During and after the election of 2016, as I’m sure you remember, there were plenty of shouting and yelling. People were shouting each other down, not wanting to listen to things they disagreed with. And although churches do not shout down to those they disagree with, at least not typically, they want, unfortunately too many in the church, want to shout down.
And they want to keep the pastors and the churches quiet who speak the truth, especially the truth that’s discomforting, i.e., judgment. And although they don’t shout as such, as I said, they do shout with their feet. Why? As we’ll see in these verses, like Israel of old, too many American Christians put up with half-truths, if not outright lies, about faith and the worship of God.
Too many do not want to hear the truth. It’s too unpleasant. They’d rather hear about prosperity and good times.
They would like to hear about love and compassion. You hear the themes? The themes of society have blended and melded into the church. They don’t want the cold, harsh reality of a sinful world to intrude upon their quiet time on Sunday.
Right here, we see it with Micah. Whatever the reasons, too many Christians and churches do not want to hear the whole counsel of God, just the pleasant parts. Too many churches do not want pastors in the mold of Micah, but we need pastors in the mold of Micah.
And as we dig into these verses, let us not only recognize how widespread a problem this is in the church, but examine ourselves to see if we also are tempted to think and act in such a manner. In verses 6 through 7, shouting down the truth. I had shutting down originally.
Shouting Down the Truth
Decided to change the shouting down to emphasize the negativity of this word here. These words in verse 6. Do not prattle, you say to those who prophesy, so they shall not prophesy to you. Do not prattle.
Drip, drop. It’s almost exclusively used in the poetic sections of the Bible. And as you’re going to hear again, a number parts of the prophets is poetic in form.
So it’s an interesting word that way. Here it’s clearly the idea of a prophet, but it seems to be used in a derisive sense. Not just stop prophesying, but stop prattling, we would say today.
You’re just dripping and it’s very annoying and bothersome. Shut up. Go away.
I don’t want to hear you, right? That’s the idea here. Amos 7.16 uses the same word. Now, therefore, hear the word of the Lord, you say, do not prophesy against Israel.
That’s the typical word you know, prophesy, if you happen to know Hebrew. Do not spout against the house of Isaac. There’s that word, prattle or drip or drop.
It’s a derisive word, right? Stop babbling, we would say, or prattle. We don’t use prattle very often today, but that’s the same idea. It’s hateful.
It’s negative. Shut up. I don’t want to hear it.
And it’s words they’re using. Do not prattle, you say to those who prophesy. So their mouths are opening and telling Micah, shut up.
We don’t want to hear your judgment anymore. And there’s a play on words you can hear in the NKJV because they translate it the same way in verse 11. And there will be prophets who have a lying spirit prophesying about prosperity, wine and drink, right? Even he, God is saying, if you want a prattler, there’s your prattler.
There’s your babbler right there, giving you good news when it should be judgment. So he ends the section, as it were, turning on them and warning them not to shout down the truth. They’re telling Micah and others to shut up.
As we know, Micah overlaps Isaiah. They’re different parts of Israel, but they have a lot of overlap and judgments and their time around. And of course Isaiah wasn’t accepted.
The prophets just weren’t accepted by the church. We don’t want to hear your incessant talk about justice and judgment, they’re telling Micah. Stop your prattling.
It’s just gibberish to us, like an old fool babbling, like an incessant dripping in an old abandoned factory that they can’t find, always drip, drip, drip in the back of their mind, driving them mad with anger. I think that’s the idea. It’s a common problem in the church, the Old Testament church, in Amos 2.12. But you gave the Nazarites wine to drink.
They vowed not to have wine, right? Here, just break your vow. We’re gonna help you violate God’s law because we have such disdain for God’s law. And command the prophets saying, do not prophesy.
Shut up. We don’t want to hear the truth. Because often the prophecies of old were bad news.
Things you don’t want to hear. You must repent. You must give up your wicked lifestyle.
You must worship me according to my rules, not your own. And the church of old didn’t want to hear it, over and over again, for hundreds of years, a thousand years, 1,200 years, till the time of Christ. And how do they react to Christ? We don’t want to hear it.
We don’t want to hear it. They shove their hands in their ears. Stop your babbling.
We think you’re just a possessed man, right? This gibberish coming out of Christ’s mouth. They blaspheme him. And the Apostles were harried and even stoned and thrown in the prison because the things they spoke of, the good news, yes, but the good news you have to go through the bad news.
You’re a wicked sinner and you need to acknowledge that sin and repent. Then you can get to the good news. They don’t want to hear it.
They don’t want to hear it at all. And it’s a problem, of course, today. Verse 7, it seems that the prophet, one of the things that’s confusing in reading the prophets, it changes the subject and the object at times.
You’re not always sure why, who the he is and who the you are, and he’ll change second person, third person, first person. So you have to be very careful in reading it. And so sometimes there’s disagreement, is my point.
You who are named the house of Jacob, is the Spirit of the Lord restricted? Are these his doings? Do not my words do good to him who walks uprightly? You who are named the house of Jacob, which is to emphasize you who are the very apple of God’s eye, and you’re talking to God this way? Right? This is astounding, the prophet says. God’s talking to you and warning you, the house of Jacob, so he calls them by that name. You reject the very God who is the Lord of your house, because God has named you.
Is the Spirit of the Lord restricted? Do you think your shouting down the mouth of the prophets will shut them up? Because, of course, the prophets, if they’re of God, have the Spirit of God, and they will not be shortened, nor stopped, nor hindered. Do not my words do good to him who walks uprightly, he says at the end of verse 7? You don’t think so. That’s why you want to shut up the prophet, because the prophet is speaking my words, isn’t he? These are my words from the Spirit.
The Spirit of the Lord is not restricted. So already by this time, a good proper theology of the Old Testament recognizes that the Word of God has the Spirit of God, as we saw in Ezekiel 37. He’s just equating them here.
He’s talking to the prophet, you tell him to shut up. My word and my Spirit, the parallel ideas there, do good to them who walk uprightly. That is, those who acknowledge their sins and are humbled and walk in the path of God.
Not those who are perfect, doesn’t mean that, but certainly those who will strive to obey God. But that begins with hearts that are humbled. They are not humbled.
They think God’s word of judgment is not good for them, will be bad for them, and they don’t want that kind of bad things. They want good things. They want happy things.
They want smiley, happy, shiny faces in people. It’s not. Life is miserable.
Life is full of sin. This is the valley of death that we are in. As Jonathan Edwards said so eloquently, this is the only hell we’ll ever have for Christians, and it’s the only heaven that unbelievers will ever have.
Remember that. It gets better from here. God’s word, is it good for you, or is it scary and something to shout down? You recognize that it is good for you, and you ought to hear the words of judgment.
Judgment. What particular judgment? What are they shouting down, saying, shut up, why you keep coming after us? Well, it seems contextually, he hasn’t changed the sin. As you recall earlier, where he talks about, in the opening verses of chapter 2, that they oppress a man’s house, and they seize houses and covet fields.
So it appears to be an oppression from the rich upon the middle class. Now we have more evidence it’s the middle class that’s being spoken of. Verses 8 through 10.
Condemning Oppression
Lately my people have risen up as an enemy. So the people of God, instead of being friendly to one another, are now enemies to one another. You pull off the robe of the garment from those who trust you, as they pass by, as though they were men returning from war.
They’re weary, and they’re trusting of you, and they need help, and instead you steal them and cheat them blind, like an enemy would. It seems as though they want to cover for the rich. They’re tired of the prattling of the prophet, who is judging them, the rich, who are abusing their power and authority, and buying people out of house and home.
They want to shut Micah up, so they can get away with lying, stealing, and cheating. They don’t want the flashlight of God’s Word and Law shining into their dark deeds. And we see the prophet going back to these dark deeds again.
This is what you want me to shut up? I’m gonna open my mouth again. My people have become an enemy. They’re taking advantage of people, and of bad situations from those you trust.
You see that there? They are like men who return from war, which of course is a bad or a hard situation which you are finding yourself in. And you come home to those you trust, and you steal from them. As though we have today, where people abuse older people, first thing that came to my head, and steal money from them off the phone, right? And do scams like that, because they know they’re not able to think quick on their feet, and they take advantage of them.
See, they’re taking advantage of these fellow Israelites. And not just any fellow Israelites. Again, this is so interesting with today’s context in our culture, isn’t it, in the churches.
Poor people, yes. And there’s deserving poor, and undeserving poor. Just as though, just as much as there’s deserving rich, and undeserving rich, and deserving middle class, and undeserving middle class.
And here we see evidence of this being, clear evidence, more clear than the prior text, it seems to me, of this being the rich oppressing the middle class, or at least poor people with a fair amount of money, lower middle class, whatever you want to call them. It’s relative categories anyways. They lose the robe.
First of all, it’s stripped off, it’s a forceful word, often used for stripping off and grabbing. So, it’s the idea of stealing or cheating them. And this robe or cloak on their back is an interesting word.
It’s only used this way, and in this form here. Elsewhere, the word means glory, or magnificent. You’re not taking off their magnificent off their garment.
You have the inner garment, right, and the robe, or the outer garment, or the cloak. No, it’s a very, as one lexicon point out, likely an expensive cloak, a nice cloak, a magnificent cloak. So, the adjective becomes a noun in that sense.
And again, not only that, we see here more evidence. The women of my people you cast out of what? Their homes? Yes. What kind of homes, brothers and sisters? Pleasant homes.
Not a shack where a poor person would live, but nice homes, soft homes, pleasant places to live. God says that too is a crime. That is sinful, and you should not be doing that.
How? I don’t know exactly. Backroom deals, shady backroom deals, loopholes in the laws to evict the women, because here it’s the women and the children. Where are the fathers? They’re maybe dead or out to war, or these are widows.
We don’t know. But the emphasis, of course, is the situation is even worse. It’s not just a man, it’s the woman and the children you’re abusing and taking advantage of.
You’re oppressing them. So, it’s a picture we see here of rich and or political leaders, people with clout. That’s the idea of oppression.
Someone with clout using it for sin against someone below them who cannot resist that sin. And our society, oppression is typically defined as, it’s uncomfortable, it’s mean, I don’t like it. Where oppression is defined by God’s law.
That’s why I was very specific with that definition. So, ask yourself, does this still happen today? Yes. And do churches support it? See, the context here, remember again, you have two things going on.
You have a nation-state called Israel, and you have a church. The membership’s the same in both, but they’re two different institutions, because they’re two different courts. The court of the king, and the court of the Lord.
2 Chronicles 19. There was not a conjoining in the way people typically conflate them. There is a conjoining in the sense that they’re overlapping.
There’s not a conflation, a confusion between the two. There just isn’t. We see it very clearly.
Whether they’re consistent with it or not in practice is different. But we know they had two different courts for two different purposes. Political purposes for the king, and religious purposes for God through the great, the high priest in the temple.
And here, we then, therefore, have the church supporting this. The people it talks about. You, my people.
Of course, it’s not just the rich now. He’s saying, my people in general. He’s condemning all of them.
Either indirectly, that is, you’re supporting the rich people who can pull this kind of stuff off. Buying off all these lands, and all these houses, and therefore, leaving nothing for the rest of us, for instance. Or it’s the rich themselves.
Probably a combination of both when he talks about the people. Yes, it happens today. And yes, churches do support this today.
Churches have, and do support, communism, and socialism, and secularism, like in the mainstream churches. That’s oppression. But, but they’re helping the poor.
Are they? You go after the middle class, one of the biggest givers in America, it’s the middle class. Americans are very, I’ve seen the numbers over the years, that we give so much money, and helping people, and institutions, and the poor, and giving to this and that. So you’re actually killing the golden goose, it would seem to me.
But be that as it may, these things are real today, and God is not satisfied with us if we do the same thing, and support rich politicians, rich pastors, rich leaders, who want to use their power in an ungodly fashion, and oppress those who don’t have the influence and ability to fight back, and protect their interests, and their families. The punishment in verse 10, arise and depart for this is not your rest. Arise and depart.
He is describing what’s going to happen to them, right? The great theme behind Amos, excuse me, Micah, is that the Assyrians are coming, and they’re going to bring judgment, and you’re going to be taken away. You’re going to lose your land, you’re going to lose the precious things, you’re so greedy, I’m going to take it all from you, and give it to a stranger, since you’re going to oppress your own people, your own citizens, people you should love, dear, and take care of, and you’re going to lose the land. You’re going to arise, you’re going to depart for this, that is, this land is not your rest.
It’s supposed to be their rest, you see, the land of Canaan must be a picture of heaven, of eternal Sabbath and rest. We even have years of rest, every seven years, and the great jubilee of the 50th year, the Sabbath years, in the land, as a type and picture of heaven to come, and God says you’re going to lose it, you’re going to lose it to invading armies, as the rich and the politicians that are typically taken first by people like Nebuchadnezzar and others, because they want those with power and influence to either control them, kill them, or manipulate them, so that they can go back to the people, instead of having to fight them all over again, you know, pay them off, and why don’t you start manipulating people to my advantage, so they’re going to be the first ones taken captive and lose everything anyways. This is not your rest, he says, being cast out of the promised land was serious discipline in the Old Testament.
It’s similar to losing access to baptism in the Lord’s Supper today. Maybe not thought about it, because we’re so blessed. That’s a form of discipline.
You lose churches, you lose pastors, you lose the preaching of the Word, you lose the sacraments, because those are signs and seals, and in the Old Testament the ceremonial law had lots of signs and seals, now we only have two, then they had multiplicity of them. They’re there to strengthen our weak faith. You lose them, your faith isn’t going to be very much strengthened now, is it? So to lose the physical place of your home, which is common to all of us, that would be terrible.
I wouldn’t want to lose it, a pagan wouldn’t want to lose it, that’s hard. That’s bad, if people of course are stealing on the flip side, if we’re being judged by losing our houses. Morally, of course, you lose your covenantal home.
This is where the church is established in the Old Testament, right then and there. It’s like losing your church as well, not just your home. And then ceremonially, of course, you’re losing the means of grace that’s there to help strengthen your weak faith.
It’s a triple whammy, because they have stolen and cheated from their fellow Jews, their fellow citizens, it’s a dual idea, and their fellow churchmen. You could have said that for England in the 1516 to 1700s. I don’t know what it is today, they still technically have an official Church of England.
Unfortunately, it’s not that way in America as such, and we have our own problems. So this is bad stuff, this is a bad judgment. Now verse 11, we see the end of these verses, it begins with prattling and ends with prattling.
Accepting Anything but the Truth
If a man should walk in a false spirit and speak a lie, saying I will prophesy to you of wine and drink, even he, you want to talk about prattlers Israel, people who babble, there’s your babblers right there, those who speak soothing words to you. False prophets and itching ears, right? Who likes to hear bad news? Please raise your hand. I mean, I’m not saying, hey, this is great, I want to hear more bad news, but you have to hear bad news.
When you have to hear bad news, when there’s sin involved, you know as a Christian you want to find the sin and rip it out of your heart and your life. Not even the most sanctified of us readily run after bad news, but we will receive it. How much more for those who love their comfort, love their security, love their peace, love their cheating and stealing and covetousness, as they meditate upon these things at night and during the day they buy up lands and houses, steal from widows, how much more would they not want to hear bad news? And we see it.
Perhaps you’ve experienced it in your own lives before God worked in your hearts. You don’t want to hear what this church has to say. I know those in the past, I won’t give names, but there was a family who came here many years ago and attended, they eventually joined, and they heard something from Dr. Coppice preaching, they get offended and said, we’re not coming back to church.
They’d leave. They come back, I don’t know if it was the next week or a few weeks later, they come back and hear it again and they hear something they don’t want to hear. And they come back again and eventually they repented.
We pray to God that that would happen more. What we see here, however, unfortunately in the time of Micah and even today, too many and too often this doesn’t happen. People’s hearts are hardened.
Isaiah 30 verses 10 through 11, in Isaiah 30 verse 10 through 11, we read, who says to the seers, that’s the old word for prophet, do not see, and to us write things, speak to us smooth things, prophesy deceits, get out of the way, turn aside from the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us. That’s what Isaiah’s hearing. And this is what Micah’s hearing as well, he uses different languages, prattling and babbling and gibberish, this drip, drip, drip, and it’s driving me nuts, get away from me prophet.
We want to hear our prophet come to us with sweet words of wine and drink and prosperity. It’s a chronic problem. It’s a problem we have today as well.
Truth preachers are unpopular. Not truth in general, of course, that’s unpopular as it is, but truth and judgment, that’s even worse. It’s so negative and so down in the mouth, as though Christ never said negative and down-in-the-mouth things, and yet we hear the liberals, I’m reading a liberal book right now.
Wow, some bad stuff. And it’s so superficial too, I mean you can see right through it. It sounds really good on the surface.
You dig a little deeper and it’s very superficial. It shows you how much sin confuses and deceives itself. Who typically has the biggest churches? Who typically are the most popular teachers? Those who are winsome, those who don’t say very bad things and negative things and make you feel bad.
Not all of them, but often that’s the case, and for good reason, because many people want to hear such words. It’s soothing to them. It’s comforting.
It’s not jolting. Christians like the Jews tell teachers today, not with their lips, but with their feet. There’s no shouting down, stop prattling pastor.
There’s just a moving of the feet away from the truth, because we have the freedom of consumerism in America and go to church, hopping to church hop until we find a church that fits us just right. So there’s no shouting down as such. So I suppose I’m saved from that.
Pastors don’t have to hear that. You don’t have to hear that. I don’t want to hear them yelling at me.
You don’t hear them at all, or you never see them again. But this is nothing new. Paul said something similar.
It’s not just an Old Testament thing. Ah, you know, those Jews, they were hardened hearts anyways, right? 2nd Timothy 4.3, 2nd Timothy 4.3, for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine. Is he talking about the unchurched? What kind of sound doctrine are the unchurched hearing? Zero! They’re hanging out with the pagans.
Not hearing sound. He’s talking about church members. There will come a time when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears that will heap up for themselves teachers, teachers that will assuage them of their guilty conscience, instead of calling them to repentance.
Preachers then, teachers that will not give them sound doctrine, but doctrines of devils and lies. And that’s what we have here. Micah says, if a man should walk in a false spirit and speak a lie, I will prophesy to you of wine and drink.
I will prophesy to you of prosperity and pleasant things. That’s what wine and drink is, isn’t it? Give us pastors and teachers who speak of prosperity and pleasant times. We have the obvious error of the prosperity gospel.
We have the less obvious error of the libertarian gospel or the libertine gospel. Live and let live. Just let me do my own thing, pastor.
You don’t have to tell me I’m right or wrong. Just give me the good news. So they’re not expecting happy and joyous things all the time, like the prosperity preachers are saying.
You’re going to be rich all the time and always healthy. They just don’t want to hear bad things. They want to be left alone and not feel any judgment or any call of repentance or any warnings.
Don’t tell us we’re doing things wrong. Don’t warn us of judgment. Just let us live and let live.
It won’t bother you. You won’t bother me. That’s all over this nation, I fear, in the churches.
Again, this is the context. In the nation, of course, but the nation isn’t members of the church anymore. Pray, brothers and sisters, that the church to receive bad news so that they can repent.
Pray that we would receive bad news that we may repent as well. Let us pray. With these words, God, which can be very discouraging, we see those of old and today as well as reflect upon our society and our churches.
Many, many, many, too many to number, who don’t want to hear bad news. Period. May we not be those of that ilk, God.
Help us help them, we pray. May our hearts go out to them and may we guard our hearts from such error in our lives. Be with us, Lord, we pray.
Amen.