As a reminder where we are in Micah, Israel is in deep trouble. That’s how the book starts out. They had turned their back on their covenant God, worshiping false idols with false worship.
We see that in chapter 1. Not satisfied with that, they began abiding and devouring one another. The next few chapters, the rich stealing from the poor, subverting even the middle class. Priests, princes, and the prophets were lying to the people.
We see in the prior and in this section of the chapter. Tickling their ears, offering a vision of safety and even a prosperity. We won’t go down.
Assyria is not going to touch you. We’re the apple of God’s eye. But then that party crasher, Micah, comes along.
He pronounces woes and judgments, demanding repentance throughout his visions here in the chapters of Micah. He names sins by name. He does so publicly.
The gall! And he offers, to be sure, a better future, as we saw here and a little bit prior. But he was so harsh and so unrelenting. Even in this vision, it’s penetrated right in the middle of it, of punishment, of something bad happening to God’s people, of them being whisked away, rather dragged away, because of combat and war, ultimately to Babylon.
This is the background of the closing section of the second cycle of judgment and deliverance. There are three cycles here in the book of Micah. And it brings more good news than the last cycle, more detail, even as it brings the bad news, as I said.
In other words, Micah is bringing a bittersweet proclamation. Not the sweetness of victory, and yet the bitterness of punishment. A mixture of good and bad.
But which one outweighs the other? And what does that mean for us today? That is the question. And we’ll have an answer to that here in the first point. Promise victory, verses 6-8.
Promised Victory
In that day, says the Lord, I will assemble the lame, I will gather the outcasts and those whom I have afflicted. In that day, I went over that in the last sermon, which was two weeks ago, on Micah. The first and second coming collapse as two mountaintops together.
They’re tied together anyways, as we know, when Christ came in the first time. He said, I’m going to come back a second time. And those things are explained as one event, I believe, often in the Old Testament time period, separated by the millennium.
Not literally a thousand years, it’s symbolic for a long period of time between the first and second comings of Christ. We are in that period now. The second referent of the second coming is the consummation of the ages, where this prophecy and all the other ones will be filled to the uttermost.
When all his people shall be fully healed, no more lame, no more captive, both in body and in soul. And the whole world will be purified with a fire, and sin completely eradicated, and all its consequences. It began with the gospel preached to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3.15, and it had grown as a seed, coming to bud as a plant, until it becomes a tree, as we see in Daniel, that fills the whole world.
The rock, ultimately, or a tree elsewhere in the metaphors, shattering over the whole earth in one of the parables of Jesus Christ. It grows. We see it grow in the Old Testament.
We see it grow the greatest when Christ finally comes and expands across the whole face of the earth. And he talks about the lame, the outcast, and the afflicted. Those are favorite themes in the liberal churches, and we see some of this now in social justice voyeurism.
As I said, I’ll talk about a little bit of that here in Micah, because Micah talks about it. But Micah means something different, doesn’t he? He means God’s law, not the law of social Marxism. So the lame and the outcast and the afflicted, I’m reminded of this during our devotionals in the evening, my family, we read from the Psalms and Proverbs, and then we go to Matthew, so we mix it up throughout the week.
And in Matthew, we’re in chapter 8, and we read here, as I read Friday night, verse 16, When evening had come, they brought to him, that is Jesus, many who were demon-possessed, and he cast out the spirits with the word, and he healed all who were sick, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying, He himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses. We often emphasize in Reformed circles and conservative evangelical circles that the Old Testament prophecies were about Christ and his spiritual work to deliver his people, and that they were, weren’t they? But it’s not the only thing he came to do. He didn’t only come to save the soul, as though Christianity is only about the soul and only reduced to the soul, and has no consequences in our body or in society.
So the sickness of our sin and the captivity of the devil, we get that, but sometimes we forget that the physical reality is true as well. Christ did heal the sick, as prophesied in the Old Testament. And the other prophecies, they talk about the captives, who were held captives and set free.
Christ had assembled the lame and the afflicted and the outcasts, as we see in this verse, I will assemble the lame and gather the outcasts and those to whom I have afflicted. That’s his people then, and that’s his people now even. In the eyes of the world, we are lame outcasts, and of course under God the Father, we have been at times judged in our life, and yet he still gathers us as he gathers Israel of old.
That’s who he’s gathered, and those to whom I have afflicted. He’s not afflicting the nations, he’s afflicting his people. As a father, that is, punishes his people, because he loves them, he punishes his children.
Hebrews 12 is very clear about that. You’re an illegitimate son if God is not disciplining you. And that is not only true individually, but it’s true collectively.
And this picture here of in that day, the last day, we are in the last days, beginning with the coming of Christ the first time, is a picture of victory. The gathering of the lame, the outcasts, and the afflicted is for victory. I will make the lame a remnant and the outcasts a strong nation, so the Lord will reign over them in Mount Zion.
And so Micah is telling the Jewish church of his day that yes, judgment is coming, but I will preserve a remnant. You who are afflicted by the Assyrian army that will come through and wipe out everything, there will be a remnant. I will gather them together, I will protect them, and I will draw them, and from them I will rule the world.
And he uses the language of lame and outcasts and afflicted to show the picture to the pride of the leadership of Israel who thought, we’re not afflicted, you know, we’re special of God, we’re especially blessed, and we have all this money, we have all this access, and we’re healthy and the like. They’re thinking like the world. There’s something special about us, a variation of the prosperity gospel, perhaps.
And God, in a roundabout way, mocks that by saying, what you consider the afflicted, these poor people you’re going after are stealing their land, as we saw in the prior chapters. People like that, they are the ones I will draw together, those who are outcasts and remnants to the ways of the world, as the world sees it. I will gather them together, and they will rule, and I will reign over them.
They are the ones that shall reign for eternity. The world mocks the people of God. They think we are nothing, they afflict us, to be sure.
They think we are lame in their presence. What is your problem? It’s a handicap to be religious more and more in America. We never thought about that.
It’s the idea of a lame person, isn’t it? He’s not saying only the lame, but just the whole branch, the whole idea, the whole category, especially morally. That’s how they approach us. That’s how they picture us.
But God says, you know, what you consider wisdom is foolish, and what you think is foolish is actually wisdom. That’s the same idea here, perhaps to some extent, with respect to this picture of the lame and the outcasts. I do not believe in this prophecy God is saying, only the lame and only the outcasts and only the afflicted are going to be saved.
But that they are the ones who are saved, and that description of them is therefore they are afflicted compared to the world and outcasts from the world. It’s not lame people who go to heaven, right? If you’re not lame, sorry, you’re not going to heaven. No, it’s a picture there.
Discouraging Punishment
Certainly God has healed the lame and the like physically, but ultimately it points to the spiritual reality of Christ gathering his people who are outcasts from the world. And we see here in verses 9-10, after this glorious picture of victory to his audience, the audience that, of course, is discouraged by this point, hearing all this bad news from Micah and the other prophet, perhaps the same audience heard Isaiah, because we know they were contemporaries, although they seemed mostly in different parts of Israel and might have overlapped and were gathered around. All this bad news, just bad, bad, hammer, hammer all the time, because they were disobedient all the time.
And they needed to hear that. They’re given, nevertheless, in these encouraging words. But he stops there, that is, the Spirit of God continues on in verses 9-10.
Now, why do you cry aloud? Is there no king in your midst? Has your counselor perished? The pangs have seized you like a woman in labor. Be in pain and labor to bring forth, O daughter of Zion. So, meanwhile, Israel, while waiting for this time of becoming the remnant and being gathered by the king, and as we saw in prior verses earlier in chapter 4, in ruling over the nations, and all the nations coming to Israel, saying, we want to be, and have this covenant God as our God, and disavow our gods.
An amazing scene, to be sure. That’s what we want. That’s what we want.
And then he reminds them. Bam! Right in the middle of this prophecy, near the end. This glorious picture.
You’re going to be gathered away. You’re going to be wailing. Perhaps even gnashing of teeth.
Because there’s punishment, there’s defeat, and there’s woe. There’s woe and pain. Why do you cry aloud? They’re crying out for deliverance and help, because the enemy of the Assyrian army is coming.
The Assyrian army is not a nice army. They don’t follow the UN rules. There’s no international rights at the time.
They’re a ruthless army. And they’re a hodgepodge. They would take all the countries and the tribes they conquered, and force enlist their men to fight for them.
And they would kill everyone they saw on sight. The imagery here goes on. Now, why do you cry aloud, right? For deliverance, and gnashing, and fear, and the like.
Is there no king in your midst? Has your counselor perished? That’s a curse. If you don’t have a wise king, as the proverb tells us, having a wise king is a blessing. It’s a protection for you that God has given and blessed the body politic with.
In this case, they don’t have such a king now. They don’t have even good counselors for the king. Where’s your wisdom now, God’s telling them? That’s part of the judgment that they’re experiencing.
The punishment from God himself. Yes, victory is coming, but first you must go through the spanking, the divine spanking of God’s providence, he tells the church of old. The woe is like that of a birthing mother we see here, right? Your pangs have seeded you like a woman in labor.
The men are like, okay, not quite sure how to relate to that. Imagine an army that has conquered Europe and is now knocking on our door. We think we’re great, but all the European armies and the Russian army are wiped out because of this army.
We’re next. All our allies have been wiped off the face of the earth. We’re next.
There’s nowhere else to go. They’re on the borders. That’s what we have here in this picture.
The Assyrian army is here, the biggest, greatest army of the time, about to wipe them out. And since they are in disobedience to God, they have little to no assurance, and the assurance they had, of course, was false. And so they’re going to be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
They are in fear, brothers and sisters. The fear he describes as a woman in labor crying out in pain, deliver us. Can you imagine the fat cats here? In the prior chapter, these rich people going along, buying up all this land and even taking the rich garments from others off their back and buying houses, pleasant houses, lots of pleasant houses.
This is what they have. They’re obsessed. They’re materialists like we have in America.
They’re in the Old Testament church, and they’re afraid and weeping and gnashing because they’re going to lose it all. I can’t lose my house. I can’t lose my possessions.
I can’t lose my other summer home or my winter home. That’s the world they live in. Of course, it’s not just them.
We read elsewhere in Micah that the fathers and the sons and the mothers and daughters don’t even trust each other. So it’s across the whole entire general populace, this wickedness and lying to one another and conspiracies we read about, widespread social conspiracies. And so all of them, this is it.
We’re going to lose it all. That shows where their hope is, unfortunately. That is too many of the Jews.
And they’re finally going to have a punishment. The wall, of course, is ultimately not about physical pain but about the captivity and losing the precious land. That’s the biggest fear they have.
There’s never coming back to the promised land, which is a token of God’s love for them. It’s a big picture. A big physical thing they can touch that says, God loves you.
He’s given you this land, and you’re going to lose this land. That’s why the greatest punishment God gives them is you’re going off to a foreign nation, and you aren’t coming back. And so we read here that you shall dwell, verse 10, halfway through 10, you should go forth from the city.
You’re not going to have the protection of the walls anymore. You’re not going to have the comfort of the city place anymore. You shall dwell in the fields, you rich people, living like the poor now.
And to Babylon you shall go as captives. You’re not special anymore. God has brought upon you the second greatest punishment, the greatest being, of course, full excommunication, which he does in 70 A.D. with the destruction of Jerusalem, the temple, and everything else.
The whole nation, as such, is no longer special. Boom. This is the second worst thing.
Being cast out of the land, spat out of the land as prophesied in the Old Testament, in the Pentateuch. Babylon, you shall go. Of course, Babylon not quite, because Babylon isn’t the capital of Assyria, but it’s an imagery of the worst of their enemies, the archetype of all enemies of God’s people, Babylon.
It’s picked up again where? In Revelation, isn’t it? And so that’s the imagery here. Not as though he’s confused, Micah, about what the capital of Assyria is. It’s not Babylon.
So, remember, losing the land, as I said, is a sign of judgment, but they don’t think they deserve judgment. As we read earlier, where the prophets, the priests, and the priests and the princes were giving them sweet words. Then they hear this.
You’re going to be brought away. The enemy’s going to take you away. You’re going to lose your land.
All the promises you thought you had, how special you were, is all gone, and you’re going to have massive cognitive dissonance going on here in this audience. What? We can’t accept this. This is just completely wrong.
But, nevertheless, he stops here. The end of verse 10. There you shall be delivered, perhaps delivered unto the enemies.
There the Lord will redeem you, as is more likely the case, from the hand of your enemies. So even in the midst of the worst bitter punishment of the Old Testament church, God is going to deliver them. That is, as we know, a remnant of them, not all of them.
Many will die in captivity, perhaps never knowing full salvation. And so we see here a bittersweet victory, to have to go through punishment and judgment to finally achieve victory over your enemies. Because it’s not simply the Lord will redeem you from the hand of your enemies.
But in the following verses, you’ll trample them down like the corn and the grain and the threshing floor as the ox do, right? That’s what they’re doing. They’re walking around crushing the grain with their hooves and breaking it apart so you can get to the good stuff. You’re going to be like that.
The Lord will take your horn and turn it into iron. That’s a picture of authority and power. And make your hooves bronze, and you shall beat in pieces many peoples.
That’s victory, isn’t it? But only after the punishment. A bittersweet victory, but a victory nevertheless. And God often does this in our own lives, brothers and sisters.
He punishes us, as Hebrews 12 reminds us, individually. You’ve gone through that, you’ve felt that, and perhaps you’re going through it now. You certainly won’t, I think, go through it unless the Lord takes you tonight or something.
That’s part of the purification, isn’t it? Because we still have sin. But the punishment, as we know, is a glorious punishment, for it says here, the Lord will redeem you. Part of the punishment is the process of redemption, because it’s the purification, it’s the refining of the gold.
And the dross is now melted away through the heat of persecution in your life. Individual persecution, perhaps even group persecution. Because our whole life is indeed mixed with punishment and consequences for our sins, as we travel to heaven.
Our whole journey here is indeed bittersweet, as we see in these verses. The promise of redemption by the gospel, we are saved, and then we find out, oh, if we weren’t fully instructed beforehand, this is a hard walk, this is a hard journey. This is difficult, it’s a fight, it’s a battle.
Ephesians tells us that. The imagery of fighting the devil and the like, that’s the Christian walk. It is bitter, it is hard, it is difficult.
And in the midst of that, we are given encouragement, as the body of Christ here at the time in these verses was also given encouragement. That in the midst of you being purified, whether because of your own sin, or just sin in general. I mean, often in our life we have consequences that aren’t because of anything we did, right? We just live in a fallen world, there’s effects of sin everywhere.
It doesn’t matter the causes, it still hurts, doesn’t it? It’s still difficult. Perhaps debt you’ve inherited, and things like that. It’s still there, and God uses it, and he gives us the sweet part of the bitterness, which is the final victory that we will have through Christ Jesus.
That we will reign in Jerusalem and in Zion, in fact, are reigning right now with Jesus Christ, as he sits in the heavenly places. Reigning, and thanking him, because he has given us the foretaste of victory now in our sanctification, reigning over our sins, fighting the flesh, having victory a little here, a little there. It seems like forever, but it’s there.
We can have the firstfruits of obedience in this life, and those are the firstfruits of victory, are they not? We have every spiritual blessing in the high places Ephesians 1 tells us. Even if we don’t see the full physical manifestation of it, I don’t believe we’re going to have a golden age on this earth. As such, there may be wonderful times and bad times.
They come and go. People are in the field, and boom, things happen. People are working in the kitchen, and Christ comes along.
So, this bittersweet victory is not only for individuals, it’s also for the body. We read that here. He speaks of collectively, just all of them together, and nothing has changed.
New Testament era, we’re still considered the body. That’s the picture of the New Testament. That’s how Paul speaks to us.
That’s how Christ speaks to us. That’s how Peter speaks to us. When he writes these things down, the Holy Spirit does through their mouth.
He speaks in generalities, right? Just the whole body, the whole church and the like, and we have the same thing with us. And so, the bittersweet victories and difficulties and deliverances and the like is not just individual, but also with respect to churches and ultimately the church universal as we see through history. And here, the last point, verses 10-13, which I got ahead of myself earlier because it’s so exciting to read this.
Wonderful Deliverance
Verses 10-13, or 11 here, Now also many nations have gathered against you, who say, Let her be defiled, and let our eye look upon Zion. They are gathered by Babylon as captives, and there’s a picture here of their enemies before them or perhaps around them saying, Now is our time. We’re going to take them out.
We wish them to be defiled, ruined, as a woman in war. They think they’ve won. The Babylonians, the Assyrians, all of them, they’ve always thought they’ve beaten the church and God’s people.
We’ve got it. In these wonderful words, he says, They don’t know the thoughts of the Lord, nor do they understand his counsel. They don’t get it.
They think because they are carnal and fleshly that they have physical victory and they have the church at the barrel, at the end of the barrel of a physical gun that they have won and beaten them. They have not. They’ve only killed the body but not our souls.
God has used it for a purpose. Our defeat is actually the defeat of our enemies and ultimately used in God’s mysterious providence as we see in the life of Joseph for our good, our sanctification and our growth. We don’t always see it now.
Don’t be deceived by that. You don’t always see it now. Faith understands this and trusts in God nevertheless and trusts in the work of Christ Jesus.
The situation may look hopeless, but Micah, and that is God through Micah, the Holy Spirit promises victory and even a dominion. They don’t know the thoughts of the Lord, nor do they understand his counsel, how he will gather them together like the sheaves to the threshing floor. Arise and thresh, O daughter of Zion.
Who is the daughter of Zion but the church? And it tells us here, For I will make your horn iron, I’ve mentioned that before, that is the authority and the strength that you have. I will make your hooves bronze by the power of Jesus Christ and you shall beat in pieces many peoples and I will consecrate their grain to the Lord. The victory goes to the Lord and their substance to the Lord of the whole earth.
God is going to have dominion over the whole earth. They think they’re winning. They think they have power and control.
They think they can rule the world. But when Christ comes back, as we saw in Sunday school class, there’s only one more time, there’s not two more, one more time, the great white throne of judgment. We will be part of that.
And we will have the victory in Christ Jesus as he rules over the whole earth, smashing his enemies to pieces. This could be a two-fold imagery of converting many of them, perhaps, because sometimes the imagery of conversion is the imagery of crushing them, breaking their hardened hearts, for instance, subduing them to God, essentially. Because that’s what happens when we’re born again, right? We’re subdued to God.
We don’t do that voluntarily. That’s part of rebellion. We don’t want to submit to God like Adam and Eve in the garden.
We want to make right and wrong by all rules. Or it could simply mean just what it seems to say, that the enemies will finally get their comeuppance in the most public way and manner. The world will see that they are fools for rejecting the rule of Jesus Christ.
And we are blessed and honored, not because we’re greater than they are, not because we’re wiser than they are, smarter than they are. My faith is bigger than their faith. They have no faith.
They have hatred. The faith that I have is a gift of the Holy Spirit, and whatever faith He gave me is a gift from Him, and I have nothing to say in that manner. I cannot boast that I have greater faith.
We are humbled, and yet we should not back down from the promises that tells us our enemies will be trampled under our feet through the power of Jesus Christ. Again, not in an overt way. We’re not going to win victories all the time, physical victories or political victories.
This nation is sliding into judgment. This nation is in judgment. But at the last day, ultimately, there shall be a full manifestation of this and of God’s power and victory over the world.
Praise God for these encouraging words, brothers and sisters, that in the midst of the bitterness of punishment in our lives individually or collectively, we can nevertheless hope in the promise of victory of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Let us pray. With these words of truth, Lord, and the graphic image illustration to get the attention of the audience, an agricultural audience that understands this threshing floor, God, a picture of judgment, of being trampled down.
We certainly understand that, God. We don’t want to be trampled down or run over by a tank or a car. And that’s the equivalent, Lord.
We’re thankful, God, nevertheless, for giving us the promises through Christ Jesus, for giving us a new life that we follow you no matter how bitter it may feel, Lord. We know at the end of the day, it’ll be fully and ultimately only sweetness, where every tear shall be wiped away and every sorrow turned to laughter. Come quickly, Lord Jesus, we pray.
Maranatha. Amen.