25/03/07 God's word of warning Micah 1:1-9
1. How many people think Gordon Brown will make a good Prime Minister? How many people have no idea who Gordon Brown is? (!) Day by day we are fed news about political leaders, about political issues and arguments. Maybe you are someone who takes a keen interest in politics. Maybe you do not follow political events very closely… but at any rate you know who Gordon Brown is! (As Christians who are committed to seeing God’s will done on earth as it is in heaven I think it is right that we should be interested in how power is exercised because we know that all power comes from God and those who exercise it are called to act in accordance with God’s character and his commands.) But anyway here are a few words from Gordon Brown’s budget speech…
…we will put the security of the country first. So, for the coming year intelligence and counter terrorism will receive an additional £86 million pounds. Our Budget for security and intelligence, which was just £1 billion in 2001, will now be for 2007-08, £2¼ billion…. I am allocating the Secretary for Defence an additional £400 million.
That’s a lot of money the chancellor was talking about… nearly two and three quarter BILLION pounds extra.. (planned expenditure on defence in total for the year 2007-8 is around 31 billion pounds)
Now if there is a lot of talk these days about national security… it was the same in the time of Micah.
He lived in dangerous times when the people of Judah were very concerned about the threat of an attack. National security was right at the top of the agenda.
2. A new empire was emerging, the armies of Assyria were coming close to the borders of Israel and Judah.
So imagine yourself in this situation where all the talk is about the movement of the troops of the Assyrian empire … and then hear this announcement from Micah…
Look! The LORD is coming!
Never mind the armies of Assyria on the move he says… GOD is on the move.
He leaves his throne in heaven and comes to earth, walking on the high places. They melt beneath his feet and flow into the valleys like wax in a fire, like water pouring down a hill.
What a picture of the awesome power of God.
Nothing in heaven and earth can resist his will. Even the very mountains and valleys melt like wax in the presence of their creator.
God is all powerful… and he is on the move.
Maybe there were one or two cheers as Micah was speaking. His hearers would have been happy to say… “Yes God will deliver us, God will rescue us from the Assyrians just as he rescued our ancestors from slavery in Egypt. He will do great wonders again and defeat our enemies.”
Well anybody who was cheering Micah as he made his announcement would have been stunned by what he said next:
Why is this happening? (in other words “Why is the Lord coming is such awesome power that the mountains will melt before him?”)
Because of the sins and rebellion of Israel and Judah.
God is on the move, says Micah… to bring judgement upon his own people.
3. The people of Israel and Judah had committed themselves to live in a covenant relationship with God who had rescued them from Slavery in Egypt and given them the freedom to live as his children, freedom to live in obedience to his laws, freedom to live loving him and honouring him in their life together.
But as we saw at the beginning of this sermon series, the people had been unfaithful to him.
They had chosen to worship other gods, they had adopted the religious beliefs and practices of the nations around them. Time and again they had refused God’s invitation to enjoy living in a relationship of love with him, ignored the covenant made at mount Sinai,
And the further they wandered away from the laws of God the more oppression and injustice was seen in the life of their nation.
Micah like other prophets saw that through the rise ofAssyria and through the power of the Assyrian armies, GOD was at work to bring judgement into the life of his people who had been unfaithful to him.
And so he announced…
So I, the LORD, will make the city of Samaria a heap of rubble. Her streets will be ploughed up for planting vineyards. I will roll the stones of her walls down into the valley below, exposing all her foundations. All her carved images will be smashed to pieces.
4. Within 10 to fifteen years of that announcement
Micah saw the northern kingdom of Israel occupied by Assyria, he heard of the destruction of Samaria the capital city. And he would have heard the sound of the Assyrian armies as they marched south along the borders of Judah to within just a few miles of his home town.
Micah was part of the pain of this situation. He felt for his people. he longed to see them turn to God in repentance. it grieved him when they didn’t. That’s why he says…
Because of all this, I will mourn and lament. I will walk around naked and barefoot in sorrow and shame. I will howl like a jackal and wail like an ostrich.
I am not sure that I know how to wail like an ostrich (!) … yet I can’t help but notice the passion of this prophet for people who have turned away from God and who will have to face up to his judgement.
Do you think that maybe we should feel that passion for people who do not know God as their heavenly father and who will have to stand before him and face his judgement alone - without a saviour to speak for them.
5. And the prophet Micah could only have been saddened by the behaviour of the leaders of his nation. The King of Judah, King Ahaz decided to find his own way out of the crisis that faced his country. Ahaz declared his loyalty to Assyria, he paid tribute money to them, and as a sign of his commitment to this new alliance he became an enthusiastic worshipper of their gods, setting up an altar to the god of Assyria in the temple in Jerusalem. And King Ahaz, a descendant of King David, who knew the story of all that God had done for his people… this King even offered one of his own sons as a human sacrifice to the gods of Assyria.
Micah was a man who knew God’s heart… so he must have wept when he heard the news of what Ahaz had done.
Ahaz abandoned trust in God and tried to find his own way to ensure the safety of the people. He failed.
Micah predicted the fate of Jerusalem the capital city of Judah…. Jerusalem will be reduced to rubble! (Micah 3:12 ) His words were fulfilled within a hundred years.. when the armies of another great empire… the empire of Babylon, swept into Judah and completely destroyed the capital city.
In this time of confusion, Micah, like the other prophets saw very clearly that the people of Israel and Judah deserved to face the judgement of God .
And the prophet saw that judgement coming in the form of the invading armies who would devastate the nation and strip them of their prosperity and self-confidence.
6. What is the relevance of this message of judgement to us to day?
Well. Our God is still a Holy God.
God cannot live in relationship with evil and corruption. His loving Holy Spirit can’t live side by side with hatred and animosity.
He cannot draw near to people who speak his name with their lips and pretend to honour him… but actually live their lives in disobedience, knowingly ignoring his commands. If we think that it is possible to deliberately and wilfully choose to ignore the commands of God and still live in close relationship and friendship with him, then we are just fooling ourselves.
We have a wrong understanding of God if we do not understand that he is wholly good, completely righteous and cannot tolerate evil of any kind.
We have a wrong understanding of God if we suppose that it is ok to simply pay lip service to him… to say oh yes I worship God... but in fact live as if other things were more important to us than honouring the God who made us.
We have a wrong understanding of God if we think that our Sin is not so serious that we have to be rescued from it.
Sin is the word the bible uses to describe what we do when we put ourselves first.. instead of putting God first; when what I want is so important that I don't even bother to try to find out what God wants.
Sin is what we do when we try to live our lives as if God isn’t there.
Sin is serious… it cuts us off from friendship with God.
We have wrong understanding of God if we do not understand that there is no future for anything or anyone opposed to him.
7. But Thanks be to God for the cross of Jesus Christ.
We live on the other side of the cross to Micah.
For Micah the cross of Jesus lay in the far distant future… but for us.. the cross of Jesus is part of our present experience .. now.
As the bible says… Christ also suffered when he died for our sins once for all time. He never sinned, but he died for sinners that he might bring us safely home to God. (1 Peter 3:18)
On the cross Jesus bore the judgement for all our sin.
Next week is Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week leading to Easter Day.. and through that time we will be thinking about what our all powerful, all holy and righteous God has done for us through the cross of JESUS.
God is still a God who judges sin and evil.
He has not changed.
But now… Jesus had paid the price for our sin and suffered the judgement we deserved.
We have a wrong understanding of ourselves if we do not humbly recognise that we need to be rescued from the judgement that we deserve. We need Jesus. We need to thank him for the facing that judgement for us on the cross.
8. Do you remember how Jesus taught us to pray..
your Kingdom come… your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Maybe Jesus wanted us to learn to pray in that way because when we pray your will be done… our prayer will always be answered.
God’s will - will be done on earth and in heaven.
The God who made the mountains will one day roll them up - they will as Micah said, melt like wax before him as he creates a new heaven and a new earth. When he does there will be no place for anyone or anything that does not welcome and delight in his goodness and love and kindness.
And either we commit ourselves now to live in accordance to all we can understand of his will for us...
or we face the prospect of standing before him one day and finding that we have tried to live our lives in opposition and hostility to our creator…
and there is no future for anyone who does that.
As Micah the prophet saw so clearly… God will judge wrongdoing.
On that day… when I am called to stand before my maker and he looks at my life… I want to know that standing with me will be Jesus… my saviour.
As I stand to face the judgement of God,
I want to hear Jesus say…
Father… this one is mine… he belongs to me.
Do you?
I want to hear Jesus say
Father… He’s been judged already… and I’ve prepared a place in your kingdom for him.
And again and again for eternity I will have reason after reason to say thank you to Jesus for taking the judgement that I deserved so that I could live in friendship with God forever.