MICAH 7: 18-20 [IN THAT DAY SERIES]
THE LORD’S PROMISE
[ISAIAH 52:13-15; John 10:11-17]
The summarizing remarks in the last verses of Micah are of gratitude and praise to Yahweh. He concludes his book by reminding himself and his readers about the goodness and uniqueness of their God. God alone can always be counted on to be faithful. So Micah and the future godly remnant must turn their eyes upon Him for deliverance, forgiveness and grace.
Here Micah foretells God’s eventual out-working of His plans for His covenant people. The remnant will triumph because of their relationship to God. Israel’s past glory will be immeasurable surpassed (v15). With the restoration of God’s people miracles (marvelous things) will again abound as they did centuries earlier at the time surrounding the exodus. The future will bring victory for God’s people when the Lord fulfills His promises and establishes the kingdom (CIT) [Achtemeier, Elizabeth. New International Biblical Commentary. Minor Prophets I. Hendrickson Publishing. 1998. p 401].
I. PRAYER FOR GOD’S CARE & GUIDANCE, 14.
II. GOD’S ANSWER WILL BE MARVELOUS, 15-17.
III. THE INCOMPARABLE GOD OF FORGIVENESS, 18-20.
In verse 14 Micah makes a prayer request of the Lord God [in light of the great promise of restoration]. “Shepherd Your people with Your staff, the flock of your inheritance, who dwell alone in a forest in the midst of a garden land; let them graze in Bashan and Gilead as in the days of old.”
In his closing prayer Micah asks God to be the shepherd of Israel, pasturing His people “as in the days of old.” The God of the past is the God of the present and future as well. “Shepherd” was a title commonly applied to kings in the ancient Near East. God is asked to exercise His kingship in the loving and provident manner in which a shepherd cares for his flock. The Lord is entreated to feed His people with His rod [staff], not with punishment (6:9) but now using it for tender care and protection [Feinberg, Charles L. The Minor Prophets. Moody Press: Chicago. 1948. P 185.]
The people are said to be God’s “inheritance,” a sacred and precious possession which one must keep, protect, and defend (Acts 15:16–18; Eph. 1:3–4).
“Bashan and Gilead” were agriculture areas of great fruitfulness which became symbols of plenty during the times of David and Solomon. It is a request that Israel’s former years of blessing be restored by her Good Shepherd (Rev. 7:16-17).
II. GOD’S ANSWER WILL BE MARVELOUS, 15-17.
The answer to the prayer in verse 14 is found in verses 15–17. God replies to His faithful servant and assures him that He will watch over His people and care for them. In verse 15
God promises He will intervene on behalf of Israel just as He did when He took her by the hand to lead her out of Egypt. “As in the days when you came out of the land of Egypt, I will show them marvelous things.”
The God of Israel’s glorious past acts of deliverance will again be evidenced by the glorious God of their future. The awesome and breathtaking splendor of the magnitude of His power had been demonstrated in the ten plagues of Egypt and the miracles at the Red Sea, along the wilderness journey and in the conquering of the land. Those periods were filled with a number of miracles performed by Yahweh on behalf of His people such as the plagues on Egypt, crossing of the Red Sea, manna and water in the wilderness, crossing of the Jordan River, walls of Jericho falling down, sun standing still, etc.. And God will once again show Himself mighty in the future return of Israel to the land in the end time. [Walter C. Kaiser and Lloyd J. Ogilvie, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, vol. 23, The Preacher’s Commentary Series (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc, 1992), 90.]
In verse 16 the Lord states that the nations will recognize that their might pales in comparison to the demonstrated power of Yahweh. “The nations shall see and be ashamed of all their might; they shall lay their hands on their mouths; their ears shall be deaf;”
The nations will be struck dumb at Israel’s marvelous deliverance, and no longer boast in all their economic, political and military might. The nations of the world will stand speechless before the wonder of restored Israel.
In that final day when the Lord once again pastures His people in their land, feeds them, and works His mighty miracles on their behalf as He did in the exodus, the nations that opposed God, including this conquering nation, will be defeated by the power of God. The rebellious nations, astounded at Israel’s deliverance “shall see and be ashamed.” No longer will they taunt Israel, as recorded in Micah 7:10 saying, “Where is the LORD your God?” Instead, “they shall put their hand over their mouth; their ears shall be deaf.” They will be so humiliated that it will be best if they say nothing and no longer listen to the vain boasts of those to whom they should never have given the time of day in the first place (Isa 52:15).
The pride of the nations will not only be humiliated, and their power vanquished, they will turn in fear to the Lord. Verse 17 states; “they shall lick the dust like the Serpent, like the crawling things of the earth; they shall come trembling out of their strongholds; they shall turn in dread to the Lord our God, and they shall be in fear of you.”
So completely routed will Israel’s enemies be that they will be best compared to Satan in that ancient prophecy in Genesis 3:14 where that enemy “shall lick the dust like [the serpent].” Since in the Hebrew the article precedes the word for “serpent,” it is included here. Note that “Serpent” is capitalized because it appears here to mean, as it does in Genesis, something other than a reptile form; it is the title of that evil one against whom we all struggle—Satan. We still use this figure of speech—”to bite the dust”—as a symbol of defeat. In biblical times and still today it refers to a defeated opponent—on the football field or battlefield or in a spiritual contest (Ps. 44:25; 75:9; Is. 49:23). God will turn the tables on all the rebellious heathen & spirits alike.
Confronted with the Lord’s powers, the nations realizing their impotence will be humbled in repentance and “come trembling out of their hiding places” before the Lord of Hosts. They shall in trepidation turn to the Lord for salvation (Ho 3:5, Je 33:9). This triumph that utterly vanquishes Satan and death is the enactment of the Lord victory over sin, death and the grave won by the resurrection of Christ.
The final deliverance of Israel by God will serve a greater purpose than the simply its exaltation and restoration. Its salvation will have something to do with the salvation of the peoples of the world who will finally turn to worship the One True God.
[The Lord’s victory at the climax of history will be deliberately patterned after David’s earlier victory over his enemies, expressed in similar terms in Psalm 18:45: “The foreigners fade away, and they come frightened from their hideouts.” Great will be the day of our Lord! [Kaiser & Ogilvie, 90–91].
III. THE INCOMPARABLE GOD OF FORGIVENESS, 18-20.
The prophecy of Micah closes with a short but magnificent doxology extolling the greatness of God. Some scholars think it the finest in the O.T. [Juan I. Alfaro, Justice and Loyalty: A Commentary on the Book of Micah, International Theological Commentary (Grand Rapids; Edinburgh: Wm. B. Eerdmans; Handsel Press, 1989), 81.]
Caught up in the adoration at the wonder of God, the prophet begins verse18 by asking an exploratory question. “Who is a God like You, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of His inheritance? He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in steadfast love.”
“Who is like Yahweh?” asks all of us to focus on the incomparability of Yahweh. [Micah’s name means “Who is like the Lord, so I guess he had thought about it a lot.] Can anyone or anything be compared to Him or be said to be His equal? Who is like You, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders [miracles]?” (Ex. 15:11). The answer, of course, is that there is no one who even comes close to measuring up to who God is and to what He has done.
Not only is our God incomparably great, but with that greatness He is mercifully “pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression” meaning “leaving it unpunished.” He is the God who pardons sin, forgives transgressions, and delights in showing mercy. Who shows compassion and deals with sin with finality [Achtemeier, 401].
The formula for forgiveness given here is as ancient as Exodus 34:6–7. God will “lift up” [the literal meaning of “pardon” in the Hebrew] the burden of sin from the shoulders of all who will confess their sin and ask for His forgiveness. He Himself can forgive and “pass over” [an allusion to the Passover night in Egypt with its provision of the paschal lamb] the transgression because He became the paschal lamb and substitute for our sins and was thereby able to offer full release from them.
The reason God pardons sin as horrendous as Israel’s and as hideous as mine is because, “He delights in mercy.” “He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in mercy.” God delights in “grace,” “loving-kindness,” and “mercy” [that beautiful Hebrew word hesed]. He does not delight in holding a grudge, or in bottling up His anger over our sins. [Psalm 103:9–10 celebrated the same truth— “Nor will He keep His anger forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor punished us according to our iniquities.” Likewise Jeremiah marveled over the same graciousness of our God: “But let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD, exercising loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth” (Jer. 9:24). What a wonderful and gracious Savior, who removes our sin and guilt and freely gives us His joy and satisfaction despite all the grief we have given to Him! That is unheard of! [Walter C. Kaiser and Lloyd J. Ogilvie, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, vol. 23, The Preacher’s Commentary Series (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc, 1992), 91–92.]
The LORD is great, not so much because of His awe-inspiring and spectacular deeds in nature and in history, but because of His total victory over sin and transgression, and because of His loving mercy through which He proves His fidelity to His promises. [Alfaro, 81.] Truly, truly who can compare with our God?
Verse 19 underscores the fact that our sins will be cast into eternal oblivion (Jer. 50:20). “He will again have compassion on us; He will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our [their] sins into the depths of the sea.”
God will love us, in spite of the fact that we, and Israel, should expect nothing but His anger (v. 18a). God will deal with sins as with a conquered enemy, treading iniquities under foot.
He treads “our iniquities under foot,” as being hostile and deadly to us. He will tread down our sins that rise up against us and threaten to overpower us. Without subjugation of our bad propensities, even pardon could not give us peace. When God takes away the guilt of sin that it may not condemn us, He takes away also the power of sin that it may not rule us. The power of goodness in the end overcomes all evil and praise Jesus’ dear name it will overcome all evil in us.
Not only does God tread down our sin, He also casts them “into the depths of the sea,” never to rise again to view, buried out of sight in eternal oblivion, where they will never be able to rise again and accuse us. The message conveyed is that sin has been utterly removed from God’s sight and remembrance.
God does this for us only because of the work of Jesus Christ on the cross where He bore those sins for us. Because He was punished for them, God can pass over the transgressions of any sinner [Feinberg, 187].
[Once every year, on Ros Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, the orthodox Jew goes to a stream or river and symbolically empties his sins from his pockets into the water as he recites Micah 7:18–20. This is the Tashlich service, named after the word “You will cast.” It symbolizes the fact that God can and will take our sins, wash them down the streams of running water and bury them deep in the depths of the ocean. God not only forgives our sins, He also forgets them. If some object that God cannot forget our sins if He is omniscient, let it be remembered that what He does when He forgets our sins is remember them against us no more! [Kaiser & Ogilvie, 92.]
The concluding verse (7:20) of Micah anchors in history the certainty of God’s pardon and mercy with a faithful promise. “You will show faithfulness to Jacob and steadfast love to Abraham, as you have sworn to our fathers from the days of old.”
The statement “sworn to our fathers from the days of old” is the key to understanding all the statements about God’s merciful and compassionate love (Ps 105:9, 10) toward His people. God promised Abraham that his descendants would be the means through which God would bring blessings on all the families of the earth (Gen 12:2-3; 18:18; 22:18; 26:4). That promise was renewed for both Isaac (Gen 26:3) and Jacob (Gen 28:14). Micah prophecies therefore of the time when the undeserved forgiveness and salvation of Israel will result in all peoples turning in worship & obedience to Yahweh as the sole Lord. When the nations see what God does in Israel, they too will give their allegiance to Israel’s Lord. [Achtemeier, pp 368-369.]
God’s promise is guaranteed both by His Word (in Genesis 12:2–3) and by His oath (in Gen. 22:16). Thus, by God’s indelible word and oath, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we have a strong assurance and a solid hope for the future (Heb. 6:18) [Kaiser & Ogilvie, 93.]
God will carry through to perfection the plan He started with the patriarchs—a plan to form a people of his own, according to his own heart. Christians see this plan brought to perfection in Jesus of Nazareth, as Mary spoke in the Magnificat quoting this verse of Micah (Luke 1:55). The promises of God given to the patriarchs are still valid and will live forever in their descendants. Hope undying is the last word of Micah. [Alfaro, pp 82–83].
IN CLOSING
Only a God who exceeds every comparison, known and unknown, can pardon, forgive, and forget our iniquities, our sins, and our transgressions. Why should any mortal still choose to carry his or her load of guilt when that weight can be borne by our Lord? Why would we not want to have our sins forgiven and cast into the depths of the deepest sea?
Only this incomparably great God can also break down the barriers and walls that presently separate Israel and the nations. And one day that is exactly what God will do! He will do such marvelous miracles before the eyes of the watching world that all will be amazed. Even kings will exclaim, “Well shut my mouth!” For they will see what they had not even dared to believe, and they will be ashamed.
God is great! Our God is Great! “Who is like our God?” We answer, with Micah, there is nothing and no one that even comes close. He exceeds them all! [Kaiser & Ogilvie, 95.]
Martin Luther pinned a thought that summarizes our passage.
Though great our sins and sore our wounds
and deep and dark our fall,
His love surpasses all.
Our trusty loving Shepherd He,
Who will at last set Israel free
from all their sin and sorrow. [E.T. by Catharine Winkworth]
BENEDICTION: ‘Grace to you, and peace, from Him who is, and who was, and who is to come; and from the seven Spirits who are before His throne, and from Jesus Christ, the Faithful Witness, the Firstborn of the Dead, and the Ruler of the Kings of the Earth.’ Rev. 1:4, 5.
God of Mercy, we praise You who created and redeemed the world from evil. You poured out Your Blood and sacrificed Yourself for us sinners, for the forgiveness of our sin. You proved to us how unconditional and immeasurable Your Love is. Indeed, we offer You our praise and our life. We adore You and wish to walk the path to Your Presence. Because of the sacrifice of our Lord, we prayer for forgiveness and righteousness. Blot out our sins and remember them no more and grant us life in accordance with Your Will. May we walk in the path of the Lord. Through Him alone, we pray. Amen.
Merciful Father, as Your Son paid the price of our sins Almighty Father, before we ask for Your forgiveness, we would like to express our gratitude towards Your mercy. Like a father showing compassion to his children, You never ran short of patience and love. Like the vast distance of Your Heavens to Earth, Your Mercy is immeasurable. Without a stain of evil or any record of wrongs, You, the Father, the God, are the Refuge of all because with You is true forgiveness. Therefore, we humbly ask for Your forgiveness as we strive to become more obedient children to You and Your Heavenly Kingdom.
