As 29-year-old Neha Wright checked her mailbox and brought in the latest batch of bills, she realized the moment had finally arrived: Her childhood love of receiving a letter in the mail had officially been replaced with a very adult fear of receiving a letter in the mail.
Neha’s parents recall that as a kid, she would teem with excitement when she got a letter addressed to her and would run to open it. Neha’s mother said, “Most of the time it was something boring like a postcard from a cousin or a school paper. She’d check the mailbox every evening after school if she knew a letter was on the way.”
Now that she’s reached adulthood, seeing a letter in the mail sends a chill down Neha’s spine, and its sort of up in the air whether she will open it at all. She says, “It’s almost always my electric bill or a notice from my bank, two of the scariest things a girl can receive.
Neha said, “It’s hard to imagine there was once a time where I loved receiving mail, because it meant $20 from my grandparents. Imagine opening mail and gaining money? That must’ve been awesome!” (Freddie Shanel, “Childhood Love of Mail Replaced with Adult Fear of Mail,” Reductress, 10-10-23; www.PreachingToday.com).
I don’t know about you, but I can relate to how Neha feels about getting mail these days. As a kid, it was fun! As an adult, I’d be content just to let it sit in the mailbox, because it’s usually just junk mail or bills.
More often than not, the mail threatens my sense of well-being. So, what do you do when that happens? What do you do when you feel threatened? What do you do when a letter, a doctor’s report, or even world events jeopardize your sense of well-being?
That was the case in Jerusalem 800 years before Christ. The Assyrian empire was on the march, getting ready to overtake Israel just north of them and threatening Judah with total annihilation. They were prosperous days for Judah and Jerusalem, but the Assyrian empire jeopardized their sense of well-being.
That’s when Micah, the prophet, preached three messages of warning and hope to his kinsmen fearing for their lives. They are messages that still apply today, 2,800 years later, to anyone, who is concerned about their future. So, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Micah towards the end of your Old Testament, the book of Micah,
Micah 1:1-7 The word of the LORD that came to Micah of Moresheth in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem [the capitals of Israel and Judah]. Hear, you peoples, all of you; pay attention, O earth, and all that is in it, and let the Lord GOD be a witness against you, the Lord from his holy temple. For behold, the LORD is coming out of his place, and will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth [i.e., the places where people worshipped idols (Psalm 78:58)]. And the mountains will melt under him, and the valleys will split open, like wax before the fire, like waters poured down a steep place. All this is for the transgression of Jacob and for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the transgression of Jacob? Is it not Samaria? And what is the high place of Judah? Is it not Jerusalem? Therefore I will make Samaria a heap in the open country, a place for planting vineyards, and I will pour down her stones into the valley and uncover her foundations. All her carved images shall be beaten to pieces, all her wages shall be burned with fire, and all her idols I will lay waste, for from the fee of a prostitute she gathered them, and to the fee of a prostitute they shall return (ESV).
God will judge Israel and Judah for their idolatry.
Micah 1:8-9 For this I will lament and wail; I will go stripped and naked; I will make lamentation like the jackals, and mourning like the ostriches. For her wound is incurable, and it has come to Judah; it has reached to the gate of my people, to Jerusalem (ESV).
When you’ve lost your sense of well-being, the first thing you do is…
WEEP BECAUSE JUDGMENT IS COMING.
Cry, because God is punishing you for your sin. Mourn, because God’s jealous wrath burns against your idolatry, and you are about to lose everything you looked to for security.
Oh, you may not have carved little statues, praying to them for prosperity and protection. But you may have coveted houses and lands and wealth, hoping that they will secure your future. If that’s the case, then God will take all that away.
Micah 2:1-5 Woe to those who devise wickedness and work evil on their beds! When the morning dawns, they perform it, because it is in the power of their hand. They covet fields and seize them, and houses, and take them away; they oppress a man and his house, a man and his inheritance. Therefore thus says the LORD: behold, against this family I am devising disaster, from which you cannot remove your necks, and you shall not walk haughtily, for it will be a time of disaster. In that day they shall take up a taunt song against you and moan bitterly, and say, “We are utterly ruined; he changes the portion of my people; how he removes it from me! To an apostate he allots our fields.” Therefore you will have none to cast the line by lot in the assembly of the LORD (ESV).
When Israel entered the Promised Land, their tribes cast lots to determine what part of the land they would inherit (Joshua 14:1-2). Here, God tells them there will be no land for which to cast lots. God will take everything away on which they depended for their security.
However, there’s coming a day when God will restore a remnant of Israel, and they will find their security in Him, not in their idols.
Micah 2:12-13 I will surely assemble all of you, O Jacob; I will gather the remnant of Israel; I will set them together like sheep in a fold, like a flock in its pasture, a noisy multitude of men. He who opens the breach goes up before them; they break through and pass the gate, going out by it. Their king passes on before them, the LORD at their head (ESV).
Like a Shepherd, God will gather His people into “a fold” for safekeeping and open the gate to green pastures. Then, as their King, He will lead them. He will go before them, never to leave them again. God will take away your idols so all that you have left is Him on which to depend.
I like the way Dan Allender put it in his book Breaking the Idols of Your Heart. He said, “Jesus relentlessly undermines all that is not god to make room for the God who has redeemed our hearts (Dan B. Allender and Tremper Longman III, Breaking the Idols of Your Heart, InterVarsity, 2008, p. 17; www.PreachingToday.com).
Pastor John Yates, in a recent podcast, reflected on his relationship with the British scholar and Bible teacher John Stott. He said:
“Stott spent the last 15 years of his life going completely blind. It began with a small stroke that knocked out the peripheral vision in his left eye, forcing him to surrender his driver’s license. And over the years that followed, this man who wrote more books during his lifetime than most of us will read in an average decade became unable to see the pages in front of him. But that wasn't all. His body grew increasingly weak. He needed more sleep. He was eventually confined to his bedroom.”
Yates continued, “I spent three years working closely with John when he was in his early 70s. I was in my mid-20s. It was absolutely exhausting. I've never been around another person with a capacity for work as fast as his. He was the most disciplined and efficient man I've ever known. But there he was, years later, now in his 80s and into his early 90s, with his mind as sharp as ever. But then he was unable to do much of anything, except to sleep, eat, and listen out his bedroom window for the call of a familiar bird.”
Yates says, “I found this personally incredibly difficult to understand. Why would God allow a man like John to suffer the loss of precisely those faculties that made his life so meaningful and has worked so successful, if it just seemed cruel? It would have been better, I thought, for him to die or to suffer from Alzheimer's, because at least then he wouldn't have known what he was missing.
“But then I finally begin to understand why John never seemed to complain. That's because God was giving him the gift of absolute dependence. God… delighted to offer Stott a dependence on Him” (John Yates III, “Season 1, Episode 1: We Have Forgotten We Are Creatures, Why Are We So Restless podcast, 7-7-22; www.PreachingToday.com).
For when God is all you have, [you discover] you have all you need (John 14:8). So, when you lose your sense of well-being, weep because judgment is coming. Grieve, because God is taking your idols away so you learn to depend on Him. Then…
HOPE BECAUSE JESUS IS COMING.
Anticipate the coming of your Savior. Expect the arrival of your Redeemer.
In Micah’s first message, he focused on God’s judgment. Now, in His second message, he focuses on God’s deliverance. To be sure, Micah mentions God’s judgment as he condemns Israel’s unjust leaders in chapter 3. But Micah takes two chapters to contrast those rulers with a Ruler from Bethlehem who will bring justice and peace to the land. Take a look.
Micah 3:1-4 And I said: Hear, you heads of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel! Is it not for you to know justice?— you who hate the good and love the evil, who tear the skin from off my people and their flesh from off their bones, who eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them, and break their bones in pieces and chop them up like meat in a pot, like flesh in a cauldron. Then they will cry to the LORD, but he will not answer them; he will hide his face from them at that time, because they have made their deeds evil (ESV).
God will judge Israel’s political leaders, and He will judge Israel’s spiritual leaders, as well.
Micah 3:5-8 Thus says the LORD concerning the prophets who lead my people astray, who cry “Peace” when they have something to eat, but declare war against him who puts nothing into their mouths. Therefore it shall be night to you, without vision, and darkness to you, without divination. The sun shall go down on the prophets, and the day shall be black over them; the seers shall be disgraced, and the diviners put to shame; they shall all cover their lips, for there is no answer from God. But as for me, I am filled with power, with the Spirit of the LORD, and with justice and might, to declare to Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin (ESV).
In contrast to Micah, who speaks the truth about Israel’s sin. The other prophets just tell people want they want to hear but only if they are well paid. As a result, God withholds insight from those prophets and puts them to shame.
Micah 3:9-12 Hear this, you heads of the house of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel, who detest justice and make crooked all that is straight, who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with iniquity. Its heads give judgment for a bribe; its priests teach for a price; its prophets practice divination for money; yet they lean on the LORD and say, “Is not the LORD in the midst of us? No disaster shall come upon us.” Therefore because of you Zion shall be plowed as a field; Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins, and the mountain of the house a wooded height (ESV).
That is, the Temple Mount will be overgrown with thickets. God will judge the nation, because its political and spiritual leaders led the people astray.
In his book The Locust Effect, Gary Haugen describes an old broken-down truck that always sat rusting and decomposing amidst the weeds in the back corner of his grandfather's raspberry farm. If you asked him if he had a truck, he'd say, “Sure.” And he could point to things on the truck called an “engine” and “tires” and “steering wheel”—but if you asked him if it worked, he'd smile slightly over the absurdity and say, “Oh, no. No one had driven it in decades. No raspberries have been hauled, no supplies have been moved. In fact, I best not go near it,” he would advise, “It's just a hide-out for snakes and spiders now” (Gary Haugen and Victor Boutros, The Locust Effect, Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 115-116; www.PreachingToday.com).
In the same way, political leaders all over the world promise to bring justice and peace, but their systems are like grandpa’s rusty, old truck in the weeds. They just don’t work for most people, and in fact, they’re harmful to many, especially the poor.
However. in stark contrast to ineffective, crooked, and unjust leaders, God will raise up a ruler who will bring real justice and peace to our world.
Micah 4:1-3 It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and it shall be lifted up above the hills; and peoples shall flow to it, and many nations shall come, and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between many peoples, and shall decide disputes for strong nations far away; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore (ESV).
God’s ruler will bring peace to the entire world!
Micah 4:6-7 In that day, declares the LORD, I will assemble the lame and gather those who have been driven away and those whom I have afflicted; and the lame I will make the remnant, and those who were cast off, a strong nation; and the LORD will reign over them in Mount Zion from this time forth and forevermore (ESV).
God will gather His people back into the land and reign over them forever.
Micah 4:10 Writhe and groan, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in labor, for now you shall go out from the city and dwell in the open country; you shall go to Babylon. There you shall be rescued; there the LORD will redeem you from the hand of your enemies (ESV).
Judah’s Babylonian captivity was 200 years away. To be sure, hard times are coming, but God will rescue His people from their captivity in Babylon.
Micah 5:1 Now muster your troops, O daughter of troops; siege is laid against us; with a rod they strike the judge of Israel on the cheek (ESV).
Micah predicts that the Babylonians would lay siege to Jerusalem and humiliate Judah’s king. And that’s exactly what happened. 2 Kings 25 says that when the Babylonians laid siege to Jerusalem, King Zedekiah tried to escape, but the Babylonian army “captured the king… and they passed sentence on him. They slaughtered the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, and put out the eyes of Zedekiah and bound him in chains and took him to Babylon” (2 Kings 25:6-7). There is a bleak future ahead for Judah…
Micah 5:2-5a But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days. Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labor has given birth; then the rest of his brothers shall return to the people of Israel. And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God. And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth. And he shall be their peace (ESV).
Matthew 2:6 identifies Jesus as the one who fulfills this prophecy. He is the ruler to come, who will bring peace to His people, the Jews.
Micah 5:7-9 Then the remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many peoples like dew from the LORD, like showers on the grass, which delay not for a man nor wait for the children of man. And the remnant of Jacob shall be among the nations, in the midst of many peoples, like a lion among the beasts of the forest, like a young lion among the flocks of sheep, which, when it goes through, treads down and tears in pieces, and there is none to deliver. Your hand shall be lifted up over your adversaries, and all your enemies shall be cut off (ESV).
When the Prince of Peace rules from David’s throne in Jerusalem, then, and only then, will there be peace on earth.
Now, what Micah did not see, and what all the Old Testament prophets did not see, is that Messiah would come two times. The first time Messiah came, after being born in Bethlehem (Matthew 1:21), He saved His people from their sins by dying on the cross. The second time Messiah comes, He will save His people from their enemies by reigning from David’s throne in Jerusalem (Revelation 19:11-21).
My dear friends, when you’ve lost your sense of well-being, your only hope is Jesus. He came the first time to bring peace in your heart by saving you from your sins, and He’s coming again to bring peace to this world by ruling over it with “a rod of iron” (Revelation 19:15). If you want peace in the midst of your storm, just turn your life over to Jesus and let Him rule in your heart today.
At the height of the Nazi’s most horrible persecution of the Jews in Poland, an old Jewish cemetery keeper came into the cemetery one morning and discovered a woman in one of the open graves with her newborn son. She had given birth in that grave and died, but the baby was still alive. The cemetery keeper said to himself and others, “This must be the Messiah, for only the Messiah could choose to be born in a grave.”
As it turned out, the child was not the Messiah, because he died before noon that day. But what that cemetery keeper said was absolutely accurate. Only the Messiah of God could choose to be born in a grave. Only a God who loves as our God loves could come into the midst of all the pain of life and death and here bring his grace (Bruce W. Thielemann, “Hark! The Herald Angels,” Preaching Today, Tape No. 63; www.PreachingToday.com).
Please, look to the God who entered your pain to deliver you from it. Put your hope not in any politician, but only in Jesus, who died for your sins and rose again, and who’s coming again to bring real justice and peace to this world.
When you lose your sense of well-being, 1st, weep because judgment is coming. 2nd, hope because Jesus is coming. And finally…
TRUST BECAUSE JUSTICE IS COMING.
Believe that God will make all things right in the end. Have faith that God will punish the wicked and pardon His people.
In his first message (Micah 1-2), Micah contrasted God’s retribution of Judah with his restoration of a remnant. In his second message (Micah 3-5), Micah contrasts crooked rulers with a just ruler coming out of Bethlehem. Now, in his third message (Micah 6-7), Micah will contrast God the Judge with God my Savior. Take a look.
Micah 6:1-2 Hear what the LORD says: Arise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice. Hear, you mountains, the indictment of the LORD, and you enduring foundations of the earth, for the LORD has an indictment against his people, and he will contend with Israel (ESV).
God calls the world to witness His indictment against Israel. Then He reminds Israel how He took care of them.
Micah 6:3-5 “O my people, what have I done to you? How have I wearied you? Answer me! For I brought you up from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. O my people, remember what Balak king of Moab devised, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him, and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the righteous acts of the LORD” (ESV).
God redeemed Israel from slavery in Egypt, and He took care of them in the wilderness. When Barak hired Balaam to curse Israel at Shittim, God forced him to bless Israel (Numbers 23-24). Then God led them through the wilderness all the way to Gilgal their first stop in the Promised Land (Joshua 4:19). What then does God require of His people in return?
Micah 6:6-8 “With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (ESV)
God rejects the outward religious ritual, accepting only a heart full of justice, mercy, and humility. But Israel’s heart was far away from God.
Micah 6:9-16 The voice of the LORD cries to the city— and it is sound wisdom to fear your name: “Hear of the rod and of him who appointed it! Can I forget any longer the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked, and the scant measure that is accursed? Shall I acquit the man with wicked scales and with a bag of deceitful weights? Your rich men are full of violence; your inhabitants speak lies, and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth. Therefore I strike you with a grievous blow, making you desolate because of your sins. You shall eat, but not be satisfied, and there shall be hunger within you; you shall put away, but not preserve, and what you preserve I will give to the sword. You shall sow, but not reap; you shall tread olives, but not anoint yourselves with oil; you shall tread grapes, but not drink wine. For you have kept the statutes of Omri, and all the works of the house of Ahab; and you have walked in their counsels, that I may make you a desolation, and your inhabitants a hissing; so you shall bear the scorn of my people” (ESV).
Ahab and Omri were two of Israel’s kings, who led the nation to worship Baal and other idols. So you see Israel was anything but just, cheating people with deceitful scales (vs.11). Israel was anything but merciful, treating people with violence (vs.12). And Israel was anything but humble, defiantly worshipping idols instead of walking with the true God of the universe (vs.16). Therefore, God will make them desolate.
God, the Judge, will judge His people for their sins. But then God, the Savior, will save His people from their sins.
Micah laments the fact that the whole nation is godless (Micah 7:1-6). So what will he do in the midst of a godless nation headed for certain judgment?
Micah 7:7 But as for me, I will look to the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me (ESV).
Micah will wait for God, His Savior. He will look past God’s judgment to God’s deliverance.
Micah 7:8-10 Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the LORD will be a light to me. I will bear the indignation of the LORD because I have sinned against him, until he pleads my cause and executes judgment for me. He will bring me out to the light; I shall look upon his vindication. Then my enemy will see, and shame will cover her who said to me, “Where is the LORD your God?” My eyes will look upon her; now she will be trampled down like the mire of the streets (ESV).
God will shame Israel’s enemies and restore His people after He has judged them. So Micah concludes…
Micah 7:18-20 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. He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. You will show faithfulness to Jacob and steadfast love to Abraham, as you have sworn to our fathers from the days of old (ESV).
God will pardon His people and get rid of all their sins, because He made a promise to Abraham and Jacob, and He will faithfully keep that promise. He will not stop loving His people even though they stopped loving Him for a time.
Who is a God like that!? By the way, that’s the meaning of Micah’s name—who is like God? Unlike any other god, our God punishes sin but pardons the sinner, who turns to Him in faith.
During the Middle Ages, English law provided a way for “sinners” to find refuge. When a criminal or debtor wanted to flee to safety, he would travel to the famous Durham Cathedral and plead for asylum. The runaway banged on the cathedral's north door, using the enormous bronze sanctuary knocker… Then the fugitive desperately clung to the knocker's ring, waiting for someone to usher him in and toll the church bell to notify Durham's citizens that a felon sought sanctuary.
Once inside, the criminal confessed his crime to a priest, surrendered his weapons, paid a nominal fee, and put on a black gown. He lived in a railed-off alcove above the southwest tower, and within thirty-seven days decided whether to stand trial or leave the country. If a criminal chose to “quit the kingdom,” the law gave him nine days to exit England's borders, traveling only on the king's highways. For the journey, he wore nothing on his head and a long white robe. He carried only a wooden cross.
During this anxious journey, signs of the cross often pointed the way. Stone crosses inscribed with the word Sancturarium stood as signposts along the highways, leading sinners to freedom (Judith Couchman, The Mystery of the Cross, IVP Books, 2009, pp. 184-187; www.PreachingToday.com).
What a beautiful picture of the freedom repentant sinners find at the cross. Only, God doesn’t banish them from His kingdom or force them to stand trial, no! Instead, He clothes them in the white robes of Christ’s righteousness and gives them a new life.
Please, let God do it for you. No matter what you’ve done, run to Christ, who died for you and rose again, confess your sins to Him, and trust Him with your life.
When you’ve lost your sense of well-being, weep because judgment is coming, but hope because Jesus is coming, and trust because justice is coming—God will make all things right in the end.
I think of the mother who ended a letter to her son in college this way: P.S. Regarding your D in biology, let me only say that sometimes a scare is worth more than good advice. I love you, Mom (H. Jackson Brown, Jr., P.S. I Love You, Rutledge Hill Press; www.PreachingToday.com).
If you’re scared today, or even just a little concerned, let that motivate you to turn to the Lord, who will help you change your ways.
