JUDGMENT

Micah 1:2-16.

1. The Necessity of Judgment.

The acknowledgment of God carries with it not only a belief in revelation, but also the recognition of Providence. If we allow to the supreme Personal First Cause no directing hand in nature and in the actions of men, we ignore the demands of reason and experience as clearly as we do if we deny the possibility of revelation. For such a conception of God would be infinitely less reasonable than that of a true earthly father who takes no steps to order the circumstances and control the actions of his child. Indeed, it is through the controlling of the forces of nature, and the overruling of the actions of men, that we may expect the revelation of the character and the will of God to be in part vouchsafed. And it is in this co-operation of Providential control and spiritual influence that men have often found the clearest evidence of the Divine will and purpose. Instances of such cooperation come readily to mind in the processes and experiences which led to the sojourn of Israel in Egypt, the Exodus, and the establishment of the Israelite monarchy. We see it at work in the birth of Jesus when the fulness of the times had come. It was manifested in a no less remarkable manner in the sixteenth century, when the intellectual, social, and political movements of the West were made to serve the purposes of the spiritual revival to which that century gave birth.

In other words, the Lord God witnesses amongst men through Providence as well as through His word. It is to this fact that Micah calls attention at the very beginning of his message. Hear, ye peoples, all of you; hearken, O earth, and all that therein is: and let the Lord God be witness against you, the Lord from his holy temple. The witness was to be catastrophic in its nature. For, behold, the Lord cometh forth out of his place, and will come down, and tread upon the high places of the earth. And the mountains shall be molten under him, and the valleys shall be cleft, as wax before the fire, as waters that are poured down a steep place.

Catastrophe, then, is interpreted as God's witness against the sin of men. The holiness of God when confronted with the iniquity of man must act as well as speak. The believer in Divine sovereignty will be ready to acknowledge this, and to interpret the experience when it comes. A mechanical conception of the universe blinds men's eyes to the witness of the events of life; it is for the prophet of the Lord to interpret them. We may not, of course, find an explanation of every event in the direct intervention of God, nor can we interpret all suffering as Divine protest against sin: if we were to attempt to do so, we should do violence to reason and experience. But as believers in moral government we must hold ourselves in readiness to relate our experiences to Divine sovereignty, and to see in history the working out of Divine purpose.

It fell to Micah's lot to prepare Judah and Israel for the immediate future, and to proclaim the significance of the coming catastrophe as the Lord's method of witnessing against the sin of His people. It was for the transgression of Jacob. It was no question of mere ignorance or infirmity, but of deliberate setting at naught of God's declared will. That is sin in its most hideous form. Man sets up his own will in opposition to the known will of God, and acts in disregard of His revealed commands. It is the qualitative rather than the quantitative element that determines transgression. We are reminded of this at the very beginning of the Bible. If sin were estimated quantitatively, the primitive story of the Fall would leave upon the mind a most disquieting conception of disproportion between the punishment and the offence. But, when the qualitative nature of sin is admitted, the teaching of that old story is seen to be enhanced by the very simplicity of the offence. For it is in the least significant choices of life that the will has the freest scope, and it is in the apparently unimportant actions that it finds its truest expression. Our Lord emphasised the same truth in His filling out of the Moral Law. Holiness and sin are essentially attitudes of mind and will. The attitude of opposition to the will of God is sin, and the expression of that attitude is transgression. This is the state of things to which Divine economy has to be accommodated; it is because of this that Divine intervention cannot limit itself to the manifestation of love; it is because of the sin of man that the still small voice has at times to speak of slaying with the sword, and to tell of judgment rather than of mercy.

2. The Time of Judgment.

Judah and Israel were guilty of persistent and deliberate transgression. They were in possession of sufficient knowledge of the Lord to enable them to understand His claims upon them; they knew that He was unwilling to give His glory to another; their experience had shown them that His claims to their allegiance were based upon His constant care of them; they were well aware that they owed their deliverance from Egypt and their possession of Canaan to His intervention in their behalf; yet in spite of it all they turned away to serve other gods; the centres of their religious and national life were made the headquarters of their idolatrous worship; they played the harlot (vers. 6, 7).

The reason of their apostasy is sufficiently indicated in the words, She gathered it of the hire of an harlot. Idolatry had seemed to them to offer the best advantages; they were out for worldly gain.

The imagery of playing the harlot corresponds to the figure under which God was represented as the Husband of His people.1 Incidentally we may notice the application of the figure in the New Testament to our Lord, after the manner in which so much of the earlier language used of the Lord God is applied to Him.2 It is the unhesitating use of such language which affords the strongest evidence of the Apostolic conception of the Person of Jesus Christ, and indeed of His own claims. But to return to the Old Testament imagery, it would be difficult to find any language which could express more vividly the claims of God upon His people, and exhibit more clearly the terrible sin of idolatry. God had made Himself known to them, He had entered into covenant relationship with them, He had made that relationship a reality by His constant intercourse and love. His claim to their allegiance was based not merely upon the contract which they had accepted, but also upon His tender care of them and His strong interventions in their behalf. He had, moreover, made it clear to them at the outset that He would brook no rival. I the Loud thy God am a jealous God was part of the covenant revelation. Yet they had proved faithless; they had deserted Him and joined themselves to other gods.

It is unfortunate that the word "jealous" should have so deteriorated in meaning through the sinfulness of men as to indicate a quality to be deprecated and abjured. It was not always so;3 and when we use the word to describe an attribute of God, we must rid our minds of those evil associations which man has gathered round it, and remember that it expresses an essential element of Deity. God cannot share His prerogatives with another; His claims are absolute. Our conception of God would vanish if we could think of Him as assenting to idolatry. The jealousy of God is an attribute which is essentially involved in His relation to His moral creation. And when His people are guilty of persistent repudiation of His claims, the jealousy of God inevitably expresses itself in judgment.

Such was the state of things which Micah had to declare: the time had come when judgment was inevitable. Her wounds are incurable (ver. 9). The words remind us of the Divine lament voiced by Hosea (when I would have healed Israel),4 and of the thwarted love of the Lord Jesus (How often would I have gathered thy children. . . and ye would not ).5 Oh! the depths of the Divine condescension! God allows His love and power to be limited by the will of man. So it must be. The creation of beings in the image of God, and after His likeness, involved from one point of view Divine self-manifestation, inasmuch as the Divine nature was in part communicated to man; but from another point of view it involved Divine self-limitation, inasmuch as the will of man can say Him nay. And when judgment falls, it means that man has thwarted God's purposes of love for him; when the Almighty declares the wound incurable, it means not that God has not the will or power to save, but that man has used his God-given faculties to make his salvation impossible. The settled impenitent state can only result in judgment, for judgment is the sole remaining means of manifesting the Divine glory and vindicating the Divine character. The idea of judgment is as essential to the idea of God as is that of revelation. Creation is not a purposeless manifestation of energy, revelation is not a purposeless declaration of character, redemption is not a purposeless activity of love: and purpose inevitably involves judgment. The goodness, forbearance, and long-suffering of God cause postponement of judgment, but it is no more conceivable that they shall cancel ultimate judgment than it is that they shall obliterate man's will-power and reduce him to a machine. And if the purpose of God that His goodness shall lead men to repentance is rendered ineffective by man's hardness of heart and impenitence, nothing can save man from the day of wrath and of the righteous judgment of God.6

1 Cf. Ex. xxxiv. 15 f.; Deut. xxxi. 16; Hos. i. 2; Jer. xxxi. 32.

2 Cf. St. Matt. ix. 15, xxv. 1; St. John iii. 29; Rev. xxi. 2, 9.

3 Cf. 1 Kings xix.10.

4 Hos. vii. 1.

5 St. Matt, xxiii. 37.

6 Rom. ii 4 ff.