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We know that Christianity is future-focused as God’s promises will ‘cash-out’ in eternity. But what about now? How should we deal with the ongoing challenges of life in the present? Micah says wait for him and bear with God’s indignation until he vindicates and bears our sin through his Son.
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.
8 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.
9 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.
10 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.
11 A day for the building of your walls!
In that day the boundary shall be far extended.
12 In that day they will come to you,
from Assyria and the cities of Egypt,
and from Egypt to the River,
from sea to sea and from mountain to mountain.
13 But the earth will be desolate
because of its inhabitants,
for the fruit of their deeds.
14 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.
15 As in the days when you came out of the land of Egypt,
I will show them marvelous things.
16 The nations shall see and be ashamed of all their might;
they shall lay their hands on their mouths;
their ears shall be deaf;
17 they shall lick the dust like a 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.
18 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.
19 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.
20 You will show faithfulness to Jacob
and steadfast love to Abraham,
as you have sworn to our fathers
from the days of old.
This transcript has been automatically generated
Micah chapter 7, verses 7 through 20. But as for me, I will look to the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation. My God will hear me. 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 judgement 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.
A day for the building of your walls! In that day the boundary shall be far extended, In that day they will come to you from Assyria and the cities of Egypt, and from Egypt to the river, from sea to sea, and from mountain to mountain. But the earth will be desolate because of its inhabitants, for the fruit of their deeds. 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, as in the days when you came out of the land of Egypt.
I will show them marvellous things. The nations shall see and be ashamed for all their might. They shall lay their hands on their mouths, their ears shall be deaf. They shall lick the dust like a 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. 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. Jerry, thank you very much, and thank you for being here, particularly if you’re back from previous weeks. Thank you for being here again. Here is our question this lunchtime: what should you do when you realise that you are not as you should be, and you realise that those who speak for God in the church are not as they should be, and you realise that the world around you is not as it should be. That is Micah’s realisation, I think, at the end of his life, and he will tell us how we should respond and how we should live.
Our key verses are going to be verse 7 and verse 9 of what Terry has just read. But first, I want to set some of the context to that. You will see on the handout that I think the date has changed again. There is a table at the top there. Chapter 6, chapter 7, they are from the final section of the book, and things have moved on from where we were in previous weeks.
The first 2 chapters, he preaches those when everything looks fine in his world. And he says that there’ll be judgement and destruction, and he just looks like a lunatic for thinking that. Then section 2 comes at the point when they know he was right, at the point of disaster when Jerusalem is under siege, and only a lunatic would say, maybe we’re going to survive this, which is what Micah does say, and they do. But now section 3, comes after that narrow escape. So the Assyrians nearly destroyed everything.
Micah told the people it was because of their sin, and the people repented, and God rescued them. An amazing moment. I don’t know if you can even imagine that in our national life. The whole nation turns back to God, realises they are in trouble, and God rescued them from the superpower’s army. It would just be the most amazing moment to be in the middle of.
But the question I’ve put on the sheet is, do narrow escapes lead to improvement? In terms of their addiction to sin, will the Assyrian invasion of 701 BC, will it lead to improvement? Will it be rock bottom for them? Will they realise they have a problem and seek for help? Or will they just say, oh, that was a narrow escape, wasn’t it?
And go back to being just how they were? And by the time Micah writes these chapters, he knows the answer to that question. We don’t know how many years further on they are, but he knows the answer. If you look just at the beginning of chapter 7, 7:1, he imagines going out of his house as a man who wants some grapes and some figs. But really he’s looking for good people and says, verse 2, the godly have perished from the earth.
There is no one upright among mankind. Verse 4, the best of them is like a thornbush. So verse 5, you can’t trust your neighbour or your friend. Verse 6, you can’t trust your family. There’s been no actual change in their moral behaviour.
But not that there’s been no change at all. They did notice there had been an invasion and it has made them more religious. This is chapter 6, more religious but not really in the way that God wanted. So 6:1, we open another big court case between God and his people and he starts with verse 3, what have I done to you? How have I wearied you?
In other words, whereas before they couldn’t care less about God, they thought they had a blank cheque from God, now they are much more religious, much more nervous, but they are beginning to complain that God is so demanding, so wearisome. So God has to tell them that he is nice, verse 4 and verse 5, I have only ever treated you well and done good things for you. And then verse 6 is what they have been saying. They have been saying, now what do I have to do to come before you and be acceptable, God? Shall I come with sacrifices?
Is that what you want, more sacrifices? How many? How much? And verse 7, maybe 1,000 rams, would that be enough? 1,000 sheep?
Or 10,000 rivers of oil? And I can’t decide whether they are just trying to make the case God is over the top or they are just so frantic that they are saying, whatever I can give you, God, would that be enough? Even shall I give you my firstborn for my transgression and the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? That was normal religion in the other countries around them. If you really made your god angry, then you started sacrificing babies.
And so they’re saying, well, God, clearly you were angry, the Assyrians came, what do we have to do now? And God’s answer is, no, nothing like that. Verse 8 is part of the answer. Verse 8 is a very famous verse, often used as if it was, kind of, could just be laid over the top of the rest of the Bible, as if this was all God wanted. I think here it’s not part of the, you know, what you should aim to, It’s part of the prosecution of God of these people.
I didn’t ask for 10,000 rivers of oil, certainly didn’t ask for any of your babies to be sacrificed. I just wanted you to live a decent life. Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God, be a decent neighbour. That’s what it was, nothing terrible God asked you to do, what you should have wanted to do anyway, be a nice person. But we couldn’t, any of us, do that.
And so, verse 9, what they should have done is paid attention to what had just happened. What had just happened was the rod of the Assyrians, and they should have listened to that, listened to what had just happened in their life and to the God who appointed it, and realised, verse 10, verse 11, there’s no way of just buying God off. There’s no way of just God looking the other way. And we’re all guilty, and narrow escapes have just led to them being frantically religious with no change in behaviour really underneath. So now Micah turns to talk to people who can see that all of this is true.
In a sense, I think he’s almost given up talking to the nation at large now. He’s talking to the group who he thinks might listen to him. And he wants to talk about life without denial, life in reality, while you know that the world is not as it should be, your religious leaders are not as they should be, and you are not as you should be, while you know that Babylon is coming. He’s told them that Babylon is going to come and destroy everything, so how should you live now? And that is closely related to the world we live in.
He knows Babylon is coming. We know that Jesus Christ is coming back and that he will judge and destroy this world before he makes the perfect new world that is coming. So how should we live? And this week is Micah at his most cheerful, actually. This is, if you found the last 3 weeks a bit miserable, well, this is Micah still realistic, still honest, But I think you will find this is the opposite of denial and despair and head in your hands.
So our key 2 verses and then the reason why is our 3rd point. So first point is verse 7 of chapter 7. How should you live? Well, as for me, I will look to the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation. My God will hear me.
For now you should wait, And that is the opposite of panic. I think that’s where this is going. Wait for God rather than panicking. However bad things get, Micah says, I will wait for the Lord. So, panic would do a couple of things to us.
It might tell us to give up. The world’s going wrong, so give up and live just the same way as everybody else. There’s nothing I can do, give up and join in. Or panic might also send us back to the desk today aggressive to other people in the way they live their life and join the sin police and try and force everybody to live better lives. Will you stop doing that and stop doing that and stop doing that?
Micah, he will warn people about sin and the way it’s real, but he doesn’t think he’s going to make any difference trying to push that rock up the hill. What he does is he waits for God, to come and do what God thinks is right. And he’ll look to the Lord and he’s confident in him, however dark things get. And I think if you have an open Bible and you read it, then it should be obvious that we live in a country, in a city that has given up on God.
Maybe since the 19th century we’ve been running that experiment. What happens if you try and live without God? And break free from God. That is running at full steam now. I will be who I want and live how I want and put me first all the time.
So, maybe you can see that’s what’s going on. But seeing that honestly, it doesn’t mean that we panic. No need to give up and join in. No need to turn into Mr. Moral Lecture.
Instead, wait for God and have some confidence that God knows what he’s doing. It’s the first way to live. Second key verse is verse 9. Let me read verse 9. I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him.
And here is the one that is the opposite of denial. Denial is a terrible thing, isn’t it? Whether we are talking about your financial affairs or your health or an addiction of some kind, Denial is a trap. Honesty is a release and is the door to get out and improve things. And collusion with denial is not helping someone, is of no therapeutic benefit whatsoever.
But Micah here is just the opposite of denial. I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him. He’s not making any excuses, whereas you’d think he probably could. Micah is a very different man from the greedy property stealers in chapter 2 or the bribed lot in chapter 3 that we looked at. He could say, I’m much better than them.
But actually Micah says, I know that I am a sinner as well. I know that I deserve God’s anger. And personally, I moved from hating Jesus’ message to loving it when I moved out of denial about myself. I was of the opinion that I was the most religious boy of 10 in the UK, and actually I think that was factually accurate. There was nothing, you know, denial or unreal about that.
But I also thought that I was good. I thought that I was good and that God was pleased with me. And when I heard that Jesus’ offer was to forgive bad people, I was absolutely furious. Don’t say that to me! Until God opened my eyes and I saw reality clearly.
I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him. And Micah is not playing when he says this. This is not just words for Micah, it’s not just a theological idea. Micah predicted that his hometown of Mordecai would be destroyed because Israel was sinful. And he was right, and his hometown was destroyed.
And then Micah fled with everybody else into Jerusalem, and Micah predicted that Jerusalem would be surrounded and besieged, and it was. And Micah starved to death, well, starved along with the rest of them inside the city. There was no special kind of place for Micah to have loads of food, while the rest of them were in trouble. And Micah was as threatened by the army of the global superpower as anybody else. And Micah knows that in the future Babylon is going to come and destroy all of Israel, and he doesn’t know when.
And his attitude in verse 9 is astonishing. Whatever God decides is right in the future, in the next 100 years, you’re not going to hear Micah complaining. Micah knows that he deserves to face the consequences along with everybody else. It’s not that he’s uncertain of his place with God in the future. We had a question about that in the talk just before now.
He knows that when the New Jerusalem comes at the end of time, he’ll be in it and that God wants him there. But before then, Babylon is going to come. And there’s not going to be a magic bus for Micah to get on that means that he can escape the consequences of that. As it happens, Micah is dead before exile came, but he is ready whenever God decides that it is time. And I wonder if we think that London is too beautiful to destroy, or too historic, or too vibrant and busy, or too rich.
I wonder if we think that our world is safe from God’s judgement, or our churches, or the Christian things we’re involved in, whether we think that they’re too busy and successful or too useful for God to destroy. Or I wonder if somebody has told us that Christian families are protected from the consequences of God’s judgement that play out in the world and society around us. Well, actually, that is a lie. And if a whole culture reaps broken trust and post-truth, or broken relationships and smashed-up families, or fear and knife crime in schools, or whatever it is, we’re going to find our families and our churches affected by that too. And we live here, we don’t live in a magic bus.
And as God’s judgement is played out, as our society moves away from God and God allows us to live the way we say we want to, well, here we’ll be under God’s judgement too. And Micah says, I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him. Micah knows that his city is on borrowed time and he is ready to accept whatever God decides. But Micah is not without hope. Look at how verse 9 goes on.
I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him until he pleads my cause and executes judgement for me. He will bring me out to the light. I shall look upon his vindication. Now, isn’t that an extraordinary thing to say? The whole book has been structured as a series of court cases.
Of God against the guilty people in denial. And now here is the one man who is not in denial. He knows that he’s guilty. He sees what’s real. But he says, the one thing I’m hoping for is a day in court with God.
And I’ll stay hopeful even if I’m taken away to Babylon because what I’m really waiting for is for God to execute justice. How can he say that? And why? Well, because he knows the God who is the God who bears sin. And that’s our third point.
And I said right at the beginning of this series, this book, it’s all about the kind of God you believe in really and what God is really like. If you’re going to go and deliver a message from God, you want to know what the message is. What the message is will depend on what God is like. And we’ve learned some things, I hope, about God through the book. This is not a God who can ignore sin.
This is a God who sees what we’re really like. There’s no blank check. It’s not a God you can buy off with loads of religious activity and some sacrifices. So, are we left miserable? No.
This point, I think, is the opposite of wallowing and despair about sin. Because of what God is like at the deepest level of his being, At the very end of the book, Micah gives us the theme tune, which is, who is a God like you? That is so much part of this book that it is what Micah’s name means. Micah’s name in Hebrew means, who is like Yahweh? So when you introduce, you know, have you met Mr. and Mrs. Who Is Like Yahweh?
Here they are from Mordecai. And all through the book, the big question, the big puzzler for God to solve has been sin. On the sheet I’ve put the way that the words sin and transgression come together at every single section and at every key turning point in the book. And the big unanswered question has been, how can God get us to be his perfect people with his perfect King, all cleaned up and purified and not doing anything wrong anymore, as we saw last week? Well, here is how.
The book returns to sin and transgression at the very end of the book. It says, who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity, passing over transgression, compassion, verse 19, treading our iniquities underfoot and casting all our sins into the depths of the sea? That is how you can believe in judgement the way Micah does and come out of denial and see that you really belong in that picture and yet not be gloomy and hopeless. But the English translation here has translated out what I think is Micah’s best idea here. The key point in point 2 was that we should be willing to bear God’s indignation, God’s anger.
We should be willing to pick up responsibility for what we’ve done and put it on our own shoulder, if you like, carry it. I’m not going to complain. I will bear that because it’s mine and I deserve it. But what you can’t see in English is that the same word is here again in verse 18 as the first key idea to know about God. Who is a God like this?
No other God is like this who, and in the English it says pardons, But in the original it says bears iniquity, the same word as back in verse 9. No one is like God, no one is like our God, because what he does when he sees our iniquity and our sin and our transgression, what he does is he picks it up and he carries it, he bears it. And the translation we’ve got here is fine in most places in the Bible because the result is you end up pardoned. When God lifts up your sin and takes it away from you and carries it away, well then you’re pardoned. That’s an all right translation.
But here it goes with what we’ve been saying is the shock reveal in the whole book. Chapter 6, you’ve noticed that God can see your sin. It’s made you complainy and whingey and frantically religious, but actually it’s done you no good because you can’t pay for your sin. And you’re still exactly where you were. And then verse 9, Micah says, well, I need to be realistic that whatever comes in my country, I’m going to accept it because I’m going to carry my sin.
I’m going to carry it. But I’m still hopeful because God is a God of forgiveness. How is he going to do that? How can he possibly, possibly forgive us? Well, only, chapter 7, because God finds a way to pick our guilt up and carry it for us, carry it instead of us.
And the Old Testament ideas here are huge. He will pass over, that’s a big idea. And the result here is permanent and dramatic. He carries the sin, he takes it away, he then steps on it in verse 19, I think, sort of till it stops struggling, and then he throws it in the sea and drowns it so that you can never ever find it again. Does that work for you as a cheerful idea?
God is so committed to forgiving you and having you with him forever in his perfect future city that he is going to lift your sin off you, place it onto, well, we now know, onto his Son, Jesus Christ, who will carry it instead of us, carry God’s anger, carry the punishment, carry the guilt, so that it lifts off us and we are utterly secure in our forgiveness from God. Somebody asked earlier how point 2 and point 3 go together. Is Micah not sure if he’s forgiven or not? No, he’s completely sure. He will be in that future city with God, no doubt.
But point 2, until then, he will have to live with the consequences of sin all around him. But this is not a depressing book, not for those who will move out of denial and see that they are not the way they should be, and nor are all the people around them. If you will pass through rock bottom, and see your sin and see that you need help, well then, this is the most wonderful news you ever heard of or ever thought you might tell to somebody else. We’re going to pause there. We’ve got time for questions.
So, let me lead us in a prayer and then I’ll give you some time to write a question down.
Father God, we thank you that you sent your only Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, into this world and that he offers to pick up and carry our sin. And we ask our Father that we would turn towards him, not in denial and with excuses, but in honest repentance and trust, and that we would ask him to carry our sin for us and that we would love you for it and that we would love telling others of this great message of salvation. In His name we ask. Amen. Does anyone want to stick a hand up and ask a question?
Yeah, thanks. Yeah, thanks, Charlie. So, I was wondering about kind of timescales here between points 2 and 3. So, on the one hand, we bear our sin, and on the other hand, God takes away our sin. So, does one happen first and then the other, or Thank you.
That’s a really helpful question. Basically, how do point 2 and 3 relate? Does God take away our sin or do we bear our sin? Do we do one first, then the other? No, that’s enormously helpful.
Thank you. And I was confusing what I said. No, I think Micah is a forgiven man. He knows he’s forgiven. You can see that in 18 to 20.
He understands that God is the God of forgiveness. I don’t think there’s any doubt in Micah’s head that he will be with God forever. As a forgiven person, but Micah also lives in a condemned country. And Micah will have known other good people all over Israel and Judah when the Assyrians came first time, and I guess a number of those people were killed or enslaved or had their houses burnt down, and Micah certainly would have lost whatever farm or investment, you know, his life had been profoundly affected. Despite being a good forgiven man.
So, I think, yes, what we’re saying is our relationship with God is secure, but we live in a world that is under judgement and will be destroyed, and we don’t escape the consequences of that, neither the consequences of our own mistakes nor the sort of consequences of our society’s mistakes. And we shouldn’t kid ourselves that we’re immune from those. And also, we shouldn’t jump up and down at God about that, because though, pray God, we’d be saved from, you know, the worst sort of ways of falling, but actually we’re all sinful people, and the things that are wrong in society have echoes in our hearts. And so, the attitude to that Micah’s recommending is just say, all right, God, there’s nothing here I can complain about, while going on being totally confident in forgiveness for the long term. Yeah, thank you, that’s very helpful.
I’ll try and make that clearer next session. Yeah, do you think that then has implications on how we should be thinking about living? Because there’s a lot of emphasis on, you know, living for helping the environment or living to help our fellow man or looking after our bodies and thinking they’re the most important things to look after in our health. Yeah, thank you. Does that have implications for how we should live with examples of health and our body and the environment?
Yes, I think so. So, and it’s a fairly common Bible theme, that. So, Micah knows that Babylon is going to come and destroy everything. Later on, when they’re in Babylon, the prophet Jeremiah talks to them about how you live in Babylon when you know you’re coming home again. And in both cases, you want to do what is sensible, given that you might be here for a while, But you don’t want to pin your hopes on where you are.
So, somebody, was it in this service or the later one last week, asked the question, what about, you know, if you’re in a car you know is going to get written off, does that mean you don’t care about the car? And I think it all depends how long or far the journey is. You know, that you might well not invest your life in pimping the ride as much as possible. It might not matter how big your swimming pool is. It might not matter how how big your muscles are, but if you’re going to be alive until you’re 100, then it probably is sensible to put some money aside and to look after your health so that you’re still going to be going up and downstairs for some of that period of time.
Similarly with the environment, actually, we know that Jesus will destroy this world, but he has not told us when, and we know that for him a day is like 1,000 years. So, it might well be that our great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren will still need this planet to live on before Jesus comes back. And so, again, I think rather than be greedy and selfish and we want to pass on a car that will drive, you want to pass on a world that people can live in. So, it relativizes but doesn’t destroy a right concern for now, but it definitely pushes us ahead to the future is the most important thing. Yeah, thank you.
Other questions? Yeah, you mentioned Psalm 6:8 and just sort of clarify what the correct application is. Thank you. Yes, so 6:8, if you don’t know, 6:8 is massive on the internet. There are whole websites named after it, and it often, particularly in wider Church of England circles, it operates instead of everything else the Bible says, as if really what God wants us to do, don’t worry about the God stuff, don’t worry about telling people about Jesus, don’t worry about sin and repenting, just do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.
And it’s kind of slapped on top of everything else like that. Whereas I think in the argument here, it’s part of a court case that begins in 6:1, And 6:3 is their accusation to God. They now think that God is a demanding God who wants too much of them. So, God is saying, how have I wearied you? And he has to explain, verse 4 and verse 5, that he has been nice to them consistently, which fits again.
They’re saying, look, you’ve asked too much of us. Then you get this verse 6, verse 7, about the, you know, really, we’re being very religious, and do you really want us to kill our children and, you know, bring all the cows and all the rams for sacrifices? And God says, no, all I ever wanted was what I told you. You’ve just gotta be a decent human being. It’s in that context.
I didn’t demand more of you than you could do. I haven’t been unfair to you. Look, all you’ve gotta do is be good. Be kind to people around you? Was that really too much?
That’s the context, I think. So, rather than deleting the rest of the Bible, hey, we found a new way to be, let’s be kind, it’s part of saying, look, God’s demand is not unreasonable, but you’ve not kept it, which is then where 9, 10, and 11 goes. No way of letting you off. Does that— yeah, thank you. These are excellent questions.
One person has noticed verse 20, that it says Jacob and Abraham, but not Isaac. Where’s the missing one? I don’t know. It isn’t the— so the formula is normally Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Here we’ve got Jacob first, and Jacob was the one whose name was changed to Israel.
So, I think this is my people, and Abraham was the one who got the promise first. I think actually what we’ve got in the book, we’ve got Moses, he’s back there in 6:4, Abraham and David as the 3 key figures. But Jacob has been, if you go right back to chapter 1, Jacob has been the sort of national sinful figure. So, 1:5, the sins of the house of Israel, sorry, transgression of Jacob, sins of Israel, transgression of Jacob, that’s all him. So, I think his name comes at the end to say forgiveness possible.
And Jacob, as you might know, was a bit of a tricky character. So again, if there’s forgiveness for people like him, I think that’s the point. And 2 questions that I think are fairly similar, if I understood them properly: if Jesus has already borne my sin, why do I need to bear it? And why isn’t there a magic bus?
Yes, thank you. So that’s how do point 2 and point 3 relate?
In terms of our relationship with God, Jesus has taken our sin away and there is no need to do anything. There’s no need for frantic religious activity. There’s no need for impressing God in order to try and get your sin more dealt with because Jesus has said, that is mine. Unless you think Jesus is a liar or Jesus is not good at lifting weights, then your sin is gone. He has taken it, he has carried it.
But point 2 is saying that you still live here. You don’t yet live in the place where you will see Jesus and live with him after he has transformed and rescued everything. So, if the world decides to run headlong into selfishness and violence and fear, well, you live here, And chances are that will come knocking on your door at some point. And Christians don’t have a magic fence around. We were talking at our table, you can pray for protection from those things, but God has not promised to keep us out of those things.
And we can try and help, but still we live in a world where that is all going to happen. And Micah knew that Babylon was going to come and burn his house down at some point in the future. He didn’t know when. He lives probably long enough to see the next king of Israel after Hezekiah, who is a young man called Manasseh, who was one of the worst kings there ever was. So, the guy who was born just after the big revival actually is the worst king there ever was.
And Micah’s got no illusions about what’s coming, and we shouldn’t have either. But it doesn’t mean that we still carry our sin ourselves. And someone asked as I was going around, what do you mean no one else does this? I think that’s Micah’s point in verse 18, that there is no other religious system, social system, bonus system at work, friendship system that works the way God treats us. Who is a God like this?
Who, we should be a bit more realistic about what we’re like after going through Micah. He sees what we’re like. He sees completely what we’re like. Doesn’t want us to bluster and deny what we’re like. Says, if you will accept it, then I will pick that up and lift it off you.
I will say that is mine now, Jesus says. And you will be, well, you will watch him drown your sin and you will know that he has compassion on you. And steadfast love for you. And there is no other religion like that or system like that. There is no one else like this God.
We’ve got a couple of minutes left. Does anyone else want to ask a question from around the tables? Yeah, please do. The consequences of the judgement of God against sin now, in what ways can we expect it to be manifested? You mentioned potentially London being wiped out.
So, London will certainly be wiped out when Jesus comes back. I didn’t mean to make any particular predictions about what might or might not happen here, but I guess every world empire that’s been knocked over never saw it coming. And when I was first reading and studying Micah, I did kind of walk around London thinking, you know, I wonder in 200 years’ time, who knows what will happen geopolitically. Maybe they’ll say, you know, why did they think they were indestructible? And you could say that about a whole number of countries around the world over a 1,000-year period of history.
I think, I was thinking really of places like Romans chapter 1, where it says that not only that people have rejected God, but that God is making his anger clear by by giving people over to the things they say they want. So, maybe the sexual revolution of the ’60s, maybe, is an obvious example. So, people give up on God in the 19th century, early 20th century. Mid-20th century, they say, right, well, that means now we can do what we like with sex. And now we’re in an era where it is unusual, I don’t know statistically where it is on half and half, I was told once half of the marriages in London end in divorce.
To be, you know, brought up with your dad and your mum, knowing both of them, is unusual, and we’re kind of, God has given us over, okay, that’s what you said you wanted, let’s see how it works out. And I think you could do that on any number of issues. And again, I don’t want to be alarmist, I’m not saying everything’s as bad as it can be, or it’s always going to go down, or any of that, but Micah just says, I’m living in a world where people are living how they want to. And Micah happens to have a prediction about the Babylonians, he knows it’s coming, so he says, well, I’m ready when it comes and you won’t find me complaining, because the ways that our world goes wrong are all here in my heart, even if God’s Word maybe protects us from going all the way and holds us back, but still there’s nothing really different, I’m not a different species from anybody else I meet. So, I won’t complain, but I’m trusting in forgiveness in the future after.
Does that make a bit more sense? Yeah, thank you. But Romans 1 would be a good place to go.
Yes, thank you. Michael says that he will just wait. That implies kind of sitting back. How much should we sit back and wait? Yeah, thank you so much.
Yeah, wait. We hear the word wait and we think doctor’s waiting room, boring magazine, sitting and doing nothing. I’m through security in the lounge and the plane flight is not for 4 hours yet. And whereas in the Bible it is a much more active concept than that. I’m waiting expectantly.
It’s the guard on the walls looking into the distance, when’s the horse coming with the message? It’s the person waiting for the person they love to come home. I wonder how, you know, I’m sure they’re coming, I’ve got this promise, I know. And it’s actually active waiting. Luke 19 is the story of Jesus as the man who’s gone away to be made king and is coming back.
And while we’re waiting, you get on with his business. So, the servant who thinks the master’s coming back is active rather than feet up. Yeah, thank you, that’s very helpful. I think time’s gone. Thank you very much.
