Micah (Letter 33, Larry Crabb’s 66 Love Letters)

You Are Guilty: You are Pardoned!

They listened in the old testament temples and in too many churches now to hypocritical liars disguised as shepherds and teachers, spiritual leders with dead consciences who claim to represent God but instead turn from ego-offending truth to offer what markets well.

If a spiritual personality preaches sermons that tell you how you can get anything you want from God – more money, better health, bigger ministry, happier family, improved self-esteem, a more satisfying experience of God’s presence – people will flock to his church and make his books a bestseller.

But God says, “Like My unbroken and, therefore, unrepentant people in Samaria and Jerusalem in the days of Micah, you will remain brain-dead, so caught up in proud thinking that you will not permit truth to humble you. And you will stay soul-dead, so calloused by your demand for satisfation that you will fail to accept emptiness as the path to knowing Me. You are without hope. Unless I AM a God who pardons sin, who in mercy and compassion hurls your self-centeredness into the depths of the sea, you are doomed.”

Those whose self-satisfied complacecy dulls their hearing continue to believe their hope lies in religious excitement and activity.

God called His people then, and He calls His people now to find both Him and themselves in the rest of brokenness, in the quiet trust of repentance.

Book Name: MICAH – From Ray Stedman

Click here for entire Bible Summary from Ray Stedman

MICAH: Who is like God?

This book is called “Isaiah in miniature” because it is a much briefer presentation of essentially the same message as the prophecy of
Isaiah.

Methuselah lived 969 years, and his name means “When he dies, it will come.” The year he died the flood came, so that shows some
thing of the significance of the Hebrew names.
The name Micah means “Who is like God?” or “Who is like Jehovah?” Therefore, this is his repeated question. Everywhere this man went, apparently, this is what he said: “Who is like Jehovah?” “Who is like God?” – until people began to call him this.

The book is divided into three parts.

The first three chapters describe the failure of the nation, the lack of godliness.

In chapters four and five is a vision of the future one, the one who is Godlike, the coming of Christ, the Messiah.

The last three chapters give us the pleading of God to the nation.
In the first chapter there is a magnificent picture of God striding forth in judgment against this
nation of Judah, because of their utter failure to be godly. That sounds familiar, does it not? Why are we
not godly?

Chapter 2 goes on to picture vividly the utter destruction of the people, including the rulers, the prophets, the women and the children.

Then in Chapter 3 you read the reason for this total judgment of God. Micah says that the reason God is visiting judgment upon his people is that those who have been given the authority to act in God’s stead have forgotten that they are responsible to God (corruption, oppression, bribery, and injustice everywhere). This always touches us, does it not?

In Chapter 4, the prophet lifts up his eyes to the coming of one who is Godlike. This is one of the most beautiful Messianic passages in the Scriptures (Chapter 4, Verses 1-4):

Chapter 5 has one of the great predictive passages of the Old Testament (Verse 2):
But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are little to be among the clans of Judah,
from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel,
whose origin is from of old, from ancient days. (RSV version)

In Chapters 6 and 7, in a passage of power and beauty, Jehovah turns to plead with his people and to show them the way of God-likeness.

He has showed 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? (RSV version). That is the answer, isn’t it? That is the way to God-likeness: to walk humbly with your God.

But the Israelites failed to do this, so again there comes the cry of judgment as God at last must wake them up to their folly and their weakness.

Now Micah’s question rings in our ears: Who is like God?
Well, the only one who is like God is the man who walks with the Lord Jesus Christ – who is God himself, the Godlike one.

MICAH – David Jeremiah (Understanding the 66 Books of the Bible)

Key thought: Key thought: Sin devastates; but we have the promise of a ruler to be born in Bethlehem, whose goings forth are from old, even from everlasting.

Key Verse: He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6:8

Key Action: We need to live justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God.