The Sins of Judah pt 1

We are in Part 1 now, the two-part section here on Micah Chapter 2, Verses 1-11. So let's begin by by reading, and this section is titled The Sins of Judah. We'll come to that. That was the title that Roger gave it before I started studying, and I think it's a good title.

It just took me a while to figure it out. It's not inspired either. No, I know. We'll talk about that. But let's read the verses here. Does someone want to read... I've got it on the screen. Is there someone who wants to read either this translation or their own? There's two slides here. It's lengthy. It's 1 through 11. Go ahead. Okay, I'll go. Okay.

Woe to those who scheme iniquity, who work out evil on their beds. When morning comes, they do it, for it is in the power of their hands. They covet seals and then seize them, and houses, and take them away. They rob a man in his house, a man and his inheritance. Therefore, thus says the Lord, behold, I am planning against this family a calamity from which you cannot remove your necks, and you will not walk haughtily, for it will be an evil time. On that day they will take up against you a taunt and utter a bitter lamentation and say, we are completely destroyed. He exchanges the portion of my people. How he removes it from me! the apostate he apportions our fields. Therefore you will have no one stretching a measuring line for you by lot in the assembly of the Lord.

Do not speak out so they speak out but if they do not speak out concerning these things reproaches will not be turned back. It is being said that O HOUSE OF JACOB, IS THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IMPATIENT? ARE THESE HIS DOINGS? DO NOT MY WORDS DO GOOD TO THE ONE WALKING UPRIGHTLY?

RECENTLY MY PEOPLE HAVE ARISEN AS AN ENEMY. YOU STRIP THE ROBE OFF THE GARMENT FROM UNSUSPECTING PASSERSBY, FROM THOSE RETURNED FROM WAR. THE WOMEN OF MY PEOPLE YOU EVICT. Each one from her pleasant house, from her children you take, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my son, my cleanliness, uncleanness, sorry, that brings on destruction, a painful destruction. If a man walking after wind and falsehood had told lies and said, I will speak out to you concerning wine and liquor, he would be spokesman to these people.

All right. Thank you very much. That was a lengthy passage there. What we're going to do this morning is we're going to get the big picture of things here, and then next week we're going to kind of zoom in and look at these verses in detail. And I apologize if I'm repeating anything that's been already said in introductory lessons today. This is my first lesson in Micah, so I had to get my head around some things. in beginning here. But we're going to talk here about the fact that this was a critical time in Israel's history. Micah was one of the last prophets to speak before the northern kingdom of Israel would be taken captive by Assyria.

So, if you plot the... Now, this is plagiarized, I don't have... This is out of a very good book called Charting the Bible Chronologically by Ed Hinson and Tommy Ice. So we may not be able to publish this to the church's website when we post the PowerPoint, but I wanted to show you this chart because if you plot the Old Testament prophets on a timeline like this, you see two distinct clusters.

And can anyone see, based on this chart here, I don't know if you can see the dates, maybe a little small, but can you see what each of those clusters precedes? If you know your Old Testament dates. Well, the first one comes just before the exile of the Northern Kingdom in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. And the second cluster there comes right before the exile of the Southern Kingdom of Judah.

And you'll notice that Micah there is the last prophet to write, depending on your dating, he was contemporary with Isaiah, but I think most people place him as the last prophet in that first cluster, so the last prophet before Israel's exile. By the way, notice, if you can see it on the screen, that they've titled, they've given each of them kind of a summary title. They call his Divine Lawsuit, and we'll come back to that. But yeah, Jonah is in this group along with, sorry, Micah is in this group along with Jonah, Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah. So, looking at this and thinking about what we know of the Old Testaments, what was the primary or one of the primary ministries of the Old Testament prophets?

You can put that into a summary thought or idea. The foretell of the future of Israel. For sure, yeah. Anyone else? Warning them of coming judgment? Warning of coming judgment? Yes, yes. Absolutely. I say that one of their primary responsibilities was to call Israel's attention back to God's covenant with them and to warn them of coming judgment. So yeah, they did foretell the future. but based on God's covenant program that was laid out for them. So another question, what does it show us about God's character that he sent so many prophets to the Jews just before he sends judgment? What does that tell us about God's character? He was very patient. He had a lot of defenses. Unfailing love. Unfailing love, yeah. Yeah.

I mean, if you really look at the dates there, I mean, those prophets come over, you know, a period of, you know, a hundred years or so. That cluster there. And so it's, you know, it's actually quite a long time of intense prophetic ministry, a lot of warning that God is giving. It reminds us of, you know, Moses was a preacher. Sorry, not Moses. Well, both, actually. Noah was a preacher of righteousness before the flood came. And Moses, you know, God gave Pharaoh ten different warnings before his ultimate demise. But God is slow to anger and abundant in love and kindness, so God was giving as much warning as possible to his people.

Now, when we're talking about the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah, what are we talking about? I thought this might be worth a little bit of review this morning, because it's kind of important for our interpretation of Micah. I don't know if you found this challenging, but it can be one of those big hurdles to interpreting the Old Testament and the prophetic books. So, there are specific terms used in the Old Testament to refer to the northern and southern kingdoms that we've been talking about. So, I thought it would be good to deal with this a little bit here.

Israel, we know, is the name that God gave to Jacob. We see that in Genesis 32 there, okay? So everyone descended from Jacob is known as an Israelite, right? So the Israelites went down to Egypt as a family, and then 400 years later, they came out of Egypt as a nation. So we have the nation of Israel. But Israel is the name for an individual guy, right?

So we've got those names. And so the name Jacob or its equivalent Israel refer to either the individual patriarch or the entire nation. So that's important this morning. But under Solomon's son's reign, Rehoboam, the kingdom of Israel split into the northern and southern kingdoms. And from that point on, the Northern Kingdom retained the name Israel because it was the majority of the tribes. It was 10 of the 12 tribes. And so the Northern Kingdom retained the name Israel, usually. So now, the names Jacob and Israel refer to the individual patriarch, or the entire nation, or the Northern Kingdom.

Okay, so it gets more and more confusing. So the question is, how do we know which one is being referred to? Context. Context, context, context, context. Yeah, I had the answer up there. So during this time, Israel usually refers to the Northern Kingdom. the term Israel is usually the term used for the Northern Kingdom, and that's what we generally use when we're talking about the North. We'll talk about Israel in the North, and then we talk about Judah in the South, because if the name Israel is used to just refer to everybody, now it kind of applies to the North, what are we going to call the South?

Well, the South was called Judah, because Judah was the largest tribe of the two that were left in the south. So now we have Israel referring to the northern kingdom and Judah referring to the southern kingdom, but there's more. The northern kingdom could also be referred to as Ephraim or Samaria. Ephraim was the largest tribe in the north, and Samaria eventually became the capital city of the Northern Kingdom. And the Southern Kingdom could also be referred to as, by its capital city, Jerusalem, which is also called Zion sometimes, and actually Micah does that a fair bit, so it's worth bringing up. So putting this all together, the Northern Kingdom can be called Israel, Jacob, Ephraim, or Samaria. And the Southern Kingdom can be called Judah, and sometimes Jerusalem or Zion.

So those are typically the titles that we'll see. When we see those names, that's usually what's being referred to if it's after the time of the kingdom split. But If you look at this chart, each of those names on the left has its primary meaning and its other uses. So like we said, Israel and Jacob are names that refer to primarily, initially, the Patriarch Jacob, but they can also refer to the Northern Kingdom or the entire nation of Israel. And then all the others listed out there. So it's not It's not the most simple thing, and like we said, context has to decide who is being referred to. Right?

So, now, we'll see in a moment here why we're going through all this, just to get into Chapter 2. What we're doing is we're trying to figure out who Micah's audience is. That's kind of the important thing here. Now, I want you to follow along in either the printout of Micah that we handed out this morning or in your Bible. But I'm not going to put all this scripture up on the screen, so follow along in your text. And the reason I gave you that printout of Micah is it's a study tool that I use to be able to just mark it up as much as you want. without having to worry about writing something wrong in your permitted Bible. So we can mark that paper up as much as we want, and we'll do a little bit of that as we go along together here. So, in the past, and I think on that summary that I sent out to the other guys teaching the class, I put down Micah as a prophet to both the northern and southern kingdoms.

And that's mostly because Micah 1.1 says that Micah saw the word of the Lord concerning Samaria and Jerusalem. And, like we said, those are references to the Northern and Southern Kingdoms. So, in 1.1 there, if you've got that printout, just put a box around Samaria and Jerusalem. So, he saw things concerning both the North and the South.

And then if you look down at verse 5 of chapter 1, you'll see that that interpretation is supported there. Starting in verse 5, he says, "...all this, And we could ask, all this what? Well, all this judgment that verses 3 and 4 have talked about. So all this judgment is for the rebellion of Jacob and for the sins of the house of Israel.

So there we've got the name Jacob and Israel. And this is Hebrew parallelism. We'll see a lot of that throughout Micah. That, you know, one phrase will mirror the one before it. And so, like we said, Jacob and Israel are both names for the whole nation of Israel, or the Northern Kingdom. So we could take that either way here, but let's look at the next two phrases. There's another parallel in the last half of verse 5, where it says, What is the rebellion of Jacob? Is it not Samaria? What is the high place of Judah? Is it not Jerusalem?

So... Miles, stop me for a second. Did you have... Yes, please. Who is the audience? Do you have anything on this chart? You're just talking to the blank page. Is that what you want? Yeah, I don't have anything on this slide. I want to make sure. Right now we're just going to explore the text. Just follow along in your Bible. Thanks for checking.

So what you can do there in verse 5, if you've got the printout or something that you can mark up, put a box around the name Jacob, the name Samaria, Judah, and Jerusalem. And then I drew an arrow from the word Jacob to the word Samaria, and from the word Judah to the name Jerusalem. And so what we see here is that in chapter 1, verse 5, Micah is using the common terminology for the northern and southern kingdoms. He's calling it Jacob, which is the other name for Israel. So he's referring to it as Jacob, whose capital is Samaria, and Judah, whose capital is Jerusalem. Okay, so that's the common terminology that we'll see throughout most of the prophets. If you just do a search on the words Israel and Judah, you'll often see those together, right? Israel and Judah, or a contrast, that kind of thing.

So we kind of have that opening context in Micah. And then we come down to chapter 2, and I want you to look at chapter 2, verse 7. Okay, which is our verses for this week and next. And we're looking here at who Micah is talking to. And he says, it is being said, O house of Jacob. Okay.

Now, you can draw a box around the words house of Jacob as well, because that gives us our audience for this section. Now, when I saw that on initial reading, my instinct was to interpret the House of Jacob as the Northern Kingdom, because that would be typical, and that would be consistent with what he had said there in verses 1 through 5 of chapter 1. But, this is where contextuality is critical, and that's why I pointed out context is the way we determine this.

So, flip over now to chapter 3, verse 1, and in chapter 3 verse 1 we see that Micah is speaking to the heads of Jacob and the rulers of the house of Israel. So, who are the heads of Jacob and the rulers of Israel. Like I said, Israel would be the common name for the northern kingdom. But if you scan down to verse 9 of chapter 3, he's going to tell us who those rulers are. So in verse 9, Micah repeats that address and he says, here's this, heads of the house of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel.

But then in verse 10, he describes what these rulers do and he says, they build Zion with bloodshed and Jerusalem with violent injustice. So, like we said, Zion is a parallel to Jerusalem, it's used in, this is another parallel phrase here, building Zion with bloodshed and Jerusalem with violent injustice. So, and then if you drop down to verse 12, you'll see that the judgment on these rulers of Israel falls on Zion and Jerusalem. Verse 12 says, therefore, on account of you, Zion will be plowed as a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of ruins. So here in chapter 3, we see that the rulers of the house of Israel must be the leaders in Jerusalem, not Samaria. Okay? So that's definitely a more unusual use of the term to refer to the Southern Kingdom as Israel. But like we said, there's nothing technically wrong with it since the entire nation can be called Israel. Right?

But there's one more piece of evidence that supports this as well. If you turn over to Micah 5, verse 1. Micah 5, verse 1, he says, Now muster yourselves in troops, daughter of troops. They have laid siege against us with a rod. They will smite the judge of Israel on the cheek.

Now, out of curiosity, does anyone know who the judge of Israel there is in Micah 5? We'll get there eventually, so don't blame me if you don't know, but if you have a footnote or something, like I do, or if you have Charles Feinberg's book on Micah, he says here, Micah is predicting the shameful treatment of King Zedekiah at the time of the Babylonian invasion of the southern kingdom of Judah. Okay, so that's interesting here. The judge of Israel is the king of Judah, the southern kingdom of Judah. So we see again that Micah uses the term Israel to refer to the southern kingdom. So now flip back to chapter 2, verse 7, and in the margin where you put a box around house of Jacob, you can just write in the references 3, 9-12. And that's just a little reminder that there's contextual evidence to say that this is probably a reference to the Southern Kingdom, not the North, like we might expect.

The question is, why do you think Micah would do this? Why is he kind of out of the ordinary here? I didn't take the time to look for other examples of this in the Old Testament, though I'm sure there are some, but like I said, typically, Israel refers to just the North. Any ideas why Micah does that?

We'll talk about this in a second here, but there's something that happens in the mid-section of chapter 1. that Micah points out. Any ideas what that is? Can you see it? Following verse 5, beginning in verse 6 there. Isn't he, they see what's happening, so to speak, in the Northern Kingdom and they say, well, it may happen to us here in the South. Is that kind of the idea, maybe? Yeah, yeah, for sure. What you'll see, if you do a word search for just the term Samaria in Micah, the last time it appears is in verse 6. Okay? Yeah, so from verse 6 down to verse 9, what we see there is that Samaria is personified as a harlot.

And her imminent destruction is vividly described in those verses there. All of those pronouns, her and she, I think they all refer to Samaria. which, like we said, is the capital of the Northern Kingdom. And in verse 9, we read that her wound is incurable. And beside that, in my notes, I've just written that judgment is inevitable. At this point, Samaria, the Northern Kingdom's wound, is incurable. So there's no, in other words, at this point, there's no recovery for the Northern Kingdom. What we can see is that she's reached the final stage of discipline in God's dealings with them, and destruction and exile are inevitable.

It seems like after Micah has described this imminent destruction of the Northern Kingdom in chapter 1, 6-9, his attention shifts to the Southern Kingdom of Israel. So, in a sense, Micah is a prophet to both North and South, but there's not much said to the North here. It's just kind of, your destruction is imminent, inevitable, and and now attention is shifting to the South. So we could say that at this point God is done with the Northern Kingdom. They've received every warning that they're going to get, and their destruction and exile are guaranteed. then there's really nothing more for God to say to them through his prophet Micah.

And so, in a sense, Micah's language assumes that the Northern Kingdom is over. And with the Northern Kingdom out of view, the only part of Israel that still exists in the land is the Southern Kingdom. So at this point, the terms Israel and Jacob seem to refer to what's left, which is the Southern Kingdom.

He uses a lot of names of several towns in Judea. Yes, he does. He focuses only on those. That's right, yeah, so his attention there in verse 10 shifts to these southern cities that are going to be invaded. And it comes right off to the gate of Jerusalem. So this is a very severe warning to the southern kingdom of Judah because The Northern Kingdom is about to be wiped out.

That's what he's saying in 6-9. And he said, and it very well could sweep you away too, Judah, so watch out. You're not far behind is kind of the idea here. Yeah, that phrase in verse 9. Her wound is incurable and then that phrase for it has come down to Judah Everything has happened in Samaria is suddenly has come down into Judah Yes, that's right. Yeah, exactly, right?

Yeah, so so that's kind of I think the idea why Micah shifts and just starts calling the southern kingdom With the term Israel because that's you know, I The Northern Kingdom is kind of a write-off already, so it could also be that Micah refuses to recognize the Northern Kingdom as a legitimate kingdom at this point because of their extreme apostasy. You'll notice that in verse 1 where it says, Micah, in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, he doesn't even bother to mention the kings in the North. And Isaiah does the same thing, but some of the other contemporary prophets do mention the the northern kings that existed at this time. Micah doesn't even give them the time of day. He just doesn't have time for them.

So it could be a little bit of that as well. So those are some of the possible reasons why Micah uses that terminology. Anyway, so I know this is a little bit of a lengthy introduction. We haven't even gotten to really Chapter 2 yet, but I think it was worthwhile because this will be the pattern that holds throughout the rest of the book of Micah, that we kind of need to know who our audience is. So I wanted to kind of straighten some of that out. And frankly, because I needed to go through that, study myself to get that straightened out. I wanted to make one caveat to what we're saying here.

When we say that the Northern Kingdom ceased to exist, we don't mean that the ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom ceased to exist. It's sort of a popular idea to say that the ten Northern tribes were wiped out of existence, but there's all kinds of prophecy that tells us that all twelve tribes will be restored to the land. So that's important to understand. Just because they're in exile and God's kind of, you know, set them aside at this point in time, he's not done with them.

That's one of the things we're learning in Romans right now, right? So, all 12 tribes. So, that's that. But we want to cover one other topic here of a kind of big picture topic that's really important as we continue to study the Book of Micah. And that is... oh sorry, there's a verse that tells us that both Judah and Israel will come together from the land of the North.

Jeremiah 3.18 tells us that both the North and the South will be restored at the same time. But what we want to talk about now is the God's covenant program with Israel. And this is so key to understanding pretty much everything that's going on in the Old Testament.

And I know that there's a lot of details in Micah and a lot of the prophets that are difficult for us to interpret, you know, all these little words and expressions, so many figures of speech, a lot of it's so poetic and we're kind of sometimes left wondering, what is he saying, right? But if we keep the big framework of God's covenant program in view, then then it's not a big deal if we have difficulty with some of the fine details, right? Because we see the big picture.

We get the idea, at least. So where can we go in the Bible to get the big picture of God's covenant program with Israel? Anyone know? Where would you go? There may be a lot of things that come to mind, but what I'm going to give us this morning is the key. I really think this is the key.

This is something that I learned from Jeremy Thomas years ago, and it has absolutely been essential to keeping things clear when you're reading things like the Prophets. So the key chapters of the Old Testament are Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. So turn to Leviticus 26, that's where we'll begin here. Now if you can remember these two chapters, then honestly you hold the key to understanding the prophets. Like I said, not all the fine details, but you get the big picture. Keep in mind here that Leviticus 26 is near the end of the book of Leviticus. After the Law of Moses has been given, and here in Leviticus 26 we have a summary of what it means, how this works. So, if you are in Leviticus 26, beginning in verse 3, what does Moses say there? He says, If you walk in my statutes and keep my commandments so as to carry them out, then." That's really important.

Moses continues on from there to describe all the blessings that will come upon the nation of Israel. Agricultural prosperity, peace in the land, military security, etc. But we want to notice very carefully what the blessings are conditioned upon. If you walk in my statutes and keep my commandments, then you will be blessed. So all of this blessing is conditioned on obedience to the Mosaic Law. That's the first key to understanding what's going on in the Prophets. That blessing is conditioned on obedience to the Mosaic Law.

Now hold your place in Leviticus 26 and flip over to Deuteronomy chapter 28. This is very parallel. Deuteronomy was when the Law was given again to the nation of Israel right before they would cross the Jordan and enter the Promised Lands. This is again kind of the end of the giving of the Law or the re-giving of the Law. And here we see more detail about God's blessing that He would pour out on Israel. But again, notice the way it begins.

In Deuteronomy 28, verses 1 and 2, it says, Now it shall be if you diligently obey the Lord your God, being careful to do all His commandments, which I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth and all these blessings will come upon you and overtake you if you obey the Lord your God." So the key idea, the first key idea, is that God's promised blessings to the nation in the promised land are conditioned on if they obey the law of Moses.

Now, Look at verse 15 of Deuteronomy 28. Here's where it switches and shows the... on the other hand, okay? Deuteronomy 28, 15, "...but it shall come about, if you do not obey the Lord your God to observe all His commandments and His statutes, which I charge you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you." And then the rest of chapter 28, which is fairly lengthy, details the horrible cursings that would come. So that's the basic concept of all God's dealings with Israel under the law. Blessings for obedience and cursings for disobedience. That's really the whole law of Moses in a nutshell. Blessings for obedience but cursings for disobedience. Now hold your place in Deuteronomy and flip back to Leviticus 26. Because there's something that's recorded in Leviticus 26 that gives us a structure of how these cursings would come, and this is really important.

So, beginning in verse 14, there are five stages of cursing's outline. And each one is more severe than the last. And each of these stages, we need to realize, is an opportunity for Israel to respond, really, to God's mercy. So we won't take the time to detail these, we just don't have time. But write down those verse sections if you are interested in studying that out a little bit more. We've got stage 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

And the final stage of discipline is exile out of the land. Okay? That's really important. If you look at Leviticus 26.33, where it all kind of winds up, he says, "...you, however, I will scatter among the nations and will draw out a sword after you as your land becomes desolate and your cities become waste." So exile is the final stage of discipline. Now, if this is all that we had in these chapters, it would be very, truly depressing.

But remember that behind all of this, behind even the Mosaic Covenant, there is the Abrahamic Covenant. And that guarantees that Israel will one day be blessed in the Promised Land. So drop down to verse 40 now in Leviticus 26. At some point in the future, when Israel is out there in exile, this is what's going to happen. We're just going to read verse 42, I think.

He says, I will remember my covenant with Jacob, and I will remember also my covenant with Isaac, and my covenant with Abraham. Okay? And then jump down to verse 44, yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, out in exile, I will not reject them, nor will I so abhor them as to destroy them, breaking my covenant with them, for I am the Lord their God. Okay? So, in verse 42, even though Israel would break, God's law and would wind up in exile, God promised that he would remember the covenant that he made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He guarantees that he will restore Israel to the land and bless them on the basis of that covenant.

We could also go back to Deuteronomy, but in Deuteronomy, you won't find this in chapter 28. You've got to flip forward to chapter 30 to get to this blessing as well. And in Deuteronomy 30 verse 1, it says that in all the nations where the Lord your God has banished you, that he will call them back and he will bless them in the land. So again, in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 plus bit of 30, we see that even though Israel would break the Mosaic Covenant and would end up in exile, God guarantees that He'll one day bring them back to the land and bless them.

And this is the pattern that we see spoken of in all of the Old Testament prophets, or most of them. Jonah might be the exception. And we see this all over through the Book of Micah. So, conclusions here. Just to apply this briefly to what we're seeing in Micah and where we're going in Chapter 2.

As we said earlier, one of the primary responsibilities of the prophets was to remind Israel of what was already foretold in the covenants. And a lot of it is found right here in these two chapters that we looked at. And sometimes the prophets are only viewed as just telling the future. But a lot of what they're actually doing is telling us what's already been foretold. Of course, they do give a lot of detail about how things will unfold.

But Israel's disobedience to the law, their judgment, and their exile, and their future restoration are all foretold back in the Law of Moses, all in the books of Moses. So with Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 in their Bible, the Jews should have known that, they should have known what was coming. They should have been able to see the writing on the wall. The prophets were simply calling their attention back to the Word of God, reminding them of what would happen if they continued in disobedience.

Now, our closing thought for today, so we're ready to look at Micah chapter 2 next week. I know we haven't touched more than one phrase in it this week. But when we understand that the way that God is dealing with Israel is on the basis of covenants, okay, and if we have an idea of even human covenants in our own day, then we understand why Micah speaks as if he's in a courtroom, okay? God's covenants with Israel are legal in nature. We have a whole branch of law known as contract law. That's what covenants are. They're contracts. And contracts have legal terms. God's covenants with Israel are legal.

And we've already talked about in these lessons that there are three major divisions in the book of Micah, right? Beginning in chapter 1, verse 2, 3, verse 1, and 6, verse 1. They all gave us those words here now. which is the familiar Hebrew word, Shema. And what Micah is doing is he's calling a courtroom to order. This is like saying, order in the court. And in fact, he's also calling witnesses to the courtroom. And then, after each of those introductions, there follows the legal proceedings.

So, in Chapter 1, Micah has described the judgment that will come on the cities of Judah, and now in Chapter 2, Micah is going to describe the crimes of which Judah is guilty that led to this judgment. And it's all based on God's covenant, and in particular, the Mosaic covenant. Because only the Mosaic Covenant put conditions on Israel. So if there's going to be judgment based on the sins of Judah, it has to be based on the Mosaic Covenant.

And we can see that Micah is acting like a prosecuting attorney on God's behalf. His job is to show Judah exactly how they have violated God's law. That's really important to understand. He's not just, you know, picking these crimes as things that, you know, social evils and so on. No, these are specific violations of God's covenant law with the nation of Israel. Because if God's going to judge them, then He has to judge them on the basis of the law that He gave them and the judgments that He outlined for specific violations. And so that's what we're going to be looking at in Micah chapter 2. So there's 45 minutes of set up for now. We got it next week. We get to do 11 verses in 45 minutes. So we'll see how that goes. But hopefully that was helpful to you. And hopefully that's helpful as we continue to study through Micah.

So why don't we close in prayer there? Miles? Any other thoughts or questions? Sure. Before we close in prayer, is it safe to say that that Israel is still in exile today. Yeah. And in doing so, how should we as a church think of Israel? Good point. Good point. Yeah, I think that's well worth saying. I mean, obviously, it's an amazing history.

God got enough Israelites back into the promised land for, you know, a partial restoration so that the Messiah could be born, you know, in Israel, you know, and all of that could be fulfilled. But then, of course, we see how they were again shortly after dispersed and exiled. So I think this exile, there is a partial restoration foretold and fulfilled, but the ultimate restoration of Israel to the land has never been fulfilled. There are a lot of Jews living in the land today, but there are as many or more living outside of the land, and so that has not been fulfilled.

And I think our heart towards the Jews should be the same as what Paul's is in Romans 9-11. We desire their salvation, and that means turning to Jesus Christ our Messiah. Of course, we also know that they won't turn on mass to Christ until the tribulation, until the church is taken out of here. But that doesn't stop us from sharing the gospel with them today. So I think it's important that we keep Israel in prayer. Yes. Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. We should. Yeah. Thank you, Bob. All right. Well, on that note, let's pray for... We can pray for Israel, too.

Heavenly Father, we Thank you for what you are showing us through your Word. We thank you for the program that you have been working out with the Nation of Israel for millennia now. We know that at this point, they have been set aside momentarily, temporarily, while you build the Church, the Body of Christ. But that doesn't mean that Jews cannot also be saved and placed in the Body of Christ, just like us. And so we pray for their salvation today for as many as possible. And that we would care for them and care about their welfare.

And Lord, we know that you love the nation of Israel and you will restore them to the land. You will fulfill your covenant promises to them. one day. And Lord, we look forward to that day with great longing and anticipation when we, as a bride of Christ, will return to this earth to rule and reign from Jerusalem, the capital of Israel. And Lord, we just thank you for your amazing grace in all of your workings and dealings, both with us and with Israel. Thank you, in Jesus' name, amen.