Yay! We're back! This is Part 2 of my Micah observations, and please, if you would like to read the chapters I am talking about and add to my thoughts, feel free to do so! I would love to hear what you have learned/are learning.
In the overview I gave last time, I said that the tone of this book is judgment. God has a message for Micah to give to Israel, and His message is that destruction is coming to them because of their sin. However, even while God seems to be angrily telling them of the terror that is coming, He makes sure to mention that He is grieving with them, and for them. Their sin is not just an offence, but a wound, and it's killing them.
In Micah 2, He says,
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? (Micah 2:7)
As He is saying "Woe to those..." He makes sure to reasonably refute any injustice they might accredit to Him.
"Think about it," He challenges them. "Am I being harsh?"
What struck me especially was that He said, "Do not my words do good to him who walks uprightly?"
God wants them (and us) to understand WHY He is angry with their sin. Earlier He called it a wound, it's hurting the ones who are committing it. But beyond that, He calls them out for things like,
They covet fields and seize them,
and houses, and take them away;
they oppress a man and his house,
a man and his inheritance. (Micah 2:2)
He's not just against the perpetrators, but He is for the victims. To punish them for their sin is to give relief to the ones who have been suffering the results of it.
In Chapter 3, He specifically addresses the leaders of the people.
And I said:
Hear, you heads of Jacob
and rulers of the house of Israel!
Is it not for you to know justice? (Micah 3:1)
If you read the rest of the chapter, He basically calls out the leaders, judges, and prophets, for lying, stealing, and mistreating the people they are supposed to be leading.
One of the main things I wanted to point out to my bible study when we read through this book, was that God is the same in the Old and New Testament.
When I was a kid, I heard stories about God bringing Israel out of Egypt, but what stuck in my mind was not the fact that He stepped in and saved Israel, it was that He brought plagues down on Egypt. I didn't think about the picture of salvation the Passover Lamb was for us, I thought about the fact that God killed every firstborn Egyptian.
When I thought about their deliverance, I remembered the Israelites wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. I remembered the sons of Korah being swallowed by the earth. I remembered Abraham being asked to sacrifice Isaac. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. David and Bathsheba's baby.
This was my picture of God.
And then somehow, I was supposed to believe that the One who came as a baby, humbly born in a stable, the One who healed the lame and sick, the One who said, "Let the little children come to Me," the One who said, "Let the one without sin cast the first stone," somehow THAT One was the same God?
After all, wasn't GOD the one who made the law that she should be stoned?
I couldn't reconcile those two pictures of God in my mind until I was 13, when I felt the presence of God for the first time. When I felt so desperate, I knew that turning to God was my only option. In that moment, He showed me that I did not understand Him at all.
That moment began a journey for me of learning who God is. I gave Him control of my life, I accepted His sacrifice for me, and suddenly discovered that He wants me to learn to know Him as intimately as He knows me.
What I discovered, when I finally trusted Him and started learning, is that the story of "THAT One," does not begin in the New Testament. His story is told through the whole bible, beginning in Genesis, continuing through to Revelation.
In the Old Testament, you see the heart of God in the New, saying things like,
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.
For her wound is incurable,
and it has come to Judah;
it has reached to the gate of my people,
to Jerusalem. (Micah 1:8-9)
The wound that Jesus knew wouldn't be healed by stones thrown by broken people. The wound that Jesus came to finally bind up and heal.
In the New Testament, you see the heart of God in the Old, saying things like,
(Jesus talking about the Pharisees) They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. (remember how He reprimanded the leaders in Micah?)
....But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. (remember how He reprimanded the prophets in Micah?)
....O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!" (remember how the wound is incurable because they refuse to stop drinking the poison?)
(Matthew 23:4, 13, 37, commentary added)
In the New and Old Testament alike, God grieves over the sin of the people, and begs them to repent, because He WANTS them. If God really was just so angry that He didn't care to give them another chance, He wouldn't have given Micah anything to say. He was perfectly capable of ruining them without warning them first. The fact that Micah wrote a book of warning to the people is evidence that He wanted to give them another chance.
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
23 they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:22-23)
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