I think you understand the distinction there when I use it. In classic studies, they would talk about the civic and the cultic, right? Proper public worship as opposed to everyday life, for instance. Of course, politics, when understood, has an element of religiosity insofar as we do it for God’s glory and we do it under His law and the like.
That’s true. But this dual punishment is real here in the text, and we see this all the time in the Old Testament. Israel disobeys God.
God brings war. He brings other things like famine, pestilence, and the like. And in fact, at the end of Deuteronomy, He gives a list of punishments that He will inflict if they persist in their disobedience to God.
And I have no reason to think that God does any differently today, for He is a moral and holy God, and sin requires judgment. The difference is that we do not have a special country with a special covenant with God like the Old Testament Israel did, the Jews, the Church, in the form of Israel itself in the Promised Land. But that difference is not a null, the underlying moral reality here.
Even with that difference, there’s still similarity. War is judgment. It’s certainly not a blessing.
It’s certainly not a blessing. It is judgment. People die.
Land is destroyed. Heritage is ruined for our children and our children’s children. People killing each other is not a good thing.
Even when the war is justified as a defensive war, it is still a bad thing. The effects are bad, even if it’s necessary for defending your life. In early America, the colonies were explicitly Christian because England was explicitly Christian.
And after the Revolution, every state, save one, was explicitly, well, every state was explicitly Christian. New Jersey was the oddball. They were explicitly Christian.
But, well, they were more deist. They talked about God. The other constitutions mentioned Christ.
They mentioned Os in the name of the Trinity. That’s pretty explicit. But does this mean that they will be, excuse me, in early America, they were explicitly Christian to one degree or another.
The early Christian churches believed. During those times, I’ve read their prayers as denominations, the days of feasting and fasting, for difficulties such as the Revolutionary War, that it was judgment. The Presbyterian Church considered it a form of judgment.
It was a time for fasting, for crying out before God. The Continental Congress did the same thing, in the name of Jesus Christ, even, publicly. They looked at it as a bad thing, even though they believed they had a right cause.
And I can’t imagine, I think, we can think anything differently. It’s just been the common understanding of Christianity is near as I can study. So, what we have then, for a parallel example today, with this text, is having a society, as America, that was explicitly Christian, in its constitution, its state constitutions, among its leaders, in their laws.
They had Sabbath day laws. Even Jefferson passed the Sabbath day, he pushed for a Sabbath day law. That is Sunday, Lord’s Day.
And then over time, denying that heritage. You think God’s happy with that? To whom much is given, much is required. And if you have your forefathers standing up saying, we’re a Christian nation, and then their children repudiate that, and their grandchildren just forget about it, and now we’ve become anti-Christianity, that’s judgment.
We’ve thrown away our heritage, and I think that’s the clear parallel to what we have here. We don’t have a special covenant, but the fact that we’ve stood up and said, God is our God means something. Punishment for political idolatry, verses 10 through 11.
Punishment for Political Idolatry
And it shall be in that day, says the Lord, that I will cut off your horses from your midst and destroy your chariots. I will cut off the cities and throw them down. I will cut off the sorcerers and cut down the idols that refrain, you hear it, cut off, cut off.
It’s a punishment elsewhere in the Old Testament. Perhaps it’s debated for being kicked out of the covenant. It certainly is a strong punishment to be cut down or cut off or cut out of the covenant.
The military is destroyed, essentially. It’s talking to Israel. And it shall be in that day, says the Lord, the covenant-keeping God, that I will cut off you, Israel’s horses, and your chariots and your armed cities, your fortifications, your strong towers.
You will have nothing. You’ll be naked before your enemy. I’m taking out your military might.
The horses and chariots, of course, are powerful in many ways at the time. They are your flankers. You get those horses going, and they can go around you real quick.
The chariots can bulldoze and run you over. They’re also faster than foot soldiers as well and have armor on the side, unlike horsemen. Remember, the Old Testament restricted Israel with respect to their armies.
In Deuteronomy 17.16, we read, But he that is the king shall not multiply horses for himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt to multiply horses. For military purposes. You are called not to have a great and mighty and strong army, for God will be your army.
That was his explicit promise. So that’s one of the distinctions that we have compared to the Old Testament Church. The New Testament Church is not given such a promise.
God’s not telling us, I’m your nuclear bomb. And so we will have nations with strong armies, at least relative to what we need at the time. Theirs was greatly or supposed to be greatly undermined.
In fact, as you recall, David was punished for counting the armies when he shouldn’t have. Psalm 20, Some boast in chariots and some in horses, but we will boast in the name of the Lord our God. As children, in the covenants, Galatians 4 is a powerful metaphor.
As children, God had to teach them these lessons. Like children. Trust me.
Trust me in military might. And I will protect you. And he did.
He had miracles. They had prophets. If we had miracles and prophets today, we’d probably do the same thing.
But we don’t. And so the walled cities is the next description here. Most cities at the time had walls of some sort or another.
That’s pretty typical. That makes sense. Roving bandits and the like.
That’s how you’re going to defend yourself. With a wall and a gate. The gate’s the only way to get in.
The strong towers or the strongholds are probably towers or outposts with walls as well. Itself being a wall, a tower out in the middle of nowhere to protect them, to be a watchtower, to see ahead on top of a hill. Here comes the enemies.
Maybe shoot an arrow, have a messenger run across to the city and tell them, hey, here they come. They’re going to take us out. No, God says, all this military power and might that you had put pride in, that you put too much hope in instead of me, I’m going to wipe them out.
You’re arrogant. That’s why I call it idolatry. They were putting their hope their hope in the power and might of their army, of their chariots, of the horsemen, and not in God who said, I will be your chariot.
I will be your horsemen. I will take out your enemies. This is a special land.
I’m going to protect it if you are holy. And we’re not holy often. And in this case, as God warned at the very beginning of Micah, I’m bringing the Assyrian army because of your false worship and because of your social injustices as well.
And here, it seems, also because of their military. Military, I think you know by now, is not evil as such. It is necessary because we live in a dangerous world.
Even when we are at peace, it makes sense to have some kind of army to one degree or another. We can argue about citizen armies or standing armies or whatever. I think those are arguments of nature.
That is a law of nature, not something you can find a proof text in the Bible. Israel still had an army at the time. God didn’t say, don’t have an army.
He just said, don’t multiply your army. Don’t rest upon it. Don’t run around and keep tabs and become prideful because of your army and the like.
Saul and David were in fact told to muster them and attacked the Canaanites. Joshua mustered them and attacked the Canaanites. They were supposed to have an army.
Even though it was outnumbered, they still had an army. And Gideon is a great example of that, down to 400 men. To magnify God, to show them that he’s in charge.
That it’s not they themselves by their own outstretched arm that brought their own blessing of peace in the land, but God did it. So God himself would get all the glory. And in fact, having a military is even godly when you use the right to protect God’s people.
To protect God’s people. Remember, the centurion that was there in the New Testament, he was not told to leave the wicked pagan Roman army, but to be rather a good soldier, not abusing his authority and power. That should mean something.
And if we go to Hebrews 11.3, this is quite an eye-opening passage. If you’re like me, you’ve read the Bible at least once in your life, you can’t assimilate everything. And I was studying the due rights of just war back in, I think it was 2013 when I did a science book series on that.
Hebrews 11.3 was one of the strong passages that reminds us that war, being in the military, these things are good and proper when done for the right ends. And we read here in Hebrews 11.3, and the whole, excuse me, it’s not 11.3, no way it’s 11.3, it must be 13, it must be a typo. But it’s there in Hebrews 11, trust me.
Dig down through there and you’ll read the description of the heroes of the faith, right? This hall of faith that describes the men and women of the Old Testament who were exercising faith and showing that they trusted in God, they trusted that He would bring the Messiah, and they were looking for the city whose builder and maker is God Almighty, right? That wonderful passage. And in the midst of that passage, what do we read? We read, these who through faith subdued kingdoms. And he’s describing the Old Testament saints.
What does it mean to subdue kingdoms in the Old Testament? Is it spiritual? They’re subduing spiritual princes? No, they were killing the Canaanites through faith. Worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness remained strong, became valiant in battle. The men of faith were valiant in battle.
This is commended in the Word of God. You think it’s just the Old Testament saints that are commended? Oh, we become New Testament Christians and God’s moral law now changes? I don’t believe so. There’s certainly no evidence of being a positive command, like go to bed at 9 o’clock at night, and that changes when you’re an adult.
Go worship in Jerusalem, and that changes when we’re in an adult church in the New Testament. That’s not the same at all. This is fighting.
This is a moral reality. It’s ongoing. To be valiant in battle is a good thing done in faith.
The faith of what? The faith of trusting God. And how do you know you trust God? James talks about it. You do it with your feet, don’t you? You seek to obey Him.
And they, in obedience, were fighting and valiant in battle. And if your family is being attacked, and you defend your family because you believe it’s God’s command, what’s that word? That word belief. That means you believe, you trust God, that this is the right thing to do, regardless of the consequences.
I will defend my family and do it valiantly. That is an act of faith. It is a good thing.
It’s fine. Turn to flight the armies of the aliens. So, what about today? We don’t have a Christian nation in America anymore.
But we have Christians in a nation. We are Christians in a nation that used to be a Christian nation. We have waning influence.
The twilight of America. And since much of the Church has turned their back on God, especially the first table of the law, that is the worship of God and His gospel, He is disciplining the U.S. Church in mass, as a whole. And having unnecessary wars is a form of punishment.
This is a war upon them, upon Israel, upon the Church of old. I can’t see it being any different today, unless, of course, it’s a defensive war, right? I mean, they’re picking on us. Just because you’re being attacked doesn’t mean you’re being judged, per se.
We’ve had plenty of wars over the decades that we didn’t need to be fighting in, in my opinion, and that’s not a good thing. Not directly impinged upon the Church today, as such, in these wars. We don’t have lots of Christians being slaughtered in a war.
I mean, we haven’t had a land war in America. We tend to want to go out and find wars. The closest we have are Christians going into the military.
The Civil War was the closest one 150 years ago, where we had clear judgment upon the nation. When you’re fighting brother against brother, that’s not a blessing. That was a judgment.
Punishment for religious idolatry, verses 12-13. Verses 12-13. He puts all this in one piece here.
Punishment for Religious Idolatry
The politics, or military, we can call it. Politics is a little more easier to explain that way. I will cut off sorceries from your hand, and you shall have no soothsayers.
Your carved images I will also cut off, and your sacred pillars from your midst. You shall not worship the work of your hands. What we have here are the false leaders of Israel.
Mentioned in this list, that is, sorcerers, or sometimes translated magicians, is listed there in Egypt. In Exodus 7-11 it talks about these magicians or sorcerers doing enchantments. In other words, the Jews, the Old Testament church, was duplicating pagan worship.
They were duplicating pagan soothsaying, which is trying to figure out and divine the God’s answer to a question that you have for politics. So it still slides into the question of battles and war. Politics and war and all that was very much intimately tied up with religion at the time.
Or trying to figure out the future. Will I win this battle? Will I lose this battle? Clearly forbidden in God’s Word. Exodus 22-17, Deuteronomy 18-10.
It’s still forbidden today. We shouldn’t go ask for soothsayers and magicians to figure things out for us. They do exist, by the way.
It’s a very small minority in the American society, but they’re there. A pagan group, the Wiccas and all them. Some of it I think is just a joke, because 20 year olds with too much testosterone or something, I don’t know, think this is really cool.
Others do it for real. They think they’re talking to devils and demons. Death penalty for leading people away from God.
And it’s interesting that in Exodus 22-17, I think that’s the male, and Deuteronomy 18 mentions the female soothsayer or magician. They had them both back then. And now Calvin comments that this makes sense, that it’s the death penalty for using these things and having these kind of so-called leaders in the church at the time lead people astray, insofar as destroying souls is a greater moral sin than destroying bodies.
But certainly we only know of one incident in the Bible of a king singled out for this particular sin, interestingly enough. And that’s in 2 Chronicles 33-6, Manasseh. Also, he caused his sons to pass through the fire in the valley of the son of Hinnom.
He practiced soothsaying, used witchcraft and sorcery, and consulted mediums and spiritists. Saul did that once, and he regretted it. This guy did it constantly.
And he did it in all kinds of ways, covering all the names or probably even more names. He did much evil on the side of the Lord to provoke Him to anger. As I said before, the soothsayers were used to make and determine the future activities, to answer big questions and decisions in life.
What they probably did here, like they did with the golden calf. Remember what they did with the golden calf? That passage is quite interesting when you read through it carefully. God was not upset that they were worshipping a false god, because they weren’t worshipping a false god.
You realize that? They were worshipping the true God falsely. They thought it was proper to make a golden calf to worship Yahweh who took us out of the land of Egypt. That’s what the text says.
It’s worshipping the true God falsely. And I think here, when they had the soothsayers and the magicians and looking at the entrails of animals and things like that, that’s what they did, that’s how they figured out how to divine, not the gods, but I would argue they were probably trying to divine Yahweh’s will in their life, instead of using His commandments, His word, or talking to a prophet like Elijah, or Elisha, or in this case Micah. That’s what’s going on often.
I don’t think they always realized that. Now, of course, they were also following false gods and Baals and Asherahs and the like, and we see that here in this text, in fact, when it says in verse 14, I will pluck your wooden images, that’s the Hebrew for Asherim, or plural there, the Canaanite gods. So they did both.
God is very offended when this is done by His church. When we don’t take His word seriously, when we seek other advice than the advice of God above when it comes to moral questions of right and wrong. False worship is a serious matter as well.
The carved images, the sacred pillars, worshiping the works of your hand. When they worship their false gods, they combine a number of things, finding the will of the God. There’s also mixed in with the worship of the God.
This is false worship. These are false gods, a violation of the first table of God’s law. Israel doing this.
It’s absolutely amazing. It still happens today. Unfortunately.
The first table of the law is very serious. To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the second is like unto it.
There’s a reason why it’s called second. In America, we love to harp on the second. The killing of babies is a terrible thing.
The killing of souls is more heinous than that. And that’s what we have here. That’s why God harps over and over again in the Old Testament.
And it’s brought up again in the New Testament as well. It’s assumed there are people tearing down souls, false prophets and false teachers, right? That’s there in the New Testament. They’re killing souls.
Christ says what? Fear Him who kills both the body and the soul, not just the body. Because your body can be killed, but if you’re saved, you’re going to heaven. False worship often leads to social upheaval.
It often leads to social upheaval. I will destroy your cities, he says in verse 4. After describing the sorcerers, these false leaders and teachers in Israel with false worship and doing things in their own way, in their own image, following the culture of the day, I will pluck your wooden images from your midst. Thus I will destroy your cities.
The false worship and the violation of the first table bleeds over in punishment into the second table. Society, the politics, where you live, can be and often is affected by the punishment because of false worship. And there’s a little bit of irony and humor here.
This happens other times in the Old Testament, the prophets. You shall no more worship the work of your hands. When you think about it, you get out your saw, you cut down the tree, you shave out an image after a few hours, and you say, I’m going to worship the… Why are you worshiping what you made? With your own hands? That’s just ludicrous.
It’s laughable. It’s funny. So there may be a little humor here.
There is in other texts more clearly. When the prophet was making fun of the priest of Baal, and they were cutting themselves, they were trying to cry out to their god to put fire down upon the altar that was drenched with water. Is your god indisposed at the moment? That’s how we say it today.
You think he was serious? You think he was mocking the false religion? And so here, you shall no longer worship the work of your hands. Oh, no, that’s ridiculous. God’s going to wipe it all away.
He warns them, and he warns them. He says, fine, if you’re not going to listen to me, if you’re not going to take those wooden idols out of your home, out of the temple, out of your cities, then I will come and forcibly take it with the Assyrian armies. Because I take my worship seriously.
And I see no reason why. He doesn’t do the same thing today. They may not be with war.
In our case, it’s the implosion of the American culture. Because that’s what we are seeing. And our generation, an implosion, a disintegration, a judgment.
False worship often leads to social upheaval. It will destroy your cities. Right after berating them about false worship, he just intertwines it here in the punishment.
Punishment today is often through ordinary providential cause and effect. Do something sinfully stupid, like not prepare for a hurricane, like we heard this morning, and you’re going to suffer the consequences. I mean, that was sinful.
They knew about it, and they did nothing about it. So I use the word stupidity, not in the sense of lack of brains, but moral stupidity. Having a weak army and not preparing for war and getting destroyed, that’s your own stupid fault.
It’s your own moral fault in the face of aggression. In false worship, we allow false so-called gospels to permeate society, and this affects how people think and act. I mean, if you at this time, if you think this is Yahweh who brought you out of Egypt or brought your forefathers out of Egypt, do you think that’s going to affect how you live your life? Do you think this wooden statue is somehow your conduit to God? Of course it will.
One false doctrine about God leads to another, especially in the first table. A false view of God affects the gospel. That’s why you have the soothsayers and the sorcerers.
It all comes as a package. You can’t just sit there and take an element of pagan worship, unbelieving worship, not just back then, but today as well, and not affect the rest of what you believe. It’s going to bleed into the church, and it has.
You have, you’ve heard this before, in the mainline Presbyterian churches where they talk about female deities. I mean, they were celebrating it, I believe it was at the Peace USA, you know, one of the main, I think it was that one, a couple of years ago, I remember reading about that. It was just dumbfounding.
At their General Assembly meeting. It goes on today. Nothing different, nothing has changed.
And it’s in the church. False worship will affect the people of God. The way it affects people of God today is not physical idols or metal idols.
I’ve not seen a church that is a conservative church, not an apostate church, do that. I suppose an apostate church has. Anything’s possible in America.
What you have instead is the peer pressure of trying to get your church to grow, and so you keep compromising with the preaching of God’s Word, and of worship of His name, picking songs that are not offensive, and you don’t want to sing those psalms, because some of those psalms have imprecations and calling down God’s judgment. That’s terrible, because you know, God’s a big Santa Claus in heaven. They might not believe and teach that, but if you start singing only the good stuff, that is, what you think is good, but forget the holiness of God that He does judge you, that’s going to start affecting how you think, isn’t it? We keep forgetting we’re emotional, and we are pattern-driven as humans, in peer pressure.
So unless that pulpit is strong and preaching judgment, and your songs have no judgment in it, that’s about the only way I think you can counteract it. Typically, they go hand-in-hand. It’s been my experience.
I think it’s been many of your experience in the church that some of you have been in. It’s not just through the brain gate, right? Oh, we just teach them the right thing. It’s what you sing.
It’s what you expect. It’s the peer pressure we have with each other, negative or positive, and the like. And so, a perfect example of this is that many of the boomer politicians today, right, the older generation that’s still around in politics, went to church when they were younger.
And I tell you, most of the conservative boomers aren’t conservative enough for me, right? They’re moderate. And it shows, because they went to liberal churches with false worship and false gospels. It still affects society, at least societies that have churches like ours do.
And then here at the end, the Spirit perhaps to encourage those who have truly repented, and I’ll execute vengeance and anger and fury on the nations that have not heard. I’m not going to just punish my people. Of course, if they’re my people, the punishment isn’t everlasting, and it is for the unbeliever, is it? It’s the punishment of a father who loves his people and says, you’re not getting it right.
I’ve got to take a hard line with you because you’re being a stubborn child. But I love you. That’s why I’m taking a hard line with you.
These are not my children. They will be judged, and it will be an eternal judgment. And I’ll execute vengeance and anger and fury on the nations that have not heard.
Of course, by hearing, he doesn’t mean… It’s interesting, I heard it. No, he means hearing and doing. That’s a Hebraism.
Like when you talk to your children, didn’t you hear what I said? What you mean is, didn’t you hear it and do it? Why didn’t you do what I told you to say? What you’re really saying is apparent. It’s a very similar thing here. Everyone, of course, is judged, not just God’s people, but their judgment is a terrible judgment, unlike ours.
It is good to have the judgment of a father because it means he loves you, and you’re not an illegitimate child, as Hebrew reminds us. Here, he tells his people, he tells us. Because when I say the church in America is being judged, I don’t mean every church has equal culpability, obviously, or every family.
But we’re going to feel the effects of it because we are united that way. This is how God has designed it. And we ought to pray out for God for protection therein.
So let us examine our lives, our families, and our churches to see if there’s any sin to repent of. And if there is, to cry out for mercy. And if there is not anything in particular, nothing obvious, it’s going to stand out to you.
Still cry out for mercy for the effects, right? The material effects that are going to be there to one degree or another. Certainly cry out for those who have not repented yet and that he would be gentle in his judgments, his dual judgment, his dual punishment upon politics and upon our religion. Let us pray.
We thank you, Lord, for these words that show that you care about your glory. And that is a good thing. You’re not a fickle God who’s like, I don’t feel like, I don’t care if they offend me and violate the first table today.
That’s fine. No, God, you are always concerned and jealous of your name, of your honor, of your glory. And may, God, we have the same attitude in our lives.
Help us, God, protect us, watch over us, and purify us even in the midst of this dual punishment. In your name we pray, amen.