…nation here, and as we know, God’s justice is upon all nations. Corruption in government and church is a long-standing problem, I dare say. You just study a little more church history, you’ll have that again in a few years, as we go over the church history, and we’ll learn about corruption.
And you know, of course, your own political history and the corruption that we have in America. But not all corruption is the same in God’s eyes, because some sins are more heinous in the sight of God than others. The same with political corruption.
And this is especially true when the corruption is widespread, systemic and constant. And this is what happened during Micah’s time. The corruption is from the leaders, but the effects do not stay with the leaders.
That’s what we see here. He harps and hammers on the leaders. We’ve heard it before, and we hear it here again, and he’ll do it again later.
The people are mentioned once in chapter 7, how even your own blood is untrustworthy. But it seems to be the emphasis here is upon the leaders and their effect upon the people of God. Israel itself falls under judgment, although not every Israelite was evil.
And as we meditate upon these verses, let us look to our own situation in America, understand how similar we are to the times of Micah. It’s quite similar indeed, it seems to me. The leaders condemned, verse 9, now hear this, you heads of the house of Jacob, and rulers of the house of Israel.
Leaders Condemned
This is all of Israel. It’s a very poetic and expansive way of saying, all you leaders. Anyone who’s in charge has a position of authority.
Political, religious, religious leaders both, they are culpable before God. Both can bring harm or prosperity to a nation. We’re reminded in Proverbs 29.2, when the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice.
But when the wicked man rules, the people groan. Leadership has an effect. You cannot have a leader who’s just simply and only private in the problems that he has.
What he does will affect the entire nation, and in the church as well. What you have in particular here with this description of all the heads and the rulers, not just political, but again as I said, ecclesiastical or the church, as we see here in verse 11, where he mentions the priest as a particular example of the corruption among the leaders and the rulers of the people of God. There are two different courts in Israel.
Oh, sounds like a sentence for class, doesn’t it? Didn’t plan it. Didn’t plan it that way. There are two different courts.
Remember 2 Chronicles 19, 5 and following. 2 Chronicles 19, 5 and following, where we have during the reign of King Jehoshaphat, how he set judges in the land throughout all the fortified cities of Judah, city by city, and said to the judges, Take heed to what you are doing, for you do not judge for man, but for the Lord, who is with you in the judgment. Now therefore, let the fear of the Lord be upon you.
Take care and do it, for there is no iniquity with the Lord our God, no partiality, nor taking of bribes. The very thing we read here in verse 11, that took bribes, contrary to the commands of God in Deuteronomy, and here in 2 Chronicles, where the King Jehoshaphat sets up judges throughout the land, throughout the city by city, how specific that is, localized authorities. And of course we know the back story to that.
There in Exodus 18, right, with Jethro, and that’s Moses’ father-in-law, who said, Come on. Any Tom, Dick, and Harry knows you can’t handle two and a half million people and make rule decisions. You need to make layers of courts.
Tens and fifties and hundreds. He was using what? Natural law is the word we use today. Jethro was a pagan.
He wasn’t using divine law. Nothing written down. But it’s God’s law.
Natural law is still God’s law. As it were, written on our hearts. It’s common sense.
You’ve got to have rulers. You’ve got to have a layer of courts. That’s what they do, and it’s reinstituted again, apparently.
It was lost for many, many years, probably, just like many other things in the time of Israel, these layers of courts. And so King Jehoshaphat, as a godly king, sets these courts up, these judges, these rulers, these elders. And you’re supposed to judge, not for man, but for the Lord.
Even though this is the king’s rule, it’s still God’s law. The old language of the two kingdoms, it’s been, unfortunately, twisted in our circles, called Radical Two Kingdom, R2K. The old doctrine was one law, as it were, one Lord and Savior over two domains.
Right? The church and the state. And you have that here in the Old Testament. It wasn’t theocracy as we think of the word today, with the priest running the show.
Or was the king running the show? Well, he’s part of the show, the political part. And the priests, or the equivalent would be the pastors today, and the leaders, and the ruling elders, running the church. They’re two distinct, yet close, I mean, they were coordinated, as it was in American history and elsewhere.
So, here we have the two courts. This is the one court, the political court, or the political body, as they used to say. Verse 8, Moreover in Jerusalem, for the judgment of the Lord, and for controversies, Jehoshaphat anointed some of the Levites and priests, and some of the chief fathers of Israel, when they returned to Jerusalem.
And they take notice at the end of that chapter there, 2 Chronicles 19, and take notice, Amariah, the chief priest is over you, and all the matters of the Lord. And Zebediah, the son of Ishmael, the ruler of the house of Israel, for all the king’s matters. So, you have the matters of the Lord, you have the judges, city by city, that’s the secular.
I use that in the best sense of the word, not the church. And then you have the Levites and the priests, and they have their high for the matters of the Lord. Matters of the king, matters of the Lord, priests, judges, two different courts.
Can you not see that there, in 2 Chronicles 19? It’s quite fascinating. It’s one of the arguments the Puritans made. It was actually Rutherford who goes right to this text.
Look, this is what they had in the Old Testament. This is here, this is how they organized the society. And you realize, wait a minute, that’s kind of how we’ve had America organize.
The church is in the state, and the state is in the church. Gee, just like Israel. Imagine that.
Of course, of course. In fact, many societies have been like that. Pagan societies, to one degree or another, always had religion, took religion seriously.
The ancient Near East, as I’ve pointed out many times in the Old Testament, you see from the pagan sources, the Gentiles, they take religion seriously, unlike America today. So, this is the background when he talks about the heads of Israel. He’s talking about both courts.
You’re all corrupt. There’s a problem with all of it. It’s an absolute mess.
The elders, the priests, the chief priests, the judges, the chief judges, the chief princes of the house of Judah, it talks about there. The rulers, whatever name to description you can use. Officers is another word.
They’re all corrupt. Maybe not every single one of them, but it’s so widespread. Micah’s just like, it’s just all of you.
I’m talking to all of you. You just better listen. He doesn’t have a statistical analysis, right? He doesn’t go out there and have these CNN polls, find out how many politicians are really corrupt or not.
He just says, across the board, listen, you’ve got problems. You are condemned in God’s sight. He doesn’t, and I think it’s proper that we’re allowed to do it at times, in certain contexts, of course, as a warning.
It’s so bad, I can’t tell who’s the godly anymore. I assume you’re all evil, unless I have evidence of the contrary. Things are turned on its head, and we’re becoming fastly in that direction in this nation, it seems to me.
And he describes them again with such forceful language as he did elsewhere in the prior verses, as you recall. You abhor justice and pervert all equity. Or as he said before, you love evil and hate the good.
There’s nothing worse you could say about a judge than just simply that. About a ruler, about a leader, whatever you want to call them, the priest, the prophets, he condemns the prophets earlier, the ruling elders, the deacons, anyone and everyone, sheriffs today, judges, presidents, senators, are they all that abhor justice and pervert equity? What is this justice and equity? They are semi-technical terms, they’re not fully technical, such that he’s saying two different things here, he’s just piling on a description as is typical in Hebraic poetry. Justice, equity, truth, these are the things, of course, that are defined by God’s law, unlike today’s social justice warriors, the SJWs, they’re called, for short.
If you do any texting, Facebook, you’ll see SJW once in a while. Social Justice Warriors is what they’re called. And these are often a cover for Marxism, or what they call Social Marxism.
And neither, of course, are rooted in God’s moral law and order. These are the kind of people that would balk at Christ’s parable of hiring the day laborers for different wages, you remember that? Well, wait a minute. Why is he getting paid more when he came in four hours later? Remember that parable? I’ve been working all day, he works half a day, he gets the same pay.
He’s like, what are you complaining about? You came to me, I’m the one with the money. Social Justice Warriors would freak out about that. That’s not fair, that’s not equal.
Because Christ isn’t fair. That’s blasphemy. Of course Christ is fair.
Justice and equity, in other words, in this text, and I’m going to unpack this later through the chapters here. So you get to chapter 6, what do you have? The most famous section of Micah. What do I require of you, O man, but to love justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before your God.
What is this justice? These people talk about social justice, sounds so good. Maybe we should join these rallies out into the street. Oh no.
It’s how you define justice, isn’t it? It’s even how you define social. What do they mean by social? Usually some amorphous, implicit bias against anything they like and we don’t like. Or vice versa.
Justice and equity, as I said, are used here in an emphatic sense. Based on God’s law, politicians and priests are to follow God’s law. Nineveh, the headquarters of the Assyrian Empire, had to follow God’s law.
He says, they are wicked, I’m going to destroy them. And Jonah’s like, yeah, all right, go for it, they’re not special people of God. He’s like, no, you will go to them and you will what? Tell them you’re not under God’s law because you’re in a different kingdom, because you’re a pagan? It doesn’t count for you.
No, it does count. It’s called repent. Repent.
They’re all called to repent. To be fair and to be impartial is the idea of justice. In the Bible.
With respect to God’s law. It’s defined by God’s law. Not by our feelings or the outcome.
Well, it’s not fair that he’s got more than someone else or he gets paid more and he works less. That’s what a lot of social justice warriors don’t like. The outcome is different.
Because people are different. And bosses are different and circumstances are different. I’m sorry, life is that way until we get to heaven.
Not to give to the rich an easier trial because they are rich. That’s the historical background when he says, give justice to the poor. That repeated refrain in the Old Testament.
In Deuteronomy and Exodus. To be just and fair to the poor doesn’t mean you let them get a pass in the court. It means don’t give the benefit of the doubt to the rich because they’re paying you off.
That’s the picture. The poor, if they’re guilty, ought to be found guilty. If the rich are guilty, they ought to be found guilty.
Regardless of them being rich or poor. That’s what it means to be impartial. That’s justice.
When it’s defined by God’s law. And that is not what most of these social justice warriors are pushing. Simply isn’t.
And again, I say it not because, hey, we’re in America. I don’t think many of you know these people. But it’s in the church.
This garbage is in the church. Leaders exposed, verses 10-11. Here we read, Who built up Zion? The heads and the rulers of Israel, all of them, who built up Zion with bloodshed and Jerusalem with iniquity.
Leaders Exposed
Bloodshed and iniquity. They expand the corrupt power of Jerusalem and Israel to build up Zion and Jerusalem with sin. That’s what they’re saying.
You’re expanding your empire, right? You’re expanding your empire by destroying your own people, as we read before. You’re cannibals. And you get wealthy in the power, the central power of Jerusalem, perhaps.
The rich who are in cahoots with the government. Like, that’s never happened before, right? And the bureaucrats, they have the right connections. They know the right laws to get away with problems.
Or in this case, to steal land, to steal from the middle class, as I showed before. Not even just the poor, but the middle class Mike is concerned about. They expand it.
They expand it through wickedness, not proper, and bloodshed. With murder, perhaps. I tend to think it’s a metaphor, like what we saw just a few verses earlier about them consuming and breaking up their bones and throwing them in the pot and eating their own people.
It wasn’t literal. We see that here in chapter 2, chapter 7, verse 2. In 7.2 we read, The faithful man has perished from the earth and there is no one upright among men. They all lay, lie, wait in blood, lie and wait for blood.
It sounds like they want to murder them. Every man hunts his brother with a net that they may successfully do evil with both hands. The prince asks for gifts, the judge seeks a bribe, and the great man utters his evil desire so they scheme together.
So when you get down to the details of that text, there’s nothing about murder there. It’s bribes, it’s ripping people off, it’s stealing their land as we read elsewhere, it’s destroying them, it’s sucking them dry as we say today, right? The poor and the middle class. The emphasis Micah has is about justice.
In society and economic justice in particular even. The very things many of these confused youth think they believe and understand when they’re just young arrogant people. That’s all they are.
Listening to old arrogant people. They don’t get these ideas on their own, brothers and sisters. You know that.
You’ve been to schools. I’ve been to public schools. You know that.
So it’s the economic well-being. The lie and wait for blood. Every man hunts his brother with a net.
It’s not like they’re out there grabbing people with a net like in Warner Brother cartoon or something. No, the prince asks for gifts. Oh, you want justice? Well, my hand’s a little dry.
Would you grease it up, please? The judge seeks a bribe and the great man utters his evil desires and they scheme, they conspire together brothers and sisters to take money and to take land as we saw, even take the fine robes off the back of their own brothers and sisters. Iniquity is simply deviant or injustice. Partiality and judgment, dishonest trade, robbing, murder and oppression are other descriptions examples of iniquity in the justice system among the rulers and the leaders to whom much is given much is required.
Behavior contrary to God’s character and against which he must respond is the idea there. When he gives this condemnation an example and evidence of the leaders and he says you have done iniquity you have built up your power base in Jerusalem and across Israel and made yourself strong and powerful by cannibalizing your own people and destroying them and gutting them in an economic sense. It’s a serious condemnation indeed.
So what we have here in particular is the heads judge for a bribe the priests teach for pay and the prophets divine for money. You can clearly see the pattern there. Money, money, money.
Not actually killing people it’s all about money. Does that sound familiar? Isn’t that the American way? You always gotta make a fast buck, you gotta make a buck now. Isn’t that the arguments we always hear by the politicians? You gotta do it this way or we’ll lose money! Sometimes it’s okay to lose money if it keeps my family intact and my children’s lives here with me or around us Life is more than just money.
But not for these people. Not for even the Old Testament Israel. The people of God.
So the judges take bribes Remember in the Old Testament the executive, the legislative and the judicial are not separate distinct branches the way we have in America that’s actually a historical oddity in many ways it only lasts several hundred years maybe medieval ages to some extent it was never fully divided even in Europe with the king and the courts it was the king’s courts often. And the same was true here in Israel so we shouldn’t think well you have these clear distinctions he’s just talking about the judges it’s only the judges, you know the Supreme Court of Colorado No, it’s anybody who makes a decision. It’s the ruling elders in the gates.
It’s the priests who make judgment calls as well. And all the layers of the courts in both systems of governments in the Old Testament. Okay? So it’s the civil rulers in general I think it is in contrast to the priests the next idea there they were corrupted.
Overtly the corruption is clearly bribing judges to get a favorable ruling, that’s what the rich would do you’re not supposed to do that obviously, that’s wrong Less overt or subversive the judges ruling wrongly because it favored perhaps their friend’s ruling. You have this idea of conflict of interest you think he’s only concerned about bribes or he’s using bribes as just one of many corrupt examples. I think it’s just one of many corrupt examples.
Again we saw prior in chapter two how they’re buying up land they’re warping the economic picture and making things worse for everybody else by buying up all this land and making the rest of us poor. So there’s all kinds of different ways that’s what we typically have today unfortunately. Judges ruling because it’s favorable to their political ideology their friend’s bank or their own investment They’re supposed to recuse themselves right? It doesn’t always happen.
Paying off the priests. The priests teach for pay. That’s not saying you shouldn’t pay your pastors obviously in this context it’s another word for bribe.
It’s just another way of describing they’re not being honest in their teaching they’re teaching in accordance to what they’re getting paid to teach. Catch that? The church rulers themselves are corrupt in the Old Testament here. Pastors have to have a livelihood.
The Levites part of the livelihood was they got to eat of the offering right? It’s a big animal here. This cow, this ox got some free food not free of course it’s their worshiping God as well as paying the ministers that is the Levites for work that they do and it’s proper no they are not teaching as they’re supposed to teach they’re not exercising judgment as they’re supposed to judge. The priests are supposed to teach in the Old Testament as I pointed out it mentions Evgenia Hosea.
We forget that sometimes. And here they’re clearly not teaching the truth. Like the prophets earlier who preach peace, peace when there is no peace.
Apparently that’s what the priests are doing as well. Either out of timidity or fear I don’t think it’s always grossly Machiavellian or evil machinations from the priest how can I ruin these people’s lives? Sometimes it could be simply fear. I don’t want to lose my job as a priest and have them running me out of town because what I teach is unpopular.
Right? Isn’t that just simply fear? And you can somewhat sympathize with that guy as opposed to the evil conniving guy in the corner who wants to take out the whole town, right? Nevertheless, it’s wicked and wrong. To whom much is given much is required and you should not have sympathy and pity upon those kind of men those pastors or the priest of old. Micah doesn’t.
To him it’s all the same and it is. It’s all the same. Again overtly and directly they’re paying the priest to preach peace say that five times fast overtly and less directly threatening to withdraw their tithes or giving sacrifices to this priest.
I’ll go to these other I’m going to find this priest next week when he’s here on rotation and give him the ox and not you because I don’t hear good messages from you. You see that? You can’t imagine. I can imagine that happening.
I mean men are devious and come up with all kinds of ways to pressure the priest or the teachers to give in and they give in and they shouldn’t and covert and less direct as I said pastors who are fearful of losing people in tithes if they don’t preach peace and you will especially today. Kickbacks for the prophets Here we go again the prophets divine for money the office that crosses all courts, the priests over here in the priestly courts, the judges over here in the kingly courts the matters of the king. The prophets go between the two of them.
They’re the free range sheriffs of the day to warn and to bring judgment upon them and they themselves as supposed independent investigators are not. They’re getting paid off they’re getting paid off to give and preach peace when they should not give peace in fact they go further and say they lean on the Lord and say is not God among us? No harm can come upon us we’re special we’re the chosen people of God How they rationalize their wickedness as leaders both in society and in the church is absolutely astounding. It’s a bribe really? And they do it though and they walk around arrogantly saying God won’t judge us Look how special we are We see that today of course politicians and pastors today too many in fear are that arrogant.
Certainly politicians if anything you can see that on TV often over the decades. I was already an old politician when I was 18 I was so cynical and now it’s worse because it’s so bad it just seems to be getting worse and worse. Politicians making unjust laws that drain the bulk of Americans finances or jobs and they come off scot-free and rich like all the banks we paid off.
Oh like what was it? Citibank? Oh that’s right Citibank is one of the ones we bought out in 2008 and 9 so they wouldn’t go under. And what are they doing now? Oh that’s right they don’t want to make business with people who stand up for the second amendment. They take your money and now want to take away your rights Is that corrupt or is that corrupt? I mean I just realized that example.
I forgot about that this week. I’ll just get my other examples. It’s just absolutely incredible how much MICA is like today isn’t it? For these people it’s all about the money but in that case it isn’t just about money something else is going on when they’re going after all these wicked confused things but they are getting money because you know someone else is perhaps pressuring them more subtly of course besides the obvious bribes and lobbyists promising money for their friends or for themselves or for their family or friends’ friends or whatever politicians catering to female voters by attacking males You ever think about that? If you dig into the numbers which I’ve done over the last several years a lot of the women usually they have to be married for a while before they start voting Republicans and then they start thinking about their kids in the future.
But when you don’t have that, when you have a growing base of single women who don’t get married or put off marriage for long periods of time what do they vote? They vote Democrat and the Democrats know who their voting base is. They’ve watched these numbers like a hawk for decades and that’s why you hear one politician oh those women they’re just following their husbands. What’s wrong with them? Their husbands are deceiving them and when I get in office I’m going to give more power to the women.
Obama said that for crying out loud. Although even under Obama the women were making as much money hour per hour. They lie with those numbers again because most women work part time.
You can’t compare part time with full time. Last I checked. But hey you can do anything in a progressive universe right? Why not? It’s unjust it’s unfair.
And these politicians are talking to their base brothers and sisters so it’s more subtle. They’re buying votes with these lies of we’re going to give you power and empower you and give you more abortions and whatever else we think you women want or what you tell us you want. Equality is usually the catch all right? Pastors A Pew study in 2014 more women than men like you needed the Pew study in 2014 to know this if you pay attention.
More women than men attend church. You go to the mainline churches, PCUSA and the men, it’s full of women. And guess who’s mostly involved in churches? They’re not just going, they’re engaged in the church.
And what are women mostly concerned about? And it’s good when it’s a proper concern. Social issues and the downtrodden that’s proper. Proper downtrodden, proper social issues.
But they’re not. It’s all the wrong issues. And they’re running the show.
They’re calling the shots in these churches. When you realize as Forbes gave these numbers and again friends of mine and people who’ve been around in the business book business for instance and the like women buy most of the books and so you write to a women audience. Christians write to a women audience.
All these books are geared most of the books are geared 85% of all purchase decisions are controlled by women. You don’t think that’s also true for tithes? Women mostly go to the church and women are involved in 85% of financial decisions. You don’t think that includes the tithe.
And then you realize as I realize because I live in a bubble praise be to God in many ways that these churches yes even reformed churches talk a lot about how abusive men are and how men have to be servant in the house. You don’t hear anything about women you better submit in all things. Not in some things but all things.
I don’t hear that from these big preachers and teachers. I’ve read their articles and listened to their sermons over the years. And I have to ask myself knowing these data points and knowing human nature things that make you go hmm.
Right? I’m sorry Look brothers and sisters we shouldn’t be naive. Why do we think our churches are immune to this stuff? That pastors preach according to their audience and they don’t want to lose their tithe knowing that the women are the ones that listen and pay tithes. And influence the husbands.
Something we need to be aware of. How widespread? I do not know. But I have my suspicions.
Leaders in the nation judge verses 12-13 where you have country wide destruction. It’s not just I’m going to take out the false prophets, the false priests and the false leaders. The whole nation is going to be judged and harmed.
Leaders and Nation Judged
Because of you he says because of you all of you Zion shall be plowed like a field and the temple of the Lord shall be bare as a hill of the forest. And Jerusalem shall be a heap of ruins. Be careful who you vote for.
Who your leaders are. Is this unfair? Well I know in this group we all understand how fair it is because God gives a judgment. But for those of you who have friends who might find this unfair remind them is it unfair that the stupid decisions of parents affect their children? Is that fair? Is it fair that the stupid decisions of bosses affect their workers? Is it fair that the stupid decisions of voters affect their fellow citizens? This is how God constituted the universe brothers and sisters.
Is it fair that one man fell and all creation went with it? Is it fair that Christ Jesus obeyed the law for us and we reap the benefits? It’s all of a piece, isn’t it? We don’t like the bad part but we sure love the good part, don’t we? It’s just simply how God, and we’re trying to destroy that of course, where now they want to destroy the family so that children can grow up with multiple parents. And we’ve already done that in the 60’s. It’s called serial divorce, right? Now you just get rid of marriage altogether.
They tried that a little bit in the 60’s. Remember that? Some of the communists. They’re pushing this garbage again.
Gay marriage is destroying marriage, by definition. And the kids will pay. And they are paying.
Our nation is under judgment and has been for a while, brothers and sisters. Read Micah, it becomes more striking. And Micah is just mostly concerned about social justice, let alone the spiritual idolatry in this nation.
Judgment does not have to be a thunder and a lightning from heaven, something miraculous. It can be simply the cause and effect, the consequences that God has built into this creation of disobedience to his law brings about its own judgment. Sin brings about more sin, which is itself its own judgment.
The murder of American children is a judgment upon ourselves. Endless foreign wars is a judgment upon ourselves. Gutting the middle class is a judgment upon ourselves.
You can’t support a nation with just poverty alone. As California is going to find out soon. Most poverty, most of the poverty is in California.
One in four are poor in California. You just don’t see them because we’re segregated. I thought that was a 60’s thing.
This is where we are. This is judgment. It’s nationwide.
It’s even churchwide. As a society falls apart, families fall apart. They’re less intact.
They grow up without parents. That has a known statistical effect upon families, especially young men. I commend to you the Tucker Carlson series, Men in America.
Look it up on YouTube. The men are falling apart. With less ties and less leadership potential among the men because they’re growing up in poorer houses because they have to pay for multiple wives or they’re in debt because they live for the moment and they’re finally converted.
Being converted doesn’t change your past. It doesn’t change all the bad effects. It doesn’t change all the bad decisions, does it? It’s all gone.
No more effects. It becomes so widespread in the nation, you can’t tell me it doesn’t affect the church. Well, where do we get our converts? From our neighbors.
And if your neighbors have 20, 30, 40 years of stupidity, which is what sin is, your churches are going to be poorer. Because they’re living in more debt. That’s how they’re raised now.
More and more of them. Needless debt. And sometimes it’s not even needless debt because the economy, if it gets worse, sometimes you have to go into debt at times.
It just becomes simply worse. It doesn’t put your family back together again. It doesn’t pay off all your debts.
It doesn’t remove your drinking problems overnight like that. Lou just stopped drinking. That was how he fixed his drinking problems.
Avoid drinks altogether. A friend of mine. Being saved doesn’t fix all that.
And thinking that we can cloister the church, as Radical 2 Kingdom wants to do, and say, that’s just the nation. That’s just the world. Nothing we can do about it.
It will affect the church. God’s not going to protect the church. He didn’t do it here.
That’s why I was emphasizing the two structures. There’s two things going on here. There’s a nation and there’s a church.
They’re not the same thing in the Old Testament. Although they had the same members. Every Jew was supposed to be a member of the church.
What happened in society, the judgment, again, this book is what? Economic and social justice. And how God judges it and affects the church. We are being affected by it, brothers and sisters.
We pray and cry out for mercy to protect our churches, to protect our children and our children’s children. What inheritance do they have? Pray for America’s repentance. Pray for the church’s protection.
Work to that end, brothers and sisters. But having done all the cry out for God’s mercy. Let’s pray.
We do cry out, God. We do cry out. We thank you for your word here in Micah that you’ve deigned to put together, Lord, and to emphasize economic and social justice and the proper understanding of those terms, God, in accordance to your law.
We pray and ask, Lord, and we implore you, have mercy upon us. Amen.