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A crowd, gathering at a mountain…
A sheep, being led by a shepherd…
A companion, walking with you down a difficult path…
A heavy rock, being thrown into the ocean…
Pictures of God’s covenant with his people.
Covenant…of all the tenants of our Christian faith, of all the major themes of the Bible, covenant is one of the most perplexing to me. Covenant is an agreement where God says “I’ll be your God” and the people say “God, we will be your people”…but, as we see in the minor prophets, the people break covenant with God over and over again. They worship other gods, they worship idols, they make evil alliances with other nations, they exploit one another, they neglect the poor and the weak. Well, that’s human nature I guess.
So what perplexes me? That God keeps his covenant, his commitment to be our God.
So far as we take a quick tour through the minor prophets, Hosea and Amos have left us feeling pretty convicted (I’m surprised you’re back after Amos last week!). God’s people are often far away from God, or at least we’re moving in the opposite direction, when God wants us to return. Meanwhile, our lifestyles look a long ways off from those who know and walk with God.
Well, this “convicting” message is still there in Micah for sure: in fact, things have gotten a lot worse since Hosea and Amos (one generation later). Idolatry and injustice reign in the land…and in Micah’s time, the land has a lot to do with the injustice:
Land barons are taking advantage of the weak/poor (2.1-2, 3.9-11, 6.9-12), seizing their houses and fields, exploiting the weakest – women, children, and landless people.
It reminds me of the situation in countries like Honduras today, where only about 2% of the population own land, and many “rent” their land by share-cropping (most of the people living in Agros Uno, the village Bethany is in partnership with, come from a share-cropping background).
For a share-cropper, half of their produce goes to the landowner, the rest to feed a family, maybe a little is left over to sell for the equivalent of a few US dollars a year. Exploitation of poor farmers – it’s not just ancient history.
Meanwhile, in Micah’s time, God sees all this – and God is angry with his people. In his prophecy, Micah envisions an angry God coming to judge his people, sending them into Exile. In the minor prophet Micah, we are still in a very dark place…
Micah grew up in a little farming town called Moresheth (near Bethlehem), in Judah, the Southern kingdom. He wasn’t a city-prophet like the more well-known Isaiah, who preached nearby in the royal court of Jerusalem. Micah knew what it was like to come from an unimportant Podunk farm town – he knew what it was like to eke out a living from the land, and he knew what it was like to have your land and house and produce taken away by the rich and powerful and important people, and left empty-handed. Micah knew…
But Micah also knew something about hope…that even in the midst of national failure and gross injustice and immorality, in pain and disappointment, there was still hope. Not because of what humans could do, but hope because God keeps his covenant.
And so, embedded in his prophecy of judgment and conviction, Micah gives us these four glimpses – four snapshots – of God’s covenant hope:
A crowd, gathering at a mountain…
A sheep, being led by a shepherd…
A companion, walking with you down a difficult path…
and a heavy rock, being thrown into the ocean…
So in the daunting task of preaching on a single minor prophet on a single Sunday, I want to look at just these four glimpses of hope in Micah…glimpses of what is, what could be, and – by God’s grace – what will one day be reality.
First picture of hope...Micah 4:1-5
A crowd, gathered at a mountain
(echoed in Isaiah 2.2-4)
God’s mountain – Zion – lifted up above all other mountains, his City and his Temple at the top, and people from all over the globe streaming to it to worship the Lord. What a sight!
The people will listen to God, and they will “beat their swords into shovels, and their spears into garden hoes.” The ancient battle cry used to be “beat your plowshares into a sword – get ready for war!” but now, instead of “learning war,” people will learn peace.
There is no fear in this picture, each person will “sit under their own vines, and under their own fig trees”…in other words, they will own and cultivate the land – justice and security! No need to go to war against another nation, no need to steal from the weak. All are provided for; there is justice in the land.
And there is no more choosing or creating our own gods in this picture …Yahweh will draw the people of the earth to himself and they will “walk in the name of the Lord our God forever.”
This passage – swords into plowshares, no more learning war – is inscribed on a wall at the U.N. headquarters in New York City…it’s a dream many people share. But is it just a dream?
Remember John Lennon’s song, “Imagine”?
Imagine there's no heaven…No hell below us,
Imagine there's no countries…No religion…
The song isn’t quite what Micah saw…no heaven, no worship, no distinctions between people…everyone the same, everyone “as one…living for today.” That’s not it.
Imagine this: imagine there is a heaven, here on earth one day…with one God, one faith, and all the many diverse people of the world worshipping “the God of Jacob” in their beautifully diverse ways. Imagine that!
Imagine no war in Iraq, no conflict in the Middle East at all. Imagine no more ethnic-religious rivalries in Northern Ireland, the Sudan, anywhere…imagine no racism or hate in the U.S. Not because we’re all “as one,” but because we worship the “one God,” the God of the Trinity. “You may say I’m a dreamer…well, I’m not the only one.” A crowd is gathering at a mountain…
Second picture of hope...Micah 5:2-5a
A sheep, being led by a shepherd
A King born in Bethlehem…rings a bell? “O little town of Bethlehem…” Bethlehem was “King David’s City,” and of course this was where Jesus was born. In fact, this very passage is the prophecy that the Wise Men discovered when they saw the star and came searching for the king (Matthew 2).
Micah describes this future King as a Shepherd, who will feed and tend his flock, gathering and leading them back home after the time of Exile. The Shepherd King won’t just bring peace, he will “be our peace.”
Sheep are not glamorous animals…I grew up in cattle country – my extended family are cattle ranchers in Montana, so I was never really exposed to sheep until several years ago when I went on a seminary retreat to a sheep farm in the Canadian Gulf Coast Islands. It’s not what I had in mind from Sunday-school flannel-graphs: fluffy white sheep frolicking in green grass and heather.
Sheep are dirty, smelly, and dumb…they kept blocking gates, they stand in front of vehicles with dumb looks on their blank faces. You hear them coming because their dried dung clings on their wool and you hear it “clacking” when they run…gross. They follow their stomachs anywhere hunger leads them…even into danger.
Ever feel sheepish?
When you stand up here at the pulpit, you get to see that stained-glass window in the back (Jesus carrying a little lamb). We had a wedding last night on the front steps of the church, under that lit stained-glass window…Christ presiding over this couple and their community as they spoke marriage vows – beautiful.
Sheep aren’t normally as cute and clean as that lamb Jesus is holding, but this Shepherd/sheep image is consistently one the Bible uses for God and his people…especially in reference to Christ: the “good Shepherd,” who not only loves his sheep, but “lays down His life for the sheep.” Jesus died on a Cross, to save his sheep from their own sins. Dirty, smelly sheep…made in God’s image, precious to him, saved by him.
If in Hosea God is saying “return to me,” and in Amos God is saying “the way you live proves that you don’t know me,” then in Micah God is saying both of these things…and “you need a Savior – you can’t do this without a Savior.” A sheep is being led by a shepherd…
Third picture of hope...Micah 6:6-8
A companion, walking with you down a difficult path
(likely the most famous passage in the Minor Prophets)
The people ask,what can we offer to the Lord to receive his forgiveness? Sacrifice? Expensive animals, great quantities of rams and oil, even a firstborn child. It’s as if the people are saying, “Let’s not change, let’s change God – and buy his favor!” The price keeps rising, whatever it takes to win God back. The people want a contract, not a covenant…they want to control and manipulate God.
This is such a religious response, just going through the motions to earn salvation. But God wants more than religion, God wants us! We are “mortal” we’re reminded, we are not God, we cannot change God…
This is what God requires:
do justice,
love mercy,
walk humbly.
I love the verbs: Do, Love, Walk…not just think about, or admire. Do, Love, Walk...walk as a covenant partner with God, but he is the leader. Walk with God, and care for others. This is not a casual stroll with God! This requires our all, our ethics, our business practices, the things we buy and sell, where and how we live. This walk requires absolutely everything. It’s not easy, but we walk with God, our companion…
In middle school, I went on a three-day hike with my dad into Glacier National Park. We stayed near Sperry Glacier, and day-hiked very near to the summit of Mt. Edwards, a peak I grew up seeing on clear days through our living room window across the valley. I had seen that peak my whole life, and now I was so close to the top…I want to climb the summit so badly! But my Dad said no…it wasn’t safe. I was so angry…have you ever been around an angry middle schooler? But I got over it.
Then a few years later a guy I knew from high school went climbing by himself, on a ridge very near to where my dad and I had been hiking. No one saw him fall that day – he just didn’t come back. He’d gone off by himself, and he died by himself.
The Christian life is walking with Christ…it’s not just “just go and do your own thing,” and it’s not even just “go and do the right thing.” The Christian life is Jesus saying to each of us, “follow me, walk with me…I will not abandon you.” A companion is walking with you down a difficult path…
Fourth (and final) picture of hope...Micah 7:18-20
A heavy rock, being thrown into the ocean
Micah closes with a hymn of praise… and the hymn begins: ”Who is like you, God?”
The name “Micah” means: “who is like Yahweh?” No one is like Yahweh!
- No one pardons sins like this
- no one shows compassion like this…
- no one loves like this!
No wonder God asks us to love mercy…he invented mercy, he loves mercy. Even when God is angry with our actions, he will not abandon us to ourselves and our own devices.
He will have compassion on us, and forgive us…but there’s more here: our sins aren’t just ignored, our sins don’t just go away…God deals with our sins. He takes them, like a heavy rock, and casts them “into the depths of the sea.” Imagine your own sins, weighted down with chains and concrete blocks, and sunk in the middle of the Pacific.
The God who drowned Pharaoh’s army in the sea drowns our sins in the sea.
For the past few years, when we take High Schoolers on our annual Steps of Faith retreat, we go for a walk on the beach on Friday night. We each find a rock, to symbolize something that God wants us to leave behind…sin, stumbling blocks, fears, whatever stands between us and taking the next “step of faith” with God.
We confess those things to one other person, and then – with an assurance of pardon – we throw those rocks as far as we can out into the Puget Sound…”into the depths of the sea.” Let me tell you, I’ve seen some pretty hard, long throws on those Friday nights.
On the Cross, Jesus did something with our sins…he took our place…he took our sins upon himself and we were set free! Christ’s Cross and Christ’s Resurrection…these are our greatest hopes.
Because God is faithful, because God swore a covenant to us that he will never break…
A crowd is gathering at a mountain…
A sheep is being led by a shepherd…
A companion is walking with you down a difficult path…
and a heavy rock is being thrown into the ocean…
Imagine.
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