Answers Bible Curriculum: Lesson 8 - The Coming Ruler

Lord, we thank you so much for your great kindness to us. Who is a God like you who passes over sin that pardons iniquity? you, while you are just in your anger towards sin, you have told us that your anger does not last forever. you are a God of compassion.

And you have told us that you Take our sins and you subdue them, you tread them underfoot and hurl them into the sea, not just on the shores of the sea, but into the depths of the sea. You are a covenant keeping God. You have kept your covenant with Jacob and Abraham. We thank you that, that we have gotten buy-in as Gentiles into the covenant of Abraham through Jesus Christ.

We ask Lord that you would fill us with your spirit this morning as we look at your word. We thank you in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. All right.

Hope you guys had a wonderful week. In the Lord, we're gonna do just a little bit of review. And then we're gonna jump into our text and then try to figure out what the Lord is teaching us through the text. So last week, does anybody remember, you got to make me feel good here.

Anybody remember what we talked about last week? Say it again. I thought I heard somebody. Come on, this is where you build up my self-esteem and make me feel very good or bad about myself.

So anything that you recall about last week? And then we have a couple of new folks. It was great. Yeah, yeah, you guys would remember, yeah.

OK, we talked about a king of Judah. I'll give you guys a couple of hints. He was a good king. And the first letter of his name starts with an H.

Hezekiah, all right, we talked about Hezekiah last week. Yeah, and so you guys remember we, we compared Hezekiah to an early king of Israel. I remember what that early king of Israel is? Or who, who he was.

David, yeah. So, it's, Hezekiah is like David reloaded. If you look at David and the whole David and Goliath situation, there's a lot of overlap with Hezekiah facing off with Sennacherib, the leader of Assyria. And so, if you guys recall, Assyria comes down, they're wiping out a lot of the towns in Judah, and they send an they send an entourage to the gates of Jerusalem and threaten Hezekiah and all of the people in Jerusalem.

And they use some psychological tactics to try to get the people to lay down their arms. You remember, anybody remember some of those tactics? Yeah, Cynthia? Yeah, God hasn't really said he's going to deliver you.

That's, that's nonsense. What else? What other tactic do you guys recall? Yeah, you guys, if you don't lay down your arms once we get in there, you guys are gonna suffer incredibly and to this.

Good. Yeah, totally. So, if you do surrender, boy, you're gonna come out, we're gonna treat you really nice, you're gonna have vineyards, you're gonna have bread aplenty. We are gonna transport you to a new country, but you're gonna have all kinds of great stuff, right?

And by the way, God Himself has prophesized for me to take you out, Snackrib says to his emissary. And, and the people on the wall, remember, they don't really like them speaking in Hebrew. Why is that? And why did the leaders of Jerusalem not want the emissaries to speak in Hebrew?

Yeah, everybody on the walls can hear and everybody can get afraid. So they say, please speak in the trade language of Aramaic. No, we will speak in Hebrew. And so, long story short, Hezekiah cries out to the Lord once, goes to the temple, cries out to the Lord twice.

God delivers, some revelation through Isaiah. Which basically says they are not gonna come in here. In fact, while they have pierced many through the nose and done very violent things to their enemies, I will pierce them through the nose and I will thrust them out, and they're not even gonna have an arrow that lands in Jerusalem. All of a sudden Sennarib comes down.

He wakes up. 185,000 dead Assyrians. They take off. What's one of the reasons we, we trust, we trust the Bible, but what's one of the extra biblical resources that we have at our disposal that talks about the Assyrian invasion?

Yeah, Larry. Overexaggerate their victories. Don't even I Yeah, totally. And so we've actually, we have these stones that, that talk about all of Sennacherib's victories.

he talks about exacting 800 pieces of silver from Hezekiah. He mentions Hezekiah by name. And in the Bible, it says it was 300 pieces of silver. Snareb says 800 pieces of silver.

That's what Assyrians do is they exaggerate or embellish the truth. Is there any mention, however, of their defeat at the gates of Jerusalem? No, no mention. They, they never mentioned their defeats, so it shouldn't have been surprising to us.

That's a little bit of what happened. We see the Lord using Hezekiah as he cries out and humbles himself, the Lord protecting them from the Assyrians and so on. This morning we come, we're in a, a similar time period. We're coming to the prophet Micah, and we're gonna see that his prophecies overlap Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah.

So there's some bad kings and a good king, but remember, even in Hezekiah's reign, there were time periods where things were going OK and other times where it wasn't going so OK. And so Micah comes along and he begins to prophesy. I don't know how many of you guys had a chance to read the chapters that we assigned or even if, if you have a chance, just listen to the whole book. It only takes about 10 minutes, maybe 15 tops to hear the whole book online, like a Bible gate.

And what you, what you walk away with if you listen to the whole book, you're like, Is this guy schizophrenic or what? He's like, and that's part of one of the questions we're gonna try to answer this morning. Is our prophet schizophrenic? On the one hand, he's pronouncing judgment via prophecy, then all of a sudden he starts talking about God's blessings and God driving enemies out of the land and that Israel's gonna be in the land forever.

And then the next chapter, he's talking about great judgments and just terrible things that are gonna happen to Israel and Judah. And so, you really, you're trying to figure out what is going on here. And so that's what we're gonna try to, to handle this morning is what exactly is Micah and other prophets? What are they talking about?

By the way, there is a new memory verse in that your kids are memorizing. It'd be great for you guys to memorize it with your kids. Isaiah 53:6, All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

We're in chapter 8, The Coming ruler. We'll be talking about some more Messianic prophecies next week, but we are gonna hit one of the key ones this morning. And we've already done our review, so let's go ahead, we're going to jump. Into our text, let's open up to the book of Micah.

Let's see, I may have put that on a timer. All right, here we go. Let's go to Micah chapter 5. We're gonna, we're going to look at 3.

Main pastors, 2 main pastors in Micah. You guys open to chapter 5. I'm going to do a little, provide a little bit of overview before we get into chapter 5. In Micah chapter 1, we see it's the word of Yahweh that came to Micah.

In the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. So he overlaps with two bad kings of Judah and then Hezekiah, which actually that might account right there if you think about it. We got two bad kings, 1 good king. Could that account for some of the bad prophecies and some of the good prophecies?

We'll, we'll try to figure that out. And then it, and then it says, which he saw concerning Samaria in Jerusalem. Is Samaria the capital in the north or the south? North.

So Samaria, remember that's already, from what we looked at last week, that got wiped out by Sennacherib. In, in Micah's lifetime, we're going, like my son used to say when he was a little guy, fast backing, we're fast backing, reversing and looking into the past of the attack of the Syrians upon Samaria, that happens in 721 BC. Jerusalem is in the north or the south. The south.

So, yeah, so we've got Judah, Jerusalem's the capital down the south, north, we got Israel, Samaria is the capital up there. which of the two cities were historically considered more wicked? The north. The north is where we have, remember, Ahab had established and guys before him, just terrible idol worship.

We're talking about temple prostitution, putting your own children in fire to false gods, just terrible, terrible stuff. Well, eventually, that type of behavior and culture spreads and actually starts to, to dip into Judah. So in chapter one, you've got Micah, basically, he's prophesying how that God is gonna come down and the mountain, the mountains will melt like wax, and he is bringing his judgment upon the land. and then in chapter two, there's this, this condemnation of Israel and portions of Judah that they're actually grabbing, people's houses for themselves.

There's, immorality in the economic system where the rich are just taking from other people. and then you get over to, to chapter 3. Look at the end of chapter 3 with me for a second. Let's look at, Let's look at verse 8 and following 38, but truly, I am full of power by the Spirit of the Lord and of justice and might to declare to Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin.

Now, hear this, you heads of the house of Jacob, rulers of the house of Israel, who abhor justice and pervert all equity, who build up Zion with bloodshed, and Jerusalem with iniquity. Her heads judge for a bribe. Her priests teach for pay. Her prophets divine for money.

Yet they lean on the Lord and say, Is not the Lord among us? No harm can come upon us. Therefore, because of you, Zion shall be. Zion shall be plowed like a field.

Jerusalem shall become heaps of ruins, and the mountain of the temple, like the bare hills of the forest. So these are prophecies given both the north and the south, and we do indeed see eventually the temple is demolished, right? 586 BC down in Jerusalem. Now, this is in 7 in the 700s that this is being prophesized.

The problems that we see, we see judges are not really judging according to law. They're being bribed. We see prophets being bribed. We see priests being bribed.

It reminds us of what was going on in the pre-Reformation period, when Tetzel was going around and raising money to build the Basilica of Saint Peter. Remember that? And people could buy indulgences. You give so much money, we will give you a certificate that says you will get out of purgatory for free, right?

So you, you spend money and, and we will get, grant you forgiveness of sin. This angered Martin Luther and he said he would burst his drum, Tetzel's drum. this type of stuff angers the Lord. It kinda reminds me, I hate to be beaten up on the Catholics exclusively this morning, but I don't know if you've ever been down to Mexico City.

Any of you guys been to some cathedrals outside of the United States? OK, you get a real feel, right? Of what, what it's all about. But if you, in Mexico City, there's just this huge beautiful cathedral, and as you walk up, there's people that are selling all these little bronze, like pieces of the, of a body, like it might be an arm or a hand or a foot, and you buy those things and then then you pin them up next to one of the saints inside of the cathedral to get healing of that particular ailment.

And so, and the church makes lots and lots and lots of money on those little body parts that you're buying as well as the flowers and so on and so forth. This is the type of thing is, is, a prophet would only prophesy if you gave them money and then they would give you a good prophecy, right? And the priest would only perform the sacrifice for you if you brought them money. Not only that, but the book of Micah also tells us that Jerusalem was getting rich on its prostitution.

This is temple prostitution. They're going and worshiping false gods in these various high places, both in the north and the south, and people would pay money to go worship the false god by engaging in temple prostitution many times with children. That's how bad this, this type of religion is. And then these temples would get money and get rich, filthy rich on basically human trafficking.

That's the type of stuff, that's the type of stuff that, that Micah is prophesying against. But I want you to notice that at the end of verse 3, is, is the end of verse chapter 3 judgment or mercy? Judgment. This is terrible judgment, right?

But look at verse 4, verse 1. Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established on top of the mountains and shall be exalted above the hills, and people shall flow 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, and we shall walk in his paths, for out of Zion the law shall go forth, and so on.

So, verse chapter 3 ends with the destruction of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple. Just remember, there's no chapter divisions in this original prophecy. Basically, the next sentence says, The temple of the Lord's gonna be built and everybody's gonna flow into it. And if you're just reading this without any understanding of context, it's just like, what are you talking about?

The temple's gonna be destroyed? Oh, the temple's gonna be built up. And it just feels like maybe Micah didn't take his medication that morning and he's just flipping out. But no, this is actually a characteristic of prophecy that we're gonna, we're gonna remind you of it now, we're gonna come back to it throughout this lesson.

And that is, is prophets many times will do this thing called foreshortening. They'll look at like the near fulfillments and then it's almost like they're seeing across the mountaintops and they'll look way out into the future and see something that's going to be fulfilled hundreds or maybe thousands of years into the future. So Micah is being revealed, the Holy Spirit is revealed to him the destruction of Jerusalem that is coming in 586 BC. This will be fulfilled about 150 years after this prophecy.

But then he also sees way out into the future, into the millennial period, where Jesus Christ is reigning in Jerusalem with a rebuilt temple, and, and that nations are flowing to him. And so there's both judgment and hope. God is bringing judgment upon political national Israel and Judah who have given themselves over basically to the gods of Ahab. but he's foreseeing repentance on the part of the remnant.

We're, we're gonna, sometimes this, in this book, it's gonna be called the remnant, sometimes it's gonna be called the inheritance of the Lord or heritage, depending on which translation. And so we see that stuff in chapter 4. What's very interesting, you have how many chapters in the book of Micah? I'll just tell you, 7.

So you got 7 chapters and a lot of times Hebrew literature does this thing. There's almost like this, there can either be like a buildup and then a drop, like a book that does this is Lamentations. Lamentations is all a poem and right smack dab in the middle of that poem is the, the That part that talks about great is thy faithfulness. We're gonna sing that this morning.

Great is thy faithfulness and talking about God's goodness. But when you stretch out on the on the far ends of lamentations, it's just terrible judgment. And very similar to Micah, it starts off with judgment, but then it builds up to God's mercy, then it descends back on to judgment, but then it ends on a positive note in the last three verses. So let's, let's actually flip over to chapter 5.

And in chapter 5, We're still mostly, there's gonna be one verse of more immediate judgment prediction, and then it's gonna just jump into this fast forward flash of mercy. So, let's read the text, we'll make a couple of comments and then draw some conclusions. So starting in verse 1, Micah 5, now gather yourself in troops, O daughter of troops. He has laid siege against us.

They will strike the judge of Israel with a rod on the cheek. So, would you guys say this is a mercy passage or a prediction of judgment passage? This is a judgment. So, daughter of troops, this is not Israel.

These troops are, whoever they are, they're assembling. This is probably the Assyrians assembling against Israel. We're probably talking about the destruction of Samaria or something like that. There's different viewpoints on this, but clearly, this is Israel being struck.

By a rod on the cheek. so the idea is the leader is being hit, not just on, it's not just a little slap on the cheek, it's like knocked over and knocked down. But then right after that, We see verse 2, but you. Bethlehem, Ephratha.

Though you are little among the thousands of Judah. Out of you shall come forth to me. The one to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from old and from everlasting. I'm reading from a new King James NIV has a little bit of a same Hebrew words basis but a little bit of a different take.

Verse 3, therefore, he shall be given, or he shall give them up until the time that she who is in labor has given birth. Then the remnant of his brethren shall return to the children of Israel. And he shall stand and feed his flock in strength in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord is God, and they shall abide. For now, he shall be great to the ends of the earth, and this one shall be peace.

keep going. When the Assyrians come into the land and when he treads in our places, then we will raise against him 7 shepherds and 8 princely men. They shall waste with the sword the land of Assyria and the land of Nimrod at its entrances. Thus he shall deliver us from the Assyrian when he comes into our land and when he treads within our borders.

Then the remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many peoples like dew from the Lord, like showers on the grass that tarry for no man. Nor wait for the sons of men, and the remnant of Jacob shall be among the Gentiles in the midst of many peoples like a lion among the beasts of the forest, like a young lion among the flocks of the sheep who, if he passes through, both treads down and tears in pieces, and none can deliver, your hand shall be lifted against your adversaries, and all your enemies shall be cut off.

There is a lot going on here. This whole idea of we're gonna talk about the idea of foreshortening.

There's also, there's some immediate and far fulfillment, that's happening and we also have to remember the historical context that's going on. So, let's go back to verse two. Verse 2, Micah says, but you, Bethlehem, Ephratha. Why does he say Bethlehem, Ephratha?

Yeah, Joe. Yeah, there's actually two Bethlehems. And so it's almost like, there's like a, what do you call it? Paris, Canada.

There's Paris, California. There's another Paris, Paris, Kentucky. I'm sorry, Paris, Idaho, Paris, Kentucky, and then with a different spelling, Paris, California. Then there's Paris, France, right?

in Israel, there's Bethlehem up in the north and then there's Bethlehem down in the south. So to clarify which Bethlehem, Micah is saying Ephratha. though you are little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth to me, the one to be ruler in Israel. So there's a ruler that's coming from Bethlehem of Israel.

Why is that? Unique. Now, I know Bethlehem, it's further south than the other Bethlehem. Is Bethlehem in Israel or is it in Judah?

It says right here it's in Judah. And yet this ruler that is coming is going to reign over whom? Israel. Right now, do we have a unified Israel?

No. So we're talking about a ruler that's coming at some point in the future, that's gonna come out of Southern, the southern version of Bethlehem in Judah, and yet he's gonna reign over all of Israel. This, so the assumption is, this is a unified Israel. You follow me?

That's, we're, we're in the divided kingdom period. So that would seem very strange to happen right now. So in the future, there'll be a, a unified Israel and there will be a ruler over Israel that arises out of Bethlehem, not just any Bethlehem, but Bethlehem, Ephratha that's down in Judah. Verse 3, therefore, he shall give them up.

Until the time that she who is in labor has given birth, he will give who up? Who's the he, do you think? This seems to be that ruler that was in the previous. Sentence, right?

So this ruler that's coming from Bethlehem is going to give them up. Who do you think them is? What's the antecedent of them? Probably Israel is the most, is the closest antecedent.

So this ruler is going to give Israel up assumedly until the time that she was in labor has given birth. What does that mean? Lots of different possibilities. We could be talking about Mary giving birth to the savior.

some would point actually more to the, the millennial period that Israel is giving birth. rebirth to the remnant in the book of Revelation. Whatever it is, there seems to be some reference here to this giving up of the, of Israel that the Jews have in a sense been set aside, i.e. Romans 10, Romans 11 until the fullness of the Gentiles come in.

then the remnant of his brethren, notice this remnant terminology, shall return to the children of Israel, the remnant of his brethren, the remnant of whose brethren? This ruler, the remnant of this ruler that's coming, shall return to the children of Israel. Let me ask you this, if the if the Gentiles have never been part of this Abrahamic package, at least at this point in history, can the Gentiles be the ones that are returning to Israel? No.

This must be Jews returning back to Israel. His brethren, the ruler's brethren. So the remnant, i.e. it seems to be the remnant of Israel, and those who are his brethren, the Messiah's brethren, this ruler, shall return to the children of Israel.

There'll be this overall return. Verse 4, and he shall stand and feed his flock. Who shall stand and feed his flock? Yeah, this ruler, this Messiah ruler in the strength of Yahweh, in the majesty of the name of Yahweh as God, and they shall abide and, and now he shall be great to the ends of the earth, and this, this one shall be peace.

Now, go back to verse two, we skipped something here. The one to be ruler in Israel who's going forth, are from old, from everlasting. or from distant in the past. The idea really does seem to be that there's this ruler that rises up, but he's not to be viewed as someone who just rolls up.

This is somebody who has a lineage that goes back into This Hebrew word of, it can be translated as everlasting or from way, way, way, way, way, way back. We're not talking about someone who like Aragorn just happens to be old, right? We're talking about somebody whose history goes way back. You're talking about ancient times.

And so I think the New King James to say from everlasting is an appropriate translation. Sometimes it is translated as everlasting. Who has the NIV? On that phrase.

Yeah Could you read that for me? Just the last, the, the phrase there at the end? verse, end of verse two. Yeah, so you could say ancient times.

At the very least, the idea is that this ruler that rises up has some mysterious origins that go beyond his lifetime. so theoretically, somebody could say, well, this, this would go back to somehow this guy was living at the creation of the world and then he got reincarnated. Well, we know reincarnation is not part of biblical teaching, and so we would say, this seems to fit the New Testament idea of this rising Messiah that John chapter one says, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God, and, And so he is there, quote unquote, at the beginning of creation.

So there's 4 things that I think you, and you guys probably spent time studying this week in your material that we can draw from this passage that's being predicted about our ruler, our Messiah.

The first thing is, is, is from where he rises. So, the Messiah rises from where? Bethlehem, not just any Bethlehem, Bethlehem, Africa, and when we go to the New Testament, where is Jesus born? He was born in Bethlehem.

Secondly, we see that it's predicted what tribe he will arise from, and which tribe is that? Judah, when we go to the New Testament, we look at the various genealogies. Genealogies demonstrates that he arises from Judah. We also have predictions way back in Genesis 49, when Jacob, remember he's doing the blessing and he's he's, he's basically predicting that there is going to be one, a lion that will rise from where?

Judah. Thirdly, we see a prediction that the, the ruler that rises up, he will come from this ancient line or he will, let's see how it says it in New King James, his goings forth are from old, either from ancient times or from everlasting. This seems to hearken to John one, that speaks of the Messiah being more than just a man that just is born and happens to be a good leader. This is somebody that has at least some miraculous element to them.

And when we get to the New Testament, we get everything filled in. the colors are, are filled inside the lines. Now we see it's the Christ who is the second person of the Trinity. And then fourthly, There is this description of this ruler as being like a shepherd.

and when we get to the New Testament, clearly, Jesus is described in many different places as a shepherd. So what we have here is a prophecy that's made in the middle of the 8th century BC that is giving very specific information about this coming ruler, Bethlehem of Ephratha, Judah, he's going to be a unique individual that comes from ancient times, and he will be referred to many times as a shepherd. Now, the shepherd one, you can say there's lots of leaders that were called shepherds, but to prophesy that he would be born in this particular town, come from this tribe.

And so on.

I think we see an amazing example of God's omniscience through the prophet, Micah. Any thoughts that you guys have at this point? Is this, so would you say that this is set within a mercy section or a judgment section of the book? a little bit of both, right?

Cause the, the, you have this ruler that's rising up, he's going to unify Israel. Right now, Israel is not unified. They've fallen headlong into immorality, but he's gonna unify them. He's gonna be their shepherd.

And then in verse 5, he's gonna drive out enemies. and so when you get to verse 5, there's this, now this crossover back to like the current situation when the Assyrian comes into the land and when he treads in our place, then he will rise against him, 70 shepherds and 8 princely men. They will waste the sword, the land of Assyria, land of Nimrod, so on. So Assyria has been, on one hand, it's been predicted that Syria is going to come in and bring judgment, but right here it's speaking of Assyria being driven out.

What do you guys remember from last week? Well, we just said it this morning. Who is coming and setting up at the gates of Jerusalem underneath Hezekiah's reign? Assyria.

So Sennacherib and the entourage, they're, they've already wiped out Samaria, they've wiped out Lachish, they've wiped out other towns. They come to the gates of Jerusalem, and God basically prophesized both in Isaiah, but also we see now here that the Assyrians will not be able to get in. They will be run out. and then there's like this foreshortening of looking forward to a time when Israel will be this remnant.

Look again at verse 7, the remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many peoples like a dew from the Lord. So it's for, it's looking forward to this period when it, when Judah will actually be a blessing, but also verse 8, the remnant of Jacob shall be among the Gentiles in the midst of people like a lion. So there's those that are wanting to follow the Lord, where Judah and Israel will be seen as a blessing, and those that are wanting to rise up against the Messiah, they will be seen as like a lion.

Let's turn over now to chapter 7.

Oh yeah, go ahead, Joe. Yeah, sure. Yeah, so Joe's question, is there any indication that the prophets, any of the minor prophets, they just stand up and read their prophecy from beginning to end, like in, like, say, like we see here in, in Micah. Now, what, it's interesting when we looked at Hezekiah last week, remember Hezekiah sent his emissaries to Isaiah one time, and then Isaiah gives a prophecy.

And then there's a 2nd time that he sends them and he gives a prophecy. It doesn't seem like Isaiah leaves his spot wherever he is. I don't know why, but I think of Isaiah in a cave. I'm not sure, that's probably just made up, but I think of him just sitting there in a cave with a big long beard and just waiting for people to come in.

And And so, so he prophesized. I don't think he, it doesn't seem like he ever leaves his spot. They just deliver the message back to Hezekiah. And I thought the same thing with, with Mike, Micah, his prophecies are so all over the place.

The one thing that makes me wonder though, in verse one, the word of the Lord that came to Micah of Morisheth in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, the kings of Judah. OK. So that just says the word of the Lord. What does the NIB say in chapter one, verse one?

Who has the NIB? Chapter one verse one. the Judah, the vision he saw. OK, so the vision he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem.

When it says the vision he saw, that makes me think of it as in one fell swoop, but because it happens in the reigns of three different kings, we're talking about lengthy period of time. It seems like that would lean towards several different prophecies that have all been assembled into this book. So that, my leaning would be that he's not just giving this all at one time, there's several different prophecies given. That, that get assembled into the book of Micah, and no doubt Micah would have been read and the At the temple, when they, once they got carried off into.

In the synagogue and stuff like that. So, which may account for some of the appearance of disjointedness. that he's, he's given this prophecy about Bethlehem and then he's given this other prophecy about Lackish and so on. That's a good question.

Definitely, you, you see this, Mike is just, it's just such an interesting book from the standpoint of just the depths of judgment and then just the heights of his mercy. And we're gonna, we're gonna look now at one of those mercy passages at the end of the book, 7:18 to 20. Let's read it together. And then we're gonna make several, several points and then, and then try to wrap this up.

So verse 18, 7:18, Micah. He's come right again out of another judgment section, and then he says, who is a God like you? Pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of his heritage. Again, we keep seeing that remnant terminology.

He does not retain his anger forever because he delights in mercy. He will again have compassion on us and will subdue our iniquities. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea, and you will give truth or faithfulness to Jacob and mercy to Abraham, which you have sworn to our fathers from days of old. That is just, this is just one of the just amazing, famous.

Just covenant passages in the, in the Old Testament. Let's go back and break it up a little bit. So again, imagine, think of what is being, has been predicted here, the destruction of Samaria, the carrying away of Israel in the captivity in 721 by the Assyrians, much of the destruction of northern Judah. and even a prophecy against Jerusalem that wouldn't come down the pike until about 150 years after Micah in 586 when the Babylonians, Nebuchadnezzar come and wipe them out and carry them away off into captivity.

That stuff's being spoken of. Even the setting aside of Israel for a time, has been predicted. But then this future look. of Jerusalem being rebuilt, of the temple being rebuilt, of this ruler rising up.

And so with, after all of that, you get to this conclusion of the book, and Isaiah just stands back and says, who is a God like you? Answer, no one. There is no made up deity of any of the pagans that comes anywhere close to you. In fact, we could say, there is no magistrate.

There is no common person, there is no wealthy person that comes anywhere close to forgiving sin the way you forgive sin. God is up here and everybody else is way down below him. His thoughts are so much higher than our thoughts. And so that's his thesis is a question, who is like our God?

This God who pardons iniquity, passes over transgression of the remnant of his heritage. Is this talking about God passing over the sins of everyone who has ever lived on the planet? No, it does not. We have to be careful that this is not speaking of God, looking down upon the sins of Ahab and saying, I'm gonna pass over those sins.

Did God pass over the firstborn of Pharaoh? He did not. The firstborn of Pharaoh did not have blood over his door. Pharaoh got full judgment as he did not serve Yahweh.

But the remnant, the remnant have their sins and transgressions passed over. Notice that the remnant are being described, are they being described as sinners or as sinless? Sinners So it's not like you've got, the pagans over here and the remnant over here, and, and God's, the remnant are these really, really saint-like people who never sin, and the pagans are the evil ones. No, you've got sinners over here, you've got sinners over here, and God is passing over, pardoning the sins of the remnant.

That's befuddling. Who is a God like that, that passes over the sins of the remnant? And then he begins to use all of these different verbs and tenses and, and then, so, so look at the, the next part. He does not refrain or does not retain anger forever.

Is God just to have anger against the sins of Israel and Judah? Definitely, but he does not retain that anger forever. Why? According to the text, why does he not retain that anger?

He doesn't look at anything within the remnant. He doesn't say, because the remnant's better looking. The remnant, they just have big brown eyes and I'm just so, oh, they're just so cute. he looks at the remnant, he doesn't say, oh wow, they're just, because they're just so much better people.

They smile a lot. They're very kind and friendly. They give good presents at Christmas. They bring me better offerings.

No, what does he say? Because he, what, delights. In mercy It's all on God. Why does God's anger not persist?

Because God is a God that delights in mercy. I don't know about you, but that like, there's times where that just completely, it just overwhelms me. There's been many different periods of my life and one recently where I was just waiting for God's big hammer. you talk about the hammer of Thor, that's like nothing, like the hammer of God, boom.

I'm just waiting for the hammer of God, and yet God like awakens me to my sin, grants me repentance, and then just dumps his love on us through the Holy Spirit, and you're just like, Why? Why do you love me in spite of my sin? Because he delights in mercy. This is part of the nature of God, is that he loves to spread mercy.

He loves to, to give us a reprieve and kindness that we do not deserve, and it just causes our hearts to just well up in worship as the Spirit convicts us of sin and yet reminds us of love at the same time. So he delights in mercy and then he will again have compassion on us. So, Micah's looking out in the future. He's speaking of Israel and Judah.

He's going to have compassion upon us. Not only will he have compassion, but he will subdue our iniquities. So he's gonna take our iniquities by the scruffy neck and make them bow. Literally, the idea here is he's gonna take our iniquities and tread them underfoot.

the Assyrians, this was not uncommon in the ancient Near East. When they would conquer a particular enemy, you would have the king bow before you and you would put your foot on his neck. And if they would have had cameras back then, they would make sure everybody took a picture of Sennacherib with his neck on the top of Ahaz. What God does with our sins is he puts his foot on the neck of our sins and not just that, he crushes them.

Then he grabs them in the next part of the verse and he hurls them into the depth of the sea. So some translations say cast, that's a great word. I like the word hurl. He just, he, he treads, picks it up and hurls it.

not just onto the shore of the sea or to where when low tide comes, you can see the dead bodies of your sin still hanging out there like in the Ganges River. You guys know about the Ganges River? There in India, if you go down to Varanai. It's where everybody wants to die in Hinduism and, and, and you'll pay somebody to burn your, burn the body and throw the ashes, but sometimes it takes too much wood, it's too expensive to burn the bodies, and so they'll just throw the bodies into the river.

And so it's not uncommon to see bodies just floating down the river in the Ganges. And sometimes they'll just roll up onto the shore. God doesn't take our sins to where they can roll back up on the shore. He hurls them.

And they sink down to the bottom of the ocean, to where he remembers them no more against us. And I think the idea of him subduing and putting our sins underfoot seems to imply this idea of, of forgiveness, compassion, but also victory that he has granted us, he has given the Lord Jesus Christ and he gives us the Holy Spirit, that he's given us power to overcome our sins to where we would not be ruined by our sins. as we look at the New Testament, and compare the New Testament carefully with a passage like this, this doesn't at all mean that Christians aren't gonna sin, but that there is, there's power available to the remnant to, to take every thought captive and to, to persevere in the faith to where our sins, need not ruin us the way they would have otherwise.

I was reading a quote from Matthew Henry this week.

Where he just says, based on this passage, If we were left to ourselves to deal with our own iniquities, who of us could stand? It's like just start, get, get the devil out of the equation. If, if God were just to leave us alone and we just had to go mano a mano with our sins, we lose. But Jesus Christ comes along, dies on the cross, gives us the Holy Spirit, grants us everything that we need for life and godliness.

And God says, I am going to take your sins and tread them underfoot and hurl them into the depths of the sea. I will not count them against you. And I think as Christians, we, we need to remember that, yes, we do have indwelling sin, but we have the Holy Spirit, we have the Word of God, we have the people of God. And there has been, there's these great and precious promises where we can take hold of those things and not let our sins ruin us, to the end.

Does that make sense? And I think that's, that's part of the spirit of this passage here. And so, who is a God like you? He's not retaining his anger.

He delights in mercy, he's compassionate. He treads our sins and casts them in the depths of the sea. And then lastly, and you will give faithfulness or some translations say truth. I think the basic idea is covenant.

Truth, I filled faithfulness, faithfulness filled with content. You will give this faithfulness to Jacob and mercy, or some translators say you will be faithful to Jacob and mercy to Abraham, which you have sworn to our fathers from the days of old. So this is harkening back to the Abrahamic covenant. Abrahamic covenant says, Abraham, I'm gonna make a covenant with you for my name's sake.

I'm gonna make you a great father of many nations. I'm gonna give you many people. I'm gonna give you land, and guess what? It's a unilateral covenant.

It's not based upon you and what you accomplished, it's all based upon me. And what do we see leading many throughout the whole Old Testament, this reminder of I will keep my covenant for my name's sake, I will keep my covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and you keep seeing that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and there's constant reminders of God's keeping of his covenant with his people for his own name's sake. We call that a unilateral covenant, can't be broken.

God bounded upon Himself.

We get to Romans 11, I think it is, where it says, the gifts and callings of God are in your good dispensation list hit the pulpit, they say irrevocable. They are irrevocable. That's the word they love, right? The irrevocable word.

And so who is a God like this?, let's, let's be honest here. You or I, we, we're not gonna do this. Like Joe and I have been good friends for a long time, right? But if Joe's looking for me, to me, to always pardon iniquity, to never get angry, to delight in constant mercy in our relationship, to subdue his sins and to cast his sins in the depth.

it's not gonna happen, right? My wife and I, I love my wife to death, awesome gal. I, I refer to her as the grace of God in my life. But guess what?

We are not gonna give one another this pardoning. We can't possibly do that. We can ask for forgiveness and call upon God together. but it's only God who is like this, who forgives like this, who has compassion like this.

Who has even the ability and the authority to. To deal with our sins the way God does. And that the, that the book of Micah ends this way. It is just an amazing reminder to us that this God who's in control of all of history, while he's bringing judgment at this point upon Israel and then eventually Judah, he's promising this millennial kingdom, he's promising the rise of Jesus as the Messiah.

Even we didn't have time to look at it, but even in the book of Micah, there's another reminder of Assyria thinks that they're coming down to do their business, but they don't really understand that God's just kinda using them as a pawn to get his stuff accomplished. There's that sovereignty stuff in this book again. if you didn't have time to this week. I'd encourage you.

I've mentioned this before, right? Bible gate? Bible, you can go online for free, Biblegate.com, and they have several different translations of the Bible that are on audio. And for free.

And like on my phone, I have to like make sure it doesn't, close every 30 seconds, how you have the auto lock. So I turn my auto lock off, plug it in, in my car, and then you can just set it on the book that you want to listen to and it'll just run through that book. I love the NIV dramatized version for, I just like it for me cause I like the dramatic music that they're putting in there and they have some really good voice actors. And But you could listen to the whole book of Mic, literally, I, I think it might be 12 minutes.

I, I, I forget, maybe I'm exaggerating, but it's not long., I, it takes me about normally 20 minutes to drive to work and I, I can listen to just about, the whole book, right? On my way to work. And you get this real feel for the whole flow of the book. And then you get a real, sense of the, the judgment stuff on the outer edges of the book, but then all this mercy stuff right in the middle.

And I don't know. I like the voice actors too. Maybe I'm a pansy, but I. Who's doing on this one, I don't know.

This isn't the famous, like all the actors. If you wanna buy the Word of Promise, you have to buy that one. The Word of Promise, you can go on Amazon for about 39 bucks and either get the MP3 or the CD, the CDs cost you about $100 and that's where you have all the famous actors reading the Bible. Jim Cavieel, Jon Voight.

Alexander, what's his name? Jason Alexander. All these famous people read through the whole Bible. They spent over a million dollars.

I haven't got that one yet. I think Katie wants it for Christmas, so don't tell her. Don't put that on the audio. I'm just joking.

Any questions you guys have? Comments, criticisms, concerns? Yeah, Larry. I, the Pro How How did the evil king.

Know that, but yet nobody else in Israel knew that Jesus is gonna be born in, in Bethel. Oh, like the Herod situation? Yeah, so, Herod is a Jewish king, right? He's a pawn of the Romans, the Roman Empire, but he, so he would have been raised in his good Jewish synagogue, right?

So he, it seemed like he kinda knew what, where it was supposed to be. but who was it that didn't know again? Oh, he did know it was the Oh, OK. or somebody So his advisors told him.

Oh, I see. OK, that's right. I, it's, I haven't. Oh, OK.

So his advisors told him. So, I didn't study. Well, I, I guess not for Herod because he didn't pay attention in Sunday school and but the Jewish rabbis. Well, I don't know because, you gotta remember everything's in scrolls and if you have, if you're gonna hear the word of God, you pretty much have to go to the synagogue.

Part of my problem is, is I remember what I studied this week. So if you ask me a question about Micah, I'm good. If you ask me something about Matthew 2, I'm like 49 years old now and I'm like, Matthew, what? Was that a book in the Bible?

No. Yeah, but yeah, I think, I think if I remember correctly, after Dan gave me that little tip off, it, it would have been his counselors that told him, but you had something else there, Dan, or Their first thought was, well, we've got to get the best. That's true. Yeah, that's a good point.

Right. Prophecy. So, yeah, Dan's just making the point that when it was revealed to Mary, and then obviously, Joseph would have eventually known that they're gonna have the Messiah, they weren't like, oh, OK, let's make sure we fulfill this prophecy and, and get quickly to Bethlehem. No, it just happened through the, the census, right?

because of the census, they had to go that direction. So that's a good point. Real good. Yeah, Joe.

you Oh, OK. Oh right, yeah, cause they, yeah, they were cause he actually, I guess when he was a kid grows up in Nazareth, so he's known as being Jesus of Nazareth even though he was born in Bethlehem. Yeah, that's interesting. Definitely, I would encourage you before you get into next week's material, there is chapter 9 back there, lesson 9.

but if you didn't get a chance to listen to Micah, go and listen to it this week. If, if you're looking for stuff to have some really good quiet time fodder. Chapter 7, 18 to 20. I just spent a lot of time in it just lately and just was getting really encouraged with God's character.

So that'd be good. And I'll see if I'm gonna try to post some of the notes I didn't get to about the hermeneutics of prophecy, like how should we approach prophecy? One of the ideas we looked at this morning is foreshortening. Remember that prophets sometimes talk about the immediate context, other times, and then they'll almost like in the very next paragraph, start looking at something way in the future, and that's just the way the Lord has revealed things to certain prophets.

for his purposes, sometimes it feels a little jarring to us cause we like, whether you realize or not, we're, we're all very Greek in our mindset. We want like 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4. And prophecy just does not work that way. All right, let's go ahead and pray.

I'll be up here if you guys have questions. Lord, we just thank you so much for these reminders that yes, you are a God who judges and you will by no means let the guilty go unpunished. This gives us comfort when we look out at all the evil in our world, knowing that you will not let evil persist forever. And yet when we look at our own hearts, we see vestiges of that evil in us.

And so we cry out to you and we thank you, Lord, that you have provided atonement through Jesus Christ. And thank you for sending Jesus to Bethlehem and living a perfect life and dying for us. Thank you for being a God. there is just no God who pardons like you do and passes over the sins of your children and the remnant.

We thank you, Lord, for your great compassion upon us. Your anger, does not last forever. We thank you, Lord, for even giving us your spirit and the word and the people of God to help us subdue our sin. Thank you that you have cast our sin into the depths of the ocean.

we thank you that you are a covenant keeping God, that you are faithful, to us and that you show loving kindness. We pray, Father, that more and more that you would help us to think, properly and biblically about you and In the way that you move through history. bless us as we just turn our hearts and worship, this morning to you as your word is preached and as we sing to you in Christ's name, we pray. Amen.