Verse 1 here of Micah 6, Hear now what the Lord says, and we read that here before, a few verses earlier. This is the third cycle of three cycles in this book. Each cycle starts with a call of judgment and warning, and ends with one description or another of mercy.
This last cycle is interesting because of what it starts out with, a cosmic trial, or at least a universal trial on Earth. And so we’ll examine here this trial, this call of God before the world to witness His faithfulness to a people that are faithless to Him. It’s quite amazing to read this in this language here.
A Complaint
The complaint, verses 1 and 2, Hear now what the Lord says, that is Lord, it’s all caps as you recall, that is the covenant keeping God. Some scholars like to say Yahweh or Jehovah, that’s the name He gave Moses at the burning bush. Arise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice.
Hear, O you mountains, the Lord’s complaint, and you strong foundations of the earth. For the Lord has a complaint against His people, and will contend with Israel. He is calling out for a creational witness, right? He’s saying, look, mountains of the Earth, watch and see what I have to say before you.
If God were to go to court, who would He call as witnesses? If God were to go to court, who would He call as witnesses? This is what’s going on here. The word complaint is a fine translation. We use that in legal terms in certain scenarios as well.
It is used as a legal term. It seems likely in this case, as we know elsewhere in the Bible. That God is pleading with them, coming before them, and using this language to highlight how unfaithful they are, and how faithful He is, in spite of their faithlessness and their disobedience.
He’s certainly not going to go to the Syrians to show His faithfulness, nor the Egyptians. Neither one of them follow God. They care nothing for the God of Israel.
Creation itself is mute. Why appeal to the mountains for your faithfulness, right? And yet you can in some sense, as God does, because Psalm 19 tells us, remember Psalm 19? This is a good one to at least remember the number of the chapter. Psalm 19 is one of the classic passages on natural revelation.
The heavens declare the glories of God. You’ve got language there. Expressing how mute creation talks.
Of course it’s a metaphor. It’s a beautiful picture to show us that yes, creation does testify, although mutely, but yet truly, to men and women everywhere, that there is a God. And He is a faithful God, and He is a just God.
And He has put all things in their proper place and order. So God doing this makes sense. It’s part of His creation.
He can point to it as much as it may be ridiculous to our flesh and to unbelievers. In other words, He is bringing His complaint to the world court. Not the world court that we have today, which is often, it seems to be a sham.
It’s just a play thing of powerful politicians and businessmen. The United Nations often. But rather, here to the creation itself.
God is the plaintiff. Micah is His envoy. He delivers the message from God.
Israel is the defendant. And of course, they are defenseless. And the covenant is the contract.
That’s what is implied here. Specifically around the language complaint or plead. That particular word.
Has those strong overtones of a legal declaration. You have essentially wronged me, God is saying. He says it in a roundabout way here.
He’s more explicit elsewhere, such as Jeremiah and Isaiah. Here we see He still is merciful, even in His complaints against His own people. Isaiah and Jeremiah in particular, Isaiah chapter 3, Jeremiah chapter 25, uses very similar language.
The public witness of creation has a significance behind it. For one thing, it’s public and not private. It’s not the defendants themselves, although they are evidence of God’s faithfulness.
But they’re the guilty ones, so of course they’re going to lie about it. Creation is public. God is declaring before the whole world.
It is a relevant witness, as I mentioned before, insofar as creation does echo who God is and His faithfulness. But there’s another relevance towards it. Where did God give the covenant to Israel? But on a mountain.
It’s not only a public witness, a relevant witness, it’s also an enduring witness. The mountains are a symbol in the Old Testament often of that which endures forever. We hear that language and refrain from the prophets.
Of course it’s not forever, but it’s forever compared to us. It’s a metaphor. It’s a picture of God’s faithfulness that never wavers like the mountains.
They just stand there, thousands upon thousands of years. And, this is an interesting way of looking at it, and I agree with him, I believe it was Calvin who pointed out, it’s an insulting witness. Can you see why it’s an insulting witness? What would you think if someone had to complain against you? Your neighbor comes to you and declares, you know, my dog is my witness.
You’d think I am an idiot. A dog isn’t a witness. You’d be offended at that, wouldn’t you? But God isn’t trying to be petty here.
What He’s showing is how senseless, how brute-like Israel has become. That sentiment is echoed elsewhere in the prophets where God says, even a donkey knows its master, and you don’t know me. You care nothing about me.
And so the same thing here. God’s like, the mute creation knows more than my own people to their shame, their everlasting shame. Now this covenant complaint here, as we dig in a little bit, as I mentioned, God’s name, His covenant-keeping name, LORD, all caps is used right there, an indication that this is the emphasis, the context in which He’s speaking.
God has many names. Some names reflect His creation and might, as we see in Genesis 1. Other ones reflect His lordship and He being our master and our king, and the like. This name, above all names, as we read here, is His covenant-keeping, God, His intimate name that He gives to His people and His people alone.
The complaint or the contention here that we read or plead, as it’s used sometimes, that God has an argument with Israel. Not a petty argument, children, where you go back and forth, but a concern where your parents perhaps come to you and say, I have a serious concern with you, and I have to convince you children that you’re wrong and need to do the right thing and take care of the room, take care of the yard, stop fighting and throwing things at one another. In this case, it involves charges, charges of sin, and God reasons with them.
Doesn’t He? It’s quite interesting here. He doesn’t just shed and shout wrath from heaven and shower down upon them judgment immediately, but He reasons with them and pleads with them to change, and He pleads in the name of the covenant here. Now, the Old Testament church had broken the covenant before, and as you recall, in many ways, they did it right after God gave it to them at Mount Sinai.
Moses comes down, sees them having a worship party, that’s what that is, worshiping the golden calf, and Aaron’s like, you know, I just threw it in the fire, whoop, and it popped! It’s so quite amazing! They’re already violating it that day! Moses shattered the rock, the commandments. He was so angry and so surprised. Israel had done this before.
And so the breaking of the covenant we see from day one has a two-fold element to it. The one-fold is this. In the ultimate sense, God’s people never break it because Christ never breaks it.
Christ is their advocate. Advocate is an old word for lawyer, isn’t it? We hear that sometimes. For the non-elect, certainly, they break it from day one.
They’re already in a broken covenant, and it’s just heaped upon them for their lack of repentance. But God’s mercy is greater than our sins. We see that already from the beginning of the covenant given to Israel of old, that God did not throw them out but still bore patiently with them, as a father bears patiently with his children, over and over and over and over again for a thousand years, until here in Micah’s time in the 600s.
God talks to them and pleads with them in this language again. Look, I have a complaint as a plaintiff has a complaint against a defendant. This is serious stuff he’s telling Israel.
And this amazing thing, as I pointed out, is that God is speaking through his envoy through Micah, and he’s not wiping them out. These people have false worship, we saw in chapter 1. They don’t love one another, as we read in chapter 2 and chapter 3, and we’ll read again here in chapter 6. The social injustice towards their own people is heinous in the sight of God. That’s why he emphasizes it here in Micah so many times.
And God does not wipe them out. Isn’t that amazing? Without even using the word grace, the fact that God opens his mouth through a prophet and says, Hear O Israel! It’s already an act of mercy. When I learned this, when I became a young reformed man in my mid-20s a Calvinist, and was taught this perspective, it opened my eyes dumbfounded, it was earth shattering.
Wow! It’s the long suffering of God for his people, over and over again. Different sins that Israel has, and yet it is still a real judgment as a father really judges his children, and he will discipline them. And we expect no less from our earthly parents, and we should expect no less from our godly parent.
And so, Israel here is pleaded with as God does. And God is finishing up the book with a strong plea for the humility of Israel, for the repentance. Perhaps we need these things at times in our life.
The church in America perhaps needs it in a strong way in many regards. Something to consider. It’s not just Israel.
This isn’t just a text only relevant to Israel in the 600s under Hezekiah and the like. But for us, to one degree or another, our sins don’t have to be as bad, but they are still sins, and we must be sensitive to them. And here, the second point, verse 3, a concern he gives.
A Concern
O my people, what have I done to you? And how have I wearied you? Testify against me. He calls creation as a witness to his faithfulness. Then he speaks to Israel directly.
Again, he does not wipe them out. The fact that he speaks to them is an act of grace. And of course, these questions, I think you would realize intuitively, are rhetorical questions.
It’s not as though God is really confused and doesn’t understand what their concerns are. It’s like parents asking rhetorical questions as well. And Israel knows the answer.
Israel knows that they’ve been unfaithful, even though they hide behind the prophets and the priests, as we read, who give them cover, who give them perhaps legal justification, certainly social justification and religious justification for their sins and their false worship. When God asked this question, the first thing that came to my mind was Jesus. Micah is certainly speaking to a crowd or yelling it out to a large audience or a small audience with passion and desire, as Christ does.
We read in New Testament, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her. How often have I wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. You were not willing.
This is saying the same thing in different words. Do you see that? Oh, my people, my people, I am your God that has such strong overtones in the Old Testament. It’s not just Israel, but all the surrounding nations.
They’re like, we’re a people, we have our God, although there are false gods. There’s this intimacy they had. Unlike the God in America or in the West, which is the government often for many people, which is a very impersonal God, they had in many ways a personal God compared to us today, especially Israel.
And so this is an intimate plea. What have I done to you? How have I worried you? Testify against me. There we have, I think, moving into a challenge.
Testify against me if you can. And of course you can’t. Israel can do no such thing.
And that is the serious point. Even though I pointed out, brothers and sisters, that here Christ has built, the Lord Jesus in the Old Testament is building up a strong argument against the faithlessness of Israel, the Old Testament church. And I point out there is mercy in just the fact that he’s opening his mouth and talking to them.
And so you can see a silver lining, as it were, right? There’s a silver lining here. He hasn’t cast me out of the house. My parents haven’t disowned me yet, right? And God hasn’t disowned them yet.
And yet our sinful inclinations are subtle, brothers and sisters, and sometimes can grasp for a silver lining in a message that we hear as simply a distraction from the repentance that we need to hear. Sometimes seeing the silver lining, if our flesh is dominating us, ends up just being an excuse to avoid repentance. And so that’s something to bring to your mind.
Again, the thrust of this passage, as a number of passages in Micah, are warning, a plea, desire for a change of Israel. And of course behind that is mercy. But the warning is forefront.
And so God is a holy God. He expects holiness from us. And if we are repentant and humbled when we read these texts, we will see the silver lining, even as we hear the warning loud and clear.
And it’s good to be reminded our God is a Father, and our Father, who when he does discipline us, he disciplines us as he disciplined Israel then, because he loves them. Hebrews reminds us that. God, the covenant-keeping God, calls out for a complaint and a witness before creation, brings his concern in verse 3, and then in verses 4 and following he gives a counterpoint.
A Counter-Point
He gives evidence of his faithfulness before Israel. For I brought you, we see the 4 there connects it to the question, so we know the question no longer is a plea, it becomes rhetorical, and it works its way to him explaining to his audience, I brought you up from the land of Egypt, I redeemed you from the house of bondage, and I sent before you Moses and Aaron and the like. How could you forget that, God is saying? He pleads to history again, as I mentioned this morning.
History is significant in the Christian life. It is there for condemnation, it is there for encouragement, it is there for lessons as well. What we have here, in the language he uses, which is just snippets of Israel’s past, he doesn’t go through every conceivable act of mercy and public miracles God has given them, but he, as I break it down here into these three points, covers three main sections of Israel’s past.
The first part is the origins, the grace begun when they came out of Egypt. This is the Christian metaphor for a deliverance out of the clutches of Satan’s kingdom, out of the house of bondage. He says from the very beginning, a thousand years ago, I brought you up with my outstressed arm of mercy and power and might, out of a miserable estate of slavery, where you had to make your own straw, make your own bricks to build up the edifices of Pharaoh as you were slaves.
God reminds them and reminds us of our humble origins and how we didn’t lift ourselves out of Egypt, out of God’s kingdom, any more than Israel did. But God brought us out with his outstretched arm of mercy and love, changed us, molded us, and protected us. Not just the origins of their existence and our existence, brothers and sisters, but also as we continue on in our walk as Christians, grace is maintained, not just begun, but maintained by God himself.
When he describes the picture of Balak and Balaam there in verse 5, O my people, he cries out again as Jesus cried to Jerusalem, O my people, remember now what Balak, king of Moab, and what Balaam, the son of Beor, answered him. There they are in the desert and the pagan king is terrified, he grabs Balaam and says, curse them. You’re a good prophet guy, you’ve got connections with the God, get a hold of this Yahweh guy and curse Israel.
He tries it three times and he ends up blessing Israel. Because God’s in charge. God is merciful.
God directs and guides all things for his people and for his glory alone. So he talks about the beginning of their existence and in the tough times of their life, maintaining their existence, right? In the desert, the desert of their soul and disobedience often, when they are wooed and wooed away from their selfishness. It’s a good reminder that God takes care of us in our difficult times.
And then here, entering the land, the promised land, that’s the picture of the Caesia Grove to Gilgal, that’s where they entered the promised land. Here we have a consummation of the promise given to Abraham and through Abraham to his children that you will have the promised land, right? So God has from the beginning, out of Egypt, and maintained them through difficult times in the desert and the consummation of the promise at least in type of heaven, been there through thick and thin. He gives them the promised land, doesn’t he? He’s saying all this is evidence, 1, 2, 3, the beginning, the middle, and the end of my grace for you Israel, for you church, for you brothers and sisters today.
It’s an urging, this example of the history of the church, and we can multiply that in our own lives perhaps, in the lives collectively as a nation of our church, church here, the churches you grew up in, that God preserved them, protect them in their origin, the difficult times they’ve gone through, or your family or yourself, reflect upon those. History is used by the spirit to help us grow. And we need these reminders.
Because we are weak, we are surrounded by many voices that wish to drown out our history, to drown out things that we’ve remembered and been taught. We need strong reminders, and God’s word here gives us reminders reading through the history of the Old Testament are reminders of God’s graciousness and his wonderful long-suffering and patience for us. To read through Micah perhaps, read through the Gospels every year, there we have the history of Christ incarnate coming for you and coming for me, and for each other perhaps.
Birthday celebrations could be a time to reflect upon what God has done for you and your family, both the spiritual blessings and the material as well, and of course the Lord’s Day. The Lord’s Day as a reminder. Because what is the Lord’s Day? We have it as an unofficial holiday every year, right? Once a year, called Easter.
The Resurrection Sunday. Every Sunday is Easter. Every Sunday is a Resurrection Sunday.
Not just that one special day that the early church fought over. Which specific day was it? They did have a big fight over it. No, no, it’s the Lord’s Day.
Every day is a reminder that God loves you, and God has been with you from the beginning, out of Egypt through the deserts of your existence, and into heaven when he returns in the consummation of the ages. And he plays with you, and he plays with me to fight the world, the flesh, and the devil, and to resist that we may know his righteousness. This is evidence, he reads here at the end of verse 5, I give this evidence as brief history that you may know in order that you may know the righteousness of the Lord.
The righteousness of the Lord here was clearly the faithfulness of the Lord. That he is righteous with respect to his covenant. He has given his word, he will protect you, he will guide you, he will be with you through thick and thin, better than a marriage partner.
And he has, and he will, and will continue to do thus. Evidence that he is right, and he is good, and he is faithful. This knowledge of God’s covenantal faithfulness should be an encouragement for us this evening, brothers and sisters.
As we have worship, as we read these texts, and as we apply them to our lives, as a reminder that God does plead with us, as he plead with Israel here, to draw us away from the precipice of sin, and humble us, and encourage us, and strengthen us to bow before him, he who loves us, and is always faithful to his covenant. Let’s pray. Gracious God and Savior, glorious Lord above, you are worthy of all honor and praise.
I wonder to behold how you have initiated, maintained, and will ultimately consummate our redemption. It’s all of you, from first to last. We thank you, God, and praise you.
Amen and Amen.