises and one of those promises is this, that God is going to gather them and that we will inherit the blessings of this kingdom along with them and I believe that this is still taking place today as the continued remnant of the people of Israel is drawn to faith in Christ through the grace of God in the cross.

Earlier God is raised up and is reigning over the nations and here God is raising up and reigning over this remnant of Israel that is going to be saved.

The promise to this faithful remnant is summed up in verse 8.

The former dominion shall return.

There will be a King that reigns over God’s people from the hill of Zion.

Hopefully you are well tuned now to hear that imagery in light of Christ reigning now over His people as the head of the church.

The point is that there is one mountain and the remnant of Israel and the nations of the world are all being draw to salvation to this same mountain and the same King and this is all happening right now in this time of grace and repentance and faith in Christ Jesus the king of the mountain.

Hope in Judgement

This promise is so important though for Israel because of what follows.

We see in verses 9 - 11 what seems to be a passage of judgement.

This passage ought to ring some bells if you have been following along in the 5 day reading as we have been in Isaiah, Micah’s older contemporary ad have been learning more about the reign of Hezekiah.

We read in 9 - 11

Now why do you cry aloud?

Is there no king in you?

Has your counselor perished,

that pain seized you like a woman in labor?

10  Writhe and groan, O daughter of Zion,

like a woman in labor,

for now you shall go out from the city

and dwell in the open country;

you shall go to Babylon.

There you shall be rescued;

there the LORD will redeem you

from the hand of your enemies.

11  Now many nations

are assembled against you,

saying, “Let her be defiled,

and let our eyes gaze upon Zion.”

We know from Isaiah 39 that though Hezekiah was faithful for most of his reign that after his illness and recovery there was a change.

Envoys had come from this far away place called Babylon and Hezekiah had shown them all that God had given him, he had showed off and Isaiah comes to him at the end of Ch 39 and says: