Book of Micah Overview

Okay, Micah. Book of Micah, this is overview, kind of overview number two. And we're going to, towards the end, we'll hit verse one of chapter one of Micah. So my job is just to give these wide sweeping overviews. And then we'll get into the text. at the end today and then for the rest of the series and be in the text of Micah.

And it's poetry. It's wonderful poetry. Miles, I think he's out there. Yeah. Canada. Yeah. So he sent us all a missive or a one-page summary of Micah and his alternative theme to Micah was God delights in unchanging love and Feinberg, who I've been studying a little too, his theme is judgment or wrath upon Judea or Jerusalem and Samaria and So it looks like our brother Myles takes a very positive view.

He takes a very positive view. I guess Canadians are always... I like what he says because he brings out this verse in the end of Micah chapter 7 Who is like you? Who is a God like you who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of his possession? That's Israel.

He does not retain his anger forever because he delights in unchanging love. And I like that. That's his essence, right? Unchanging, infinite love. And in Micah, Micah eventually gets to that, you know, in the millennial kingdom and the blessing that's coming upon Israel in that kingdom, in the millennial kingdom, but there's a lot of judgment to deal with first. But at the end, it's love, love for his people Israel.

So Myles says that there's two well-known verses that speak to the reigning Jesus Christ in the kingdom, and it's Michael 4.3, and he will judge between many peoples and render decisions for mighty distant nations. Then they will hammer their short swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.

Nation will not lift up sword against nation, and never again will they train for war. That's a very famous verse, isn't it? very well known. And I think, isn't it Pete Seeger? Or someone who has that lyric that they won't study war no more? Isn't that verse on the entrance to the United Nations?

Oh, is it? Yeah. Yeah, you're correct. Yeah. So they take out of scripture what they want. I say the United Nations, that's the Tower of Babel. Yeah, right. So they won't train for war, they'll never again train for war, but that that folk song says, ain't going to study war no more. Ain't going to study war no more. And I thought that was the dumbest song when I was a kid. But I didn't know it came from scripture. But now we see where it comes from. Except they change it around and they put ain't. And so it's, I don't know. So there you go.

Micah 5, too, in regard to Christ, but as for you, Bethlehem, Ephrathah, too little to be among the clans of Judah. From you, one will go forth for me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity. So that two verses that speak to this coming messianic kingdom. That's good stuff from Myles there. That's a great, great verse. Yeah.

And then Myles, in his one-page summary, brought up this point that Micah meant the requirement of a prophet of God, and he quoted Deuteronomy 18.22, and that says, when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, If the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken.

The prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You shall not be afraid of that prophet. So it's in the negative. If a prophet gives a prophecy and it doesn't come true, then he's not a prophet to God. gives a prophecy and it does come true, then you know he's a true prophet of God. And this is evidenced by the prophet Micah. He's got several successes here.

He prophesied about the Assyrian destruction of the northern kingdom when Samaria fell. to Sargon II in 722 BC, that was during Micah's time, in Micah 1-1 through 1-6. He also foretold the fall of most of Judea by Sennacherib in the future, which is 701 BC. That's Micah 1-9 through 1-16. So he gave that prophecy to Israel or to the kingdom of Judah. In the book of Micah, he prophesies about the later defeat of the southern kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians and then the subsequent Babylonian captivity.

That's at least a century into the future from when he wrote that. And that's referenced in the book of Micah in chapter 4, 9, and 10, that the Babylonians will come and take them away. And that, of course, is in the Ezekiel time, the time of Daniel there.

So he got that right. And then this one that we just looked at about Bethlehem, So he calls, and this is amazing prophecy, that the Christ will come from Bethlehem and Bethlehem Ephratah to be specific because there's another Bethlehem. And the one who will be the ruler in Israel will come from Bethlehem.

So he got that one right. So he got all four of these. So he's definitely a a certified prophet of God here. Andrew? Yeah. One of the true strengths of that verse is the closing phrase, I mean, his goings forth are long ago and from the days of eternity. I mean, I mean, that speaks to the eternal nature of the Son of God, does it not? Yeah. His eternality. Yeah. And it says that just in that, it's calling out Bethlehem as the place where he'll come from, but also his essence about he's been around forever and he'll continue forever into the future.

That is a great, a great verse, probably the best well-known verse of the whole book, would you say, of Micah, possibly. I found this to be true, and this is my kind of thoughts on prophecy and prophets and the Old Testament and things in the Bible. So this is the cycle of national sin in Israel and Judah. I pulled, and we just studied this not long ago in the 1030 Hour, Romans chapter 9, and Paul sets forth what advantage does Israel have and what is it that makes them special or separates them out.

And they have the adoptions as sons. They have the glory. They have the covenants. They have the law. They have the temple services. And they have the Abrahamic promise and the promises, land, seed, and blessing. And Paul sets that forth in Romans 9.4. So Israel has all this advantage over all the nations of the earth. And so, but what do they do? And this is the whole This is the whole problem with why there's so many prophets to Israel and why there's so much failure.

So they start out in faithfulness and peace and they have secure borders, national blessing, and they live quietly and they're successful, but then they're led astray by foreign nations. They travel a bit and they start to desire these foreign nations and their gods. So they are led astray, away from the law and the covenants and the promises. And they kind of cease their following of the Mosaic law specifically. They build high places and they start worshiping those foreign gods, the Asherah. They build Asherah poles and they worship Baal. And then God allows them to be afflicted heavily by foreigners from their neighbors, from all sides, and even people as far away as Nineveh and the Assyrians.

They go to war. They're always at war. They get defeated. They suffer defeat. Then they go into captivity. And that's a reoccurring theme too. And then they have this repentance. And then they see it. especially with Hezekiah, King Hezekiah, which we'll look at today. And after Babylon, they have this repentance, and then they're restored to the land. But then they get back to that starting point, and it goes all again.

And God finally takes them out of the land for a long time. From the Babylonian captivity, he brings them back, but they never really have it. They're under the times of the Gentiles, and for 2,000 years, they've been there. And they have it back now, though not in peace, right?

The land of Israel. So there's the job of the prophet to, Merriman says he's a prosecuting attorney calling the Israelites back to God's institutions. And I look at God's institutions as the ones on the left there, the adoptions of sons, the glory, the covenants, the law, the temple services, and the promises. So that just is a way to look at the whole thing. It helps in my mind to see any of these books of prophecy, that's kind of the main thing, that's the cycle going on there.

So, yeah. Looking at that, a lot of people complain about the Old Testament. They don't think God is a loving God, because he says, go in and kill all the people, kill all the children, kill all the animals, But just from that circle, we've got to realize that this is God's chosen people to bring the message of Him to the earth, and He's got to keep them pure. Right. And plus He has to punish those people who He's punishing for the Ammonites and the Philistines and things like that. Yeah, they deserve what they have coming to them. And it's brutal back then. It really is. That's right. Yeah, you read that and it's a little, it's shocking. But a lot of those nations also inflicted that stuff on Israel, right? So they're being punished for that. But that's a good point, Bob.

So these common characteristics of prophets as truth-tellers, and this is from Merriman, they affirmed the collective and individual apostasy of their listeners, and that's true. They predicted God's judgment on Israel via the Assyrians and Babylonians due to Israel's apostasy.

And it's always that thing, these high places, and they worship the Asherah poles. You always see that. You did not tear down the Asherah poles, the high places, in the high places. So prophets predicted God's eventual restoration of His people Israel to the land. though yet in unbelief. And that happened in May 14th, 1948, specifically. And these prophets predict that.

A prophet was not popular. The message of the prophets were rejected by the Levitical priests, the religious leaders of the day, which Merriman calls the ministrial ministerial alliance. It's rejected by the politicians, the people, and the press. So Merriman says, does that sound familiar? So yeah, the message of God is not popular today even. And I thought that point four right there, their message, prophet's message, weren't popular. is illustrated in this passage in First Kings 22, five through eight. So you have Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, king of the south. He says to the king of the north, which is Ahab, that very bad man, Ahab of the north.

He said, because they wanted to go into battle together. So Jehoshaphat said, please inquire first of the Lord, which is a good thing to do. Then the king of Israel, that's Ahab, gathered his prophets together. There's about 400 of them, 400 prophets. And he said to them, so he asked them, shall I go into battle in Ramoth Gilead or shall I refrain? And all the prophets said, oh, yeah, go for it. Go up.

And for the Lord will give it into the hand of the king. But Jehoshaphat, who knew that Ahab was a bad guy, he said, well, is there not yet a prophet of the Lord, one more that we can inquire of him? So Ahab said, well, yeah, there is one guy. There is one man. by whom we may inquire of the Lord. But I hate him. I love him. Because he does not prophesy good concerning me, but evil. He is Micaiah, the son of Imlach. And that's not our Micah. Even though that's the same name, Micaiah can be shortened to Micah.

But yeah, you see that all the 400 profits were profits for hire, right? And that is, we'll cover that in the book of... But Andrew, doesn't that match our current political situation that one side gets 100 people to say the other guy's bad? Yeah, right. It's so true of our today. Numbers are important to some people and prove their case, but Many times numbers mean, you know, just the opposite. Yeah, right. Or you get. counselors or people close to you who tell you what you want to hear when you're the king or when you're the president or something like that. If you think a little bit about the themes in scripture, ultimately the minority view is the correct one, is it not?

All the way from Genesis to the end of the book, the end of the Bible. It's incredible. We're a minority, everyone, all of us. That's why we're a republic and not a democracy. And they knew what the prophets, the good prophets were. Israel, they really did. They knew that Micah, they knew Isaiah was one. They knew Jeremiah. They knew, but they, they, yet they ignored. Yeah, they got their own guys, right?

Bad news is never popular. Say that again, Miles? Bad news is never popular, and yet you have to be faced with the bad news before you're ever able to receive the good news, right? Yeah. And that's why, you know, at the end of... most of the minor prophets end on a very positive note, but you'll only ever get there if you've received the bad news first, so... Bad news first.

But it doesn't sell very well. Yeah. Well, let's see Roger you sent out this This literary structure. Okay, is this my eye? Okay. All right So I wouldn't put that nice you you've made it really look nice. I just said yeah, this is from a guy Did you like that guy you put more time? I didn't put much time into this guy I wasn't sure I have not yet, but I I I just popped this into this old okay slide that I had and I figured it out, and I think it would have to see, but it's really cool.

So the whole book is a chiasm, a giant chiasm. You know that from, because Vern Peterman drilled that into our heads, right? Yeah, I know, he did. Study of Isaiah. It's a Hebrew poetry pattern. And so I kind of figured that out, and he kind of makes it clear in your email, but if you look at that, Chiasm so you fold that X in on itself and it nears itself in and Hebrew poetry is Rhyme in meaning not necessarily rhyme in words but you see that The and the The the hinge right there is number six and seven which I have highlighted in blue and He, the guy says that the themes are crimes and sins, and you go one to 12, and those are the same thing. Two, sins lines up with 11 down there at the bottom of the chiasm. And then punishment has its twin down at 10, punishment number three. And then It's really cool because I think this is going to work. I didn't really study these, but I just got it onto the slide. But it's kind of cool how it works.

And I looked at at least one of these where he says, the Mount of the Lord. And those two verses talk about mountains or of the Lord. So it's kind of cool. Micah is a giant chiasm. And we'll look at, too, what Bob sent out. Bob, you sent out some words about poetry, but I think we'll get into those as we get into the book. So, yes, it's kind of cool. This is the Hebrew poetry pattern.

And who was, how were we supposed to remember that word that burnt? It's how Phil Phil. Yeah, okay. I've forgotten that. Remember he said if you want to remember what that is just it's Hal-Phil-Phil. All right. I don't know who the second Phil is. I know one is Phil Mills. Okay. You have a better memory than I do. I don't remember that acronym. Oh, I remember that. HPP. HPP? Okay. Yeah.

Hebrew Poetry Pattern. Okay. And he always, he said that like about five times during one of his... He was a big into chiasms. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so if this is a giant chiasm, we're in good shape because it'll structure it really well. Well, I was struck, this guy apparently has He has chiasm for the entire Bible, which kind of blew my mind. Yeah.

I don't know. So I was a little bit... That's mind-blowing. I was a little bit leery about his theology. He didn't talk about the Lord hardly at all, so that bothered me a bit. Oh, okay. But if he's outlined the book properly... Well, yeah. If he sticks with the Word, then he's probably okay. Sure, yeah. And here's, as a review... Here's Bob's chart, and thanks for this, Bob. This is really cool.

These are the cities, again, as review, that are mentioned in Micah, especially Micah 1, 9 through 16. So you'll recognize all those names, and that's it, and it's kingdom of Judah down south, and Jerusalem is the capital. Bethlehem there is mentioned positively, not negatively, as the birthplace of Christ. There's Morseth Gath, the hometown of Micah. And again, Lachish, the first town. That was the first town to introduce idolatry to Judea there.

And that was pretty graphically in the video of that guy. Yeah. It's amazing how well they recorded their victory over it. They were so proud of their victory over it. Keesh, the one you showed there. Just amazing. They inscribed all the things on the wall. That's how they kept records of that stuff, I guess. Yeah. So they excavated Nineveh. Let's see. And if you want to watch that YouTube video, there it is.

They excavated Nineveh and he found back in the 1880s, and Nineveh is Mosul in Iraq, and they found this chamber with this wall and you see those those statues on the two sides of the man with a lion's head or something or bull. And that went down this grand hall to this exhibition room. So like at a museum, you go down a hall and then you come to a room where the exhibition is and you have the paintings in the room. So he found this and they came to this exhibition room with reliefs, stone reliefs on it.

And they said, Oh, it's, it's describing some battle. And this is a, this isn't, this is Snakarib. And some what battle is this? And they didn't know. And it turns out that it's Lakish, right, that the picture on the mirror, and they have this mural, you'll see it in the video of the Battle of Lakish.

And, and then there's an inscription about Sennacherib saying, well, Hezekiah, I went to him and he didn't give me my tribute, so I invaded him, things like that. And it matches exactly what the Bible says about the Battle of Lachish. So there's extra biblical proof to the Bible by what Sennacherib has written in this exhibition hall. This is a very important battle.

There's the Lakish Tel, and I kind of drew in, I put in what would be that maybe around where the city walls would be, the lower city wall, the upper city wall near the flag of Israel up there. And then the siege, and this is what's depicted on this mural and in excavated Nineveh. And you can see the siege wall that they built right there. They just pile up rocks and they build a ramp and then they just send their engine, their siege engine, which will break the wall and they can get in through a hole and then they battle. And you can see probably those bigger stones are the city walls that they tore down.

And that was Lakish. It was bigger. It was a bigger town than Jerusalem in Judah at the time. So that's that's it. It doesn't look impressive, but it was a really impressive battle. And they were saying, well, boy, if this is the Battle of Lakish, you know, that's odd because and Sennacherib, he he laid siege to every city in Judah.

And they say, well, why wouldn't he make this big exhibition hall about the siege of Jerusalem? Because that's... Right? Right. So that's... And so they said, why wouldn't that be? But we'll see why not, right? So Hezekiah and Sennacherib are talked about in Isaiah 36-37, 2 Chronicles 32, 1-23, 2 Kings 18-19. And this is all Micah's time here. Just by way of illustration, here's the siege wall at Masada, if you know that story of Masada. That was a Roman fortress on the top there. You see the ruins.

But after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, the warring Judeans or Jews went down there and they took over Masada and they lived there. And they took it over and they defeated Rome down there. So Rome sent their army and camped at the base of this. And you can see how well fortified, you can't get up those cliffs. But they made a camp, the Romans, and they just, over like three years, they built that siege wall. You see that siege wall? And they just, and that's how they got in, over the top. And the Jews at the top committed suicide instead of being taken by the Romans. So that's the siege wall at, or the siege ramp at Masada.

And I was there. That was kind of cool. I was on the edge there and I was looking down and I said, what's that road coming up here? That's kind of weird. And they said, Oh, that's that. And I didn't understand what the siege walls were, or siege ramps. But that's, that's what they were. And that's how they did it. And that was kind of the way you protected yourself. And that's the way you overcame your enemy by building these ramps. Yeah.

And they didn't go through the city gates because the city gates were like two gates, but then in the enclosed area, which is a, if they went through there, it's a killing zone that you, it's just, you can kill all the invading army, right? Because they're walled in there. So they went through the wall. They, they had to break down another part of the wall.

So, and this is all what prophets and the enemy camp that you can see them camping. And for a long time, and they're building a siege wall, and you can't do anything about it. And so you know your destruction is coming because it takes a long time, right? The enemy is just camped out building a siege wall for months, whatever it takes. And the city kind of just waits for that to happen.

So 1.1.

Chapter 1, verse 1 says in Micah, the word of the Lord which came to Micah of Moresheth in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem. Micah means, who is like Yahweh? And I'll go backwards in this verse.

Concerning Samaria, that's the capital of the northern kingdom, or Israel. There's 20 kings that occurred after Solomon and they were all bad kings. And I'll do a supplement, try and get a supplement. And you can see that chart in the supplement. And concerning Jerusalem, which is the capital of Judah, the southern kingdom. So, and the southern kingdom is the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. So that's what he saw concerning those two cities. And I thought I'd just go through these biographies of these kings that Micah was under briefly and kind of bullet point ways.

And just prior to Jotham, which is in Micah 1.1, we have Uzziah. And he initially did write in the sight of the Lord, but he didn't go as far as tear down the high places, you know, those Asherah poles or the shrines in the high places. And he didn't do any reform in Judah.

He was very blessed militarily, and he had Judah secure, but he was proud of heart, very proud. And if you remember that story, he entered the temple, and he's a king, and he burned incense to the Lord. And he essentially did the work of a priest. So God struck him down with leprosy, which he had until his death. So this is the king right before Jotham, which is mentioned in 1.1. So during Micah's time comes on the scene Jotham, which is Uzziah's son. And he did write by the way of the Lord, in the sight of the Lord.

But again, he didn't tear down those high places. That's a reoccurring theme. But he was strong militarily. And that's about all that's said of Jotham. Then we have Ahaz up there in 1.1. And his background is covered in 2 Kings chapter 16 and 2 Chronicles chapter 28. So you see his years that he reigned there, 731 to 715 BC. He was a bad king. He did not do right in the sight of the Lord. I changed my mind and I said, very bad. Very, very bad. Because he sacrificed and burned incense in the high places. So he's active. He was an active idolater. And he sacrificed his own son in the fire to Moloch, Ahaz. So this is one of the guys Micah is dealing with.

But he got beaten by the king of Aram, which is in Damascus, so the king of Syria. Not Assyria, where like Sennacherib was from, but Assyria, so next door. And he got slaughtered by the tribe of Ephraim in the northern kingdom, too. And there's a good story about that. It's included that And this is, well, different king. So let me, let me move on because I'm thinking of a different king there. So A has basically, he basically replaced all the religious things to the God of Israel in the temple. And he switched those out with the gods of Damascus. because he was paying tribute to Syria.

So this is a really bad king. So after Ahaz, Hezekiah comes along and he's in 2 Kings 18 and 19 and 2 Chronicles 29 and then a lot in Isaiah 36 and 37 in regard to Sennacherib. And he was a very, very good king. He tore down the pillars and the Asherah poles. And so other kings did not do that, but he did that.

And he destroys... This is an interesting thing. Moses' bronze serpent was still in existence. It was hanging around. But it was being worshipped for another god, so he destroyed it. It says that Hezekiah clung to the Lord. He did not depart from him.

The northern kingdom fell to Assyria under Hezekiah and they went into captivity so that the southern kingdom saw that and they should have paid close attention to that, but they did not. Under Hezekiah is Sennacherib and he laid siege to Judah and the fall of Lachish, which we looked at. Um, and Sennacherib tried to get Hezekiah to pay tribute to him. Um, and Sennacherib, there's a whole narrative that this, the commander of the army of Assyria, said, hey, men of Jerusalem, don't listen to Hezekiah. You know, your God isn't as good as, he's just another God. He's not doing, he's not protecting you. Look, we've taken, we've laid siege to all the cities in Judah and we are successful. So just surrender to us.

And so Hezekiah, went and conferred with Isaiah. And Isaiah, what do you say? And Isaiah says, do not be afraid of the king of Assyria. And then Hezekiah prays a beautiful prayer regarding this, that Sennacherib is on, building up to lay siege against Jerusalem.

And he, a wonderful prayer. And the Lord answers his prayer, and this is my very 21st century summary of it, but the Lord basically says, I have Sennacherib's downfall planned from long ago, from ancient times. You know, I've got his number, I've got a hook in his nose, and he will turn back from where he came. Don't be afraid of Sennacherib and just trust in me. So he went to the Lord about it. And what happens? And there's this beautiful poem by Lord Byron. And I won't read the whole poem. It's three slides long. But it's because I put this in because Macaulay is giving his thoughts about that. But was that some school they studied that? What was the context of that? Before his Parliament or something like that? What was the occasion for him doing this?

Well, which, you mean Macaulay? Yeah, well he was talking about this particular poem. During his lesson, he couldn't remember. He said it was the Fallen Snack. Who wrote that? And he was like, is it? And he's expecting his audience to know, oh, that's John. And they didn't know. But he knew of this poem. So I looked it up. And it's The Destruction of Snacker by Lord Byron, 1850. He's an English, he's one of the, they're called the Trinity of British Romantic poets, Lord Byron, Peets, and Shelley. So great poetry. So he has this poem about the fall of Sennacherib.

And on the second page here, God sends the angel of death, right? And the second angel of death in the Bible, and the one before was the one to Pharaoh, right? And I think there's only two times that God sends this angel of death. So he sends the angel of death and their siege to Jerusalem isn't successful because the whole army of Sennacherib is dead. And that's why, in that video, that's why there's no exhibition room to the crown jewel of Jerusalem. You know, the destruction of Jerusalem. Because he didn't get Jerusalem, he got Ishmael. For the last seven years, one of my favorite passages It's about that siege on Jerusalem, and in the King James Version, it says, the next morning they all woke up dead.

And this is kind of cool, because we understand English poetry. So, I mean, I'll just read this page. It's beautiful. For the angel of death spread his wings on the blast, And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed. And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, And their hearts but once heaved, and then forever grew still. And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide, But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride, and the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf, and cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf. And there lay the rider, distorted and pale, with the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail, and the tents were all silent, the banners alone, the lances unlifted, and the trumpet unblown, and the widows of Asher are loud in their wail, and the idols are broke in the temple of Baal, and the might of the Gentile, unsmoked by the sword, hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord.

And so that's just, it's a wonderful poem about the fall of Sennacherib at Jerusalem. Really cool stuff. But I better quit here. Okay. I'll pray here and close this out. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for your Word. the wonderful truths you lay out in the Old Testament. And we look forward to studying these things and we thank you for salvation in Christ and we thank you in his name we pray. Amen.