The Word Comes to Micah

[Read Micah 1:1]

Back in the days of World War II—or at least the era—Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a very important book. I encourage all of you to read it. It’s called The Cost of Discipleship. That title is based off of a phrase from Jesus where he says tells people that they need to count the cost before following him. He  reminds them that they would never attempt to build a tower without first counting the cost, and says they should also not set out to follow him before first counting the cost. Bonhoeffer wrote the book because he felt like many people in Germany not only ignored this aspect of Jesus’ teaching, but they completely denied the fact that there is a cost to following Jesus. 

Now, I realize that may sound heretical if I leave it at that. Some people will say something like, “Hold on a minute. Salvation is free. So how can you say there is a cost?” That’s true—to a degree. Of course, we don’t pay anything for our salvation and we don’t earn it in any way. In that sense it is free. Yet, Jesus did have to pay a price. He laid down his life for our salvation. And the point that Bonhoeffer makes in the book is that Jesus repeatedly calls us to lay down our own lives to follow him—and that is costly. That’s what Jesus was saying. He was telling people to make sure they are willing to lay down their lives in order to follow him—to count that cost—before they make a decision to follow him. 

In order to explain this he came up with a couple of terms: cheap grace and costly grace. Here’s how he distinguishes between the two: “Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession...Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate…Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost Of Discipleship).

This was a massive problem in Germany during WWII. This is also a massive problem in the USA right now. You can go out on the street and talk to numerous people who will say they are a Christian but have no desire to lay down their life and follow Jesus. They feel no need to repent of their sin—or really to even avoid sin. If confronted about sin in their lives they will say, “I’m forgiven. Jesus died for my sins. I don’t have to worry about that” and then they keep on sinning. That’s the cheap grace that Bonhoeffer was talking about.

It shouldn’t surprise us that these are the only two times the church has struggled with these issues. As we go through the book of Micah, we’re going to see that this is one of the major themes throughout the book. During Micah’s day God’s people had embraced this idea of cheap grace and thought they could live however they wanted because God would simply forgive them. We’ll see how that worked out for them. 

We’ll be spending a while in the book of Micah, staying in the book from now through Easter Sunday. Since we’re going to be spending a chunk of time in this book, I thought it would be important to take some time this first week to set the stage for the book, so that we have a better understanding of what is going on at the time, who Micah is, and why he is saying some of the things he is saying. I’m hoping that this will something we can build upon and go back to over the next few months. 

The book begins saying, “The word of the LORD that came to Micah of Moresheth in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah…” (Micah 1:1, ESV). This gives us our timeframe of Micah’s ministry. His ministry began when Jotham was king and ended during Hezekiah’s reign. 

So, what was happening in those days? I’m not going to go too in-depth, but we can look at a few overviews that help us understand what is going on. Here’s what we read about Jotham’s reign, “He was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem...And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, according to all that his father Uzziah had done. Nevertheless, the high places were not removed. The people still sacrificed and made offerings on the high places...” (2 Kings 15:32–38, ESV). So, Jothan didn’t do too bad. Yet, those darn high places that Jeroboam built were still around and still being used to make sacrifices. So, not too bad, but not great. 

Next comes Ahaz, “Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. And he did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord his God, as his father David had done, but he walked in the way of the kings of Israel. He even burned his son as an offering, according to the despicable practices of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. And he sacrificed and made offerings on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree.” (2 Kings 16:1–4, ESV). Things go south quickly with Ahaz, don’t they? It’s no longer just the high places, but they are on every hill and under every green tree—there’s idolatry everywhere—and the worst part is that Ahaz even burned one of his own children as a sacrifice to one of the foreign gods. This is the epitome of failure and faithlessness. And to make it worse, this was happening in Judah! Not just in the faithless Northern tribe of Israel, but in the tribe of David. This was really bad. It’s important to recognize that Micah was a prophet throughout Ahaz’s entire reign. So, that should help us understand the content of the book a bit better. 

Then came Hezekiah: “He was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem...And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, according to all that David his father had done. He removed the high places and broke the pillars and cut down the Asherah. And he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it (it was called Nehushtan). He trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel, so that there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor among those who were before him. For he held fast to the Lord. He did not depart from following him, but kept the commandments that the Lord commanded Moses. And the Lord was with him; wherever he went out, he prospered.” (2 Kings 18:1–7, ESV). That’s quite a change, isn’t it? It’s a powerful reformation in the people of God! What happened? We’ll find out. 

During that period of unfaithfulness in the middle, there was a lot more going on behind the scenes. The problems was not only that the king was unfaithful and immoral and ungodly, but the people and the priests were as well. We’re going to read about the ways that some of the rich were coming in and buying up all the land—basically killing the family farm and causing a ton of trouble. We’re going to hear about lying and cheating and stealing happening in the marketplace—promoting injustice. We’re going to hear about how immoral the priests and religious leaders had become—being co-opted by the rich for their own benefit, refusing to say hard things because they feared reprisal, only preaching a cheap grace, and falling into a variety of other moral failings. Does any of that sound relevant to what we’re seeing today? It’s wild. 

In the midst of that we read, “The word of the LORD that came to Micah of Moresheth…” (Micah 1:1, ESV). In the midst of all that craziness in the life of God’s people, Micah is called into the ministry. God gives him a word to speak to the people. As many people in the Bible, Micah’s name means something that providentially fits with the message of the book. Micah means, “Who is like Yah? [Yahweh]” and he will actually throw his name into one of the prophecies against the people, reminding them that God is not a God to be trifled and played with. Nobody is like him. 

What I really appreciate about Micah is the fact that he comes from Moresheth. Eventually, Micah actually calls his hometown Moresheth-Gath and that tells us something about Moresheth. It tells us that it’s most likely such a small town that nobody’s ever heard of it, so he has to connect it to a bigger town near by. It’s like when people ask me where I grew up in Minnesota; I don’t tell them Pease because their population was about 300; I don’t tell them Milaca, population 2,000; I typically just say “an hour north of the Twin Cities.” Micah is a small-town bumpkin that God told to go into the big city with a message. It would be something like me going down to Milwaukee and walking the streets preaching this message.

Why would he do it? We know the answer right? God gave him a message and told him to give that message to the people. Guess what event had happened prior to Micah? Jonah. So, God had already sent a warning shot to any prophet who thought they could run away from the calling God had placed on their life. So, Micah wasn’t going to do that. God gave him a message, a calling, and a command to preach this word to the people, and Micah obeyed and preached the word. It didn’t matter if he was a country bumpkin, or a nobody, or didn’t want to do it. God told him and he obeyed. 

It’s also important to notice that Micah didn’t go into the big city and say whatever he wanted to say. He didn’t just walk into the city and vent all of his personal frustrations to the people of Jerusalem and Samaria. This isn’t his message. This is the Word of the Lord to His people. The words coming out of Micah’s mouth were the very Word of God to his people. That means Micah didn’t get to say whatever he wanted, but it also meant Micah’s word had power and authority because they were the very Word of God. That gave him courage and strength to speak some hard things in very hard situations. But it also means that when Micah spoke the Word of God, the people were supposed to receive it as the Word of God and listen.

This is not only true of the book of Micah, but it’s true of the entire Bible. We read this in 2 Peter: “Knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” (2 Peter 1:20–21, ESV). Peter is saying this about every book in the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. These are the very Word of God to his people. It’s not just a bunch of people spouting off their opinions or telling stories. This is the very Word of God spoken to His People—including you. 

That means you need to hear this word in that way. As God’s people, we don’t have the option of picking and choosing which parts we want to listen to and what parts we want to ignore. Not an option, because this is God speaking to us and we are expected to listen. This is also why I preach the way I do. You will not hear me get up here and tell you a bunch of thoughts that have come out of my head, or about the things that have been bothering me this past week. If I were to do that—or any other pastor for that matter—there would be no authority in that message. The only authority I have comes because I am preaching to you the very Word of God. And because it’s the very Word of God, I’m going to preach it with passion and conviction and I’m not going to try to soften it or change it or water it down. I don’t have that authority.

This is important to remember as we go through the book of Micah, because Micah can get pretty intense at times. This is not a light book. There are some very strong rebukes for God’s people in this book—some rebukes that may even make us uncomfortable at times. There will be a temptation to soften them and water them down a bit so that we’re not so uncomfortable. We need to let the full weight of these rebukes from the Lord settle us on so that we can feel the weight that comes along with rebellion and wandering away from God. 

Some will probably even question why the words are so harsh. Couldn’t it have been said in a nicer way—more Midwest nice?. Couldn’t it have been said in a way that’s gentler and softer? I don’t think so. We’ll talk about this more throughout this series, but there’s a saying that I’ve developed over the years based on biblical principles that says: soft hearts need soft words and hard hearts need hard words. 

But it’s also important to remember WHY we would ever use hard words on hard hearts. The Apostle Paul gives us some insight into this because he said some hard words to the church in Corinth. He actually says this about sending that letter to them: “I did regret it, for I see that that letter grieved you…” (2 Corinthians 7:8, ESV). So, Paul sent them this hard letter, and then regretted it because of how it seemed to hurt them and grieve them. But, hear the rest of the context around this verse. He says, “For even if I made you grieve with my letter, I do not regret it—though I did regret it, for I see that that letter grieved you, though only for a while. As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us.” (2 Corinthians 7:8–9, ESV). Paul says that he’s not rejoicing because the letter hurt a little, he’s rejoicing that the grief they felt caused them to repent and turn to Jesus Christ. THAT was the goal of the hard words in the first place. 

That’s important. We must never speak hard words to people simply because we’re angry and want to get back at them. That most often the case. They said something that hurt us and we want to hurt them back. That’s not Christian. However, when we see someone who’s heart has become hard, and they we’ve tried soft words repeatedly to no effect, and we see them continually walking down a path to death and destruction, eventually, in love, we need to scream, “Turn around! You’re going to die! Repent!” We may even need to use some hard words and hard language to wake them from their stupor—not out of anger nor spite nor self-righteousness, but because we love them and want to see them turn to Jesus Christ. 

Ultimately, this is the message of the book of Micah and we must make sure we don’t miss it. We’re going to hear many rebukes for social injustice in this book. We’re going to hear rebukes for religious apathy. We’re going to hear rebukes for the message of cheap grace. Yet, we’re also going to hear about a messiah who is coming, one that will be born in Bethlehem. He’s not coming to simply fix the social injustices or to motivate the apathetic. He’s coming as the Savior of the world. He’s coming to live and die and rise again for the forgiveness and atonement of our failures AND his salvation promises to not only forgive but to also transform. His salvation will be so comprehensive that it will overcome our entire lives—and cheap grace along with it. His salvation will be so comprehensive that it will eventually overcome religious apathy and social injustice. His salvation is so comprehensive that all those who weigh the cost and lay down their lives now to follow him, will receive that life back in abundance, not only in this life, but for the rest of eternity. This is the Word of the Lord.