The LORD’s Plan

Mobilize! Marshal your troops! The enemy is laying siege to Jerusalem. They will strike Israel's leader in the face with a rod. (Micah 5:1 NLT)

Israel (the northern kingdom) is about to fall.  Their rebellion over hundreds of years has tried the LORD’s patience.  Now, their kingdom is about to end.  The prophet Micah is sent to deliver the message of doom and gloom.

But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, are only a small village among all the people of Judah. Yet a ruler of Israel will come from you, One whose origins are from the distant past. The people of Israel will be abandoned to their enemies until the woman in labor gives birth. Then at last His fellow countrymen will return from exile to their own land. And He will stand to lead His flock with the LORD's strength, in the majesty of the name of the LORD His God. Then His people will live there undisturbed, for He will be highly honored around the world. And He will be the source of peace…  (Micah 5:2-5a NLT)

Sound familiar?  It should.  This passage is quoted every Christmas as we celebrate the birth of the LORD’s Messiah and King: Jesus.  Micah doesn’t just deliver a message of doom and gloom.  Micah is delivering a message that reveals the LORD’s plan.  Some of that plan will be experienced by the Israelites in Micah’s day.  Other parts of it won’t be experienced for many more years to come.  All of it is God’s plan, though.  It is a plan that gives us hope.

What can we bring to the LORD? What kind of offerings should we give Him? Should we bow before God with offerings of yearling calves? Should we offer Him thousands of rams and ten thousand rivers of olive oil? Should we sacrifice our firstborn children to pay for our sins? No, O people, the LORD has told you what is good, and this is what He requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:6-8 NLT)

How about you?  Do you see the LORD’s plan?  Can you see which parts are already completed and which parts are still to come?  Do you trust the LORD’s plan?  Does it give you hope?

The LORD’s Promise

This whole series, when I say “Israel,” you say, “North!”  It’s been a reminder that the word, “Israel,” refers to the tribes of the northern kingdom during this part of history.  Now, however, Israel is no more.  When I say, “Israel,” you say, “Gone.”  Israel is gone.

In the last days, the mountain of the LORD's house will be the highest of all--the most important place on earth. It will be raised above the other hills, and people from all over the world will stream there to worship. (Micah 4:1 NLT)

Throughout this series, however, we have seen the patience of God.  We have seen the mercy of God.  We have seen the love of God.  We have seen that the LORD want’s more for the people of Israel than they are experiencing.  So, even now, we see that the LORD does not give up on them.

People from many nations will come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of Jacob's God. There He will teach us His ways, and we will walk in His paths." For the LORD's teaching will go out from Zion; His word will go out from Jerusalem. (Micah 4:2 NLT)

The LORD sends a message through the prophet Micah that paints a picture of the future.  God is purposefully vague on the timing, but is quite clear about the picture.  The LORD will restore the world and its people to a Garden walk once again.  It will begin in Jerusalem with Israel go out into all the earth.

The LORD will mediate between peoples and will settle disputes between strong nations far away. They will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will no longer fight against nation, nor train for war anymore. (Micah 4:3 NLT)

This picture is in the future for the people of Micah’s day.  The LORD called the time period, “the last days.”  Now, we have seen the beginning of this picture taking place.  The LORD’s Messiah has already come, taught, died, arose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father.  Now, the LORD’s teaching is going out.  It began in Jerusalem.  Then it moved to Judea, Samaria, and continues to the “ends of the earth.”

Everyone will live in peace and prosperity, enjoying their own grapevines and fig trees, for there will be nothing to fear. The LORD of Heaven's Armies has made this promise! (Micah 4:4 NLT)

This teaching reminds us to love God with everything and to love our neighbors as ourselves.  This teaching paints and repaints the picture of life and humanity that was given to us all the way back in the Garden of Eden.  This teaching empowers, equips, and encourages us to walk together with God.  This picture is more than a picture.  It is the LORD’s promise and it is starting to be fulfilled in our lifetime, today.

Though the nations around us follow their idols, we will follow the LORD our God forever and ever. (Micah 4:5 NLT)

How about you?  Can you see the picture?  Do you believe that it’s true?  Do you trust in the LORD’s promise?

The LORD’s Justice

The LORD isn’t a fire-and-brimstone God in the Old Testament any more than in the New Testament.  In fact, the LORD makes it clear that God doesn’t want to reign down wrath upon us.  We are made in the image of God!  But the LORD will not allow us to keep doing things that are destructive to ourselves, one another, and in complete rebellion against God.  So, we are given instructions.  When we forget, ignore, or outright rebel against these instructions, the LORD sends prophets to warn us of the consequences.

"Don't say such things," the people respond. "Don't prophesy like that. Such disasters will never come our way!" Should you talk that way, O family of Israel? Will the LORD's Spirit have patience with such behavior? If you would do what is right, you would find My words comforting. Yet to this very hour My people rise against Me like an enemy! You steal the shirts right off the backs of those who trusted you, making them as ragged as men returning from battle. You have evicted women from their pleasant homes and forever stripped their children of all that God would give them. (Micah 2:6-9 NLT)

You see, God doesn’t walk away from us.  We walk away from God.  The LORD simply shows us, and the world, what that looks like.  Israel rejected God, so the LORD deports the people of Israel.  This is the LORD’s justice.  This makes it clear to the whole world that the Israelites are no longer the people of God.  They are not walking together with God.

The LORD rejected all the descendants of Israel. He punished them by handing them over to their attackers until He had banished Israel from His presence. For when the LORD tore Israel away from the kingdom of David, they chose Jeroboam son of Nebat as their king. But Jeroboam drew Israel away from following the LORD and made them commit a great sin. And the people of Israel persisted in all the evil ways of Jeroboam. They did not turn from these sins until the LORD finally swept them away from His presence, just as all His prophets had warned. So Israel was exiled from their land to Assyria, where they remain to this day. (2 Kg 17:20-23 NLT)

How about you?  Do you see God as a fire-and-brimstone type of God who wants to inflict punishment on people?  Do you see God’s patience – exhausting every other avenue before punishing us for our rebellion?  Do you see God’s justice?

The LORD’s Prophets

The LORD gave this message to Micah of Moresheth during the years when Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah were kings of Judah. The visions he saw concerned both Samaria and Jerusalem.  Attention! Let all the people of the world listen! Let the earth and everything in it hear. The Sovereign LORD is making accusations against you; the Lord speaks from His holy Temple. Look! The LORD is coming! He leaves His throne in heaven and tramples the heights of the earth. The mountains melt beneath His feet and flow into the valleys like wax in a fire, like water pouring down a hill. And why is this happening? Because of the rebellion of Israel--yes, the sins of the whole nation. (Micah 1:1-5a NLT)
People have lots of misunderstandings about prophets.  Prophets are simply spokespersons for a deity or god.  The prophet is a true prophet when he or she accurately communicates what their god instructs them to communicate.  The God told us that we could recognize true prophets of the LORD by their miraculous signs or short-term predictions and by their consistency with what had already been revealed by the LORD.
"So I, the LORD, will make the city of Samaria a heap of ruins. Her streets will be plowed up for planting vineyards. I will roll the stones of her walls into the valley below, exposing her foundations. All her carved images will be smashed. All her sacred treasures will be burned. These things were bought with the money earned by her prostitution, and they will now be carried away to pay prostitutes elsewhere." (Micah 1:6-7 NLT)
Prophets are often misunderstood, too.  We tend to forget that the prophets, whose writings are captured in the pages of Scripture, lived in a certain time and a certain place.  Their context tells us a lot about how to understand the messages that they delivered from the LORD.
What sorrow awaits you who lie awake at night, thinking up evil plans. You rise at dawn and hurry to carry them out, simply because you have the power to do so. When you want a piece of land, you find a way to seize it. When you want someone's house, you take it by fraud and violence. You cheat a man of his property, stealing his family's inheritance. But this is what the LORD says: "I will reward your evil with evil; you won't be able to pull your neck out of the noose. You will no longer walk around proudly, for it will be a terrible time." (Mic 2:1-3 NLT)
Micah, for example, lived during the days when Israel was defeated and taken into captivity by Assyria.  His messages were delivered to Israel prior to their defeat, so they would know what was about to happen.
I said, "Listen, you leaders of Israel! You are supposed to know right from wrong, but you are the very ones who hate good and love evil. You skin My people alive and tear the flesh from their bones. Yes, you eat My people's flesh, strip off their skin, and break their bones. You chop them up like meat for the cooking pot. Then you beg the LORD for help in times of trouble! Do you really expect Him to answer? After all the evil you have done, He won't even look at you!" (Micah 3:1-4 NLT)
Micah’s message was also delivered to them so they would know the reasons that the LORD was going to do what the LORD was about to do.  They had rebelled against God for too long, now.  The LORD was finally saying, “Enough!”
Listen to me, you leaders of Israel! You hate justice and twist all that is right. You are building Jerusalem on a foundation of murder and corruption. You rulers make decisions based on bribes; you priests teach God's laws only for a price; you prophets won't prophesy unless you are paid. Yet all of you claim to depend on the LORD. "No harm can come to us," you say, "for the LORD is here among us." Because of you, Mount Zion will be plowed like an open field; Jerusalem will be reduced to ruins! A thicket will grow on the heights where the Temple now stands. (Micah 3:9-12 NLT)
How about you?  Do you read the books of the Bible written by the prophets?  Do you have a Bible (or some other resource) that helps you understand the time and place that they lived?  Does it help you understand these books of prophecy?  Do you listen to the LORD’s true prophets?

The LORD’s Patience

Over the years, any people have told me that they are “New Testament” Christians.  They tell me this to let me know that they like Jesus, God’s love, and God’s forgiveness that they see in the New Testament.  They don’t like God’s wrath, God’s justice, or fire and brimstone that they see in the Old.  When I read through the Old Testament, though, I see something different than they see.  I see God’s love, forgiveness…and patience.
Hoshea son of Elah began to rule over Israel in the twelfth year of King Ahaz's reign in Judah. He reigned in Samaria nine years. He did what was evil in the LORD's sight, but not to the same extent as the kings of Israel who ruled before him. King Shalmaneser of Assyria attacked King Hoshea, so Hoshea was forced to pay heavy tribute to Assyria. But Hoshea stopped paying the annual tribute and conspired against the king of Assyria by asking King So of Egypt to help him shake free of Assyria's power. When the king of Assyria discovered this treachery, he seized Hoshea and put him in prison. Then the king of Assyria invaded the entire land, and for three years he besieged the city of Samaria.  (2 Kings 17:1-5 NLT)
We will joke about it – that God will strike us down if we say or do something wrong.  We watch for a lightning strike on us (or the person standing next to us) when we do something wrong.  The think about that joke is that we half expect it to happen.  Only, it hardly ever happens – at least not right away.  Why?  Has God gotten soft over the years?  Is it ok to rebel against God now?  No, this is the way the LORD has worked with God’s people throughout history.
Finally, in the ninth year of King Hoshea's reign, Samaria fell, and the people of Israel were exiled to Assyria. They were settled in colonies in Halah, along the banks of the Habor River in Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. (2 Kings 17:6 NLT)
We read the Old Testament and see the LORD defeating, capturing, and taking Israel into captivity through the nation of Assyria.  We see God’s justice and wrath being lived out.  What we forget, however, is that the LORD has been reaching out to Israel (the north) for hundreds of years now.  God even intervened and forced Israel to have a good king (Jehu) for one generation. But the kings, and people, of Israel continually rejected God.  They turned away from God, rebelled against God, and treated one another in ways that ignore the fact that people are made in the image of God.  God was patient.
This disaster came upon the people of Israel because they worshiped other gods. They sinned against the LORD their God, who had brought them safely out of Egypt and had rescued them from the power of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. They had followed the practices of the pagan nations the LORD had driven from the land ahead of them, as well as the practices the kings of Israel had introduced. The people of Israel had also secretly done many things that were not pleasing to the LORD their God. They built pagan shrines for themselves in all their towns, from the smallest outpost to the largest walled city. They set up sacred pillars and Asherah poles at the top of every hill and under every green tree. They offered sacrifices on all the hilltops, just like the nations the LORD had driven from the land ahead of them. So the people of Israel had done many evil things, arousing the LORD's anger. (2 Kings 17:7-11 NLT)

How about you?  Do you see the LORD’s patience in working with Israel?  Do you see the LORD’s patience in working with you, your family, your friends, and your neighbors?  How do you thank God for being patient with you?