THE SHORT COURSE SERIES

Edited by Rev. John Adams, B.D.

The Prophecy of Micah

By Rev. Arthur J. Tait, D.D.

Chapter 8 THE RESPONSE OF THE CHILD OF GOD

Micah 7.

1. Confession.

The first stage in the return of the sinner to God is conviction of guilt and need, which expresses itself in confession. The Prodigal had to come to himself.1 What a pregnant expression! The man has not been himself, he has not allowed liberty of action to those parts of his nature which were given for the purpose of control, his conduct has not been the expression of his true being.' He is like a man who acts in his sleep without the dictation of conscience and will, or who has rendered himself temporarily irresponsible by subjecting his mental activities to the soporific influence of a drug. The sinner has to learn that, when he permits the higher parts of his nature to be dominated by the appetites of the flesh, he is denying his manhood, and that he needs to come to himself.

There are many and varied ways in which the conviction is produced. For some it is the result of affliction, the consequence, it may be, of the overthrow of the things which were held to count, or of the withdrawal of blessings, the enjoyment of which was taken as a matter of course. For others it comes through the failure to find satisfaction in the life from which God has been excluded. Others come to themselves through being confronted with some manifestation of Divine power, as was the case with the jailer at Philippi.2 The change takes place in others through the vision of the Lord Jesus, as it did in the experience of Saul of Tarsus.3 However varied the means may be, the same conviction of guilt and need is for all alike the first stage in the process of repentance.

In this closing chapter of Micah's prophecy a section of the people of Judah is represented as passing through this experience. The message of judgment has not been delivered in vain. Woe is me! I have sinned against the Lord is their cry (vers. 1-9). And what a description the prophet has to give of the condition of the nation, as he muses within himself! What a confession he has to make! The faithful among them are so few that he can compare them only with the gleanings after the fruit has been gathered. The nation as a whole has turned away from God, and righteousness is hard to find. Violence and robbery are the rule. All alike are diligent in doing evil, and the men of position and influence lead in the way. Treachery and deceit are rampant: they contaminate even the most sacred of social relationships (vers. 1-6). But there is a faithful remnant of the people which is convicted of the national guilt, and conscious of the national need: and the prophet speaks as their representative.

2. Faith.

After conviction comes faith, the attitude of heart and mind towards God which carries with it repentance, confession, prayer, trust, and obedience.

But as for me, I will look unto the Lord (ver. 7)

The words are an anticipation of the description of the Prodigal's return, he arose and came unto his father.4 They imply repentance and confession: repentance,

because the Godward look involves the turning of the back upon sin; confession, because the look is the expression of the sense of need.

I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will hear me.

The words are an expression of the confidence which comes of a prayerful trust and obedience. What an inspiring insight into the state of mind of a true believer! He looks to the Lord, prays to the Lord, waits for the Lord, trusts in the Lord. This is his portion, the secret of peace in the midst of trouble, the condition of pardon and power.

My God will bear me. Faith finds no difficulty in the conception of prayer being answered. The believer's philosophy of prayer is exceedingly simple, and at the same time amply sufficient. As it is reasonable and natural for a child to bring his needs to his father, and for the father to hear and answer his child's requests, according to his greater knowledge and experience, even so it is reasonable and natural for the child of God to pray to his Heavenly Father with the assurance that the prayer will be heard and answered in accordance with Divine love and wisdom.5 Faith requires no other explanation of prayer than this. The belief that God is carries with it the assurance that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.6

Micah's faith made no demand for such an answer to his prayer as would secure for him immunity from trouble and freedom from chastisement. On the contrary, his unhesitating confidence in God's will and power to save was accompanied by an uncomplaining resignation to suffering and a filial submission to discipline.

Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall he a light unto me. I will hear the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned against him; until he plead my cause, and execute judgment for me: he will bring me forth to the light, and I shall behold his righteousness (vers. 8-9).

Triumphant faith indeed in the hour of difficulty and defeat! The fall is only a claim to restoring grace; darkness is only a claim to the provision of light. The one thing which the believer cannot claim is the absence of trial: he must recognise the fact of the righteous indignation of the Lord. We have sinned: therefore we must expect to pass through the purifying fire,7 to receive the chastisement which is the evidence of the Father's love,8 and to experience the cleansing which is the condition of bearing more fruit.9 It maybe that we do not sufficiently realise the sinfulness of sin and the holiness of God, or that we need to be saved from self-esteem and self-reliance: but whatever the cause may be, we shall, like St. Peter,10 have to pass through bitter experiences, the very sifting processes of Satan, the hours of the power of darkness, before we are ready to do the work which lies in front of us, and are prepared to fulfil the destiny which God has set before us. When the day of trouble comes, may it find us, as it did the Prophet Micah, ready to acknowledge the love which has permitted the trial,11 and to trust in the grace which can bring us through it.12

3. Hope.

In the next few verses (10-17) we have a picture of the reward of faith. In the day when the Lord executes judgment for His own, unbelief will be put to shame, the taunting challenge will receive its answer, faith will find its vindication (ver. 10). The suffering of discipline will give way to happiness and prosperity (vers. 11-13). The manifestation of God's power will make His people an object not of envy merely, but also of fear to the nations of the world (vers. 14-17).

In this prediction of the victory, restoration, and prosperity of Judah, Micah stands before us once again13 as a man of hope, and illustrates incidentally another characteristic of the child of God. The two qualities of hope and faith are linked together in the closest possible connection. Without faith, hope would have no substance,14 and, without hope, faith would lack its natural fruit.15 If faith is necessary to hope as its source and cause, hope is necessary to faith as its product and completion.

When faith is man's response to the revelation of God, the hope which it produces is not an indefinite expectation of possibilities, but a confident assurance of future certainties. In this connection hope loses all the element of uncertainty which often attaches to it, and becomes a definite, unhesitating confidence in respect of things that are to be.

Such was the hope of Micah. He was a man of hope because he was a man of faith, and he was a man with a definite, assured hope because his faith was built upon revelation, and rested in the God of hope.16

And now, with Micah's experience as our guide, let us consider the functions which hope fulfils in the life of the child of God. We shall have no difficulty in perceiving three, when we remember that the prophet had to endure trials, to accomplish a ministry, and to live for the future. In all three respects it would be true to say that his hope was his salvation.17

Micah had to endure trials. There is a sense in which affliction may be said to produce hope,18 for it assists a man to set his affection on the things which are to be rather than upon the things which are, and hope, like many other qualities, increases with exercise; but it is also true that hope is the secret of endurance. The absence of hope is one of the surest causes of defeat. The man who endures to the end is one who can say with the Psalmist, My soul fainteth for thy salvation: but I hope in thy word.19

We are not surprised to find salvation by hope as one of the leading ideas of the Epistle to the Hebrews, seeing that the epistle was written for the purpose of encouraging Hebrew Christians during the severe trials of the transition period, when the New Covenant was being established in the place of the Old. The writer exhorts them to hold fast their boldness and the glorying of their hope firm unto the end,20 and to shew diligence unto the fulness of hope to the end.21 He reminds them that they have the promise and the oath of God for their comfort, seeing that they have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before them, which they have as an anchor of the soul, a hope sure and stedfast.22 Patience, then, is one of the fruits of hope.23

But Micah had also to accomplish a ministry. He had to go on warning, exhorting, and teaching, while all the time the work seemed to be in vain. It was his hope which was the secret of his patient continuance.

St. Paul possessed the same secret. Was there ever a combination of circumstances more calculated to dishearten and depress a man, whose work was that of an apostle, teacher, preacher, and ambassador, than those which beset him as a prisoner in Rome? Think of the restriction, the fetters, the fate hanging over his head, and the malicious devices of the false brethren! Yet amid it all he remained a man of joy and confidence, and continued to accomplish whatever ministry was open to him through lip and pen. The Apostle's secret lies revealed before anyone who will take the trouble to read his prison letters: it can be summed up in one phrase, my earnest expectation and my hope.24

In the third place, Micah had to live for the future, not in the sense of personal continuance after death, but in that of national revival after judgment. He had to interpret present experience in the light of revealed purpose, and to set his affection on the things which were to be. This he was able to do because he was a man of hope: he both possessed hope as a feature of his character and rejoiced in a hope as an element in his creed.

Perhaps the most illuminating example of this aspect of hope is the attitude of Abraham towards God's promise of Isaac, when he in hope believed against hope, to the end that he might become a father of many nations, according to that which had been spoken, So shall thy seed be. And without being weakened in faith he considered his own body now as good as dead... and the deadness of Sarah's womb: yea, looking unto the "promise of God, he wavered not through unbelief, but waxed strong through faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform.25

What hope did for Abraham and Micah, in the restricted sense in which they were able to live for the future, that it can do now for the child of God, for whom Jesus Christ abolished death, and brought life and incorruption to light through the gospel.26 If we are to live for the future, as it is now revealed unto us, we must put on for a helmet the hope of salvation.27

4. Praise.

It is not surprising that the statement of Micah's hope should close with a doxology (vers. 18-20). Faith in God always leads to praise, because the hope of the child of God never makes him ashamed.28 Micah praises God for His forgiving love, His redeeming power, and His faithfulness to His word.

He praises God in the first place for His forgiving love; and this is the most wonderful feature of the revelation of God.

Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? he retaineth not his anger for ever, because he delighteth in mercy.

Natural religion ends with the conception of God as an object of fear. Men find themselves confronted with the forces of earth, air, fire, and water, forces infinitely greater than any which they themselves possess; and through these they perceive the majesty and sovereignty of God, but they hardly get beyond the idea of a Being who has to be humoured and propitiated. When St. Paul lays his indictment against the heathen world, he charges idolaters with failure to perceive, by the things that are made, God's eternal power and divinity,29 but in respect of the knowledge of God he does not go beyond that. It is to revelation that men owe their conception of the love of God, faintly understood as an attribute by members of the Old Covenant, but now seen in the person of the Incarnate Son to be the very essence of the Divine Nature. We now know not merely that God is loving and that He loves us, but also the far deeper truth that God is love.30 Love is as truly of the essence of God's nature as are holiness and faithfulness. And this means, for all who are willing to have it, the forgiveness of sins.31 If Micah could believe this and praise God for it, how much more can we who rejoice in the revelation of Jesus Christ?

In the second place, Micah praises God for His redeeming power.

He will turn again and have compassion upon us; he will tread our iniquities under foot; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.

This is something more than forgiveness: it is the deliverance of man from the dominion of sin. Divine love will never stop short at forgiveness.32 Pardon is only the first step towards salvation. God forgives man in order to make him holy.33 Holiness is the condition of forgiveness, not in the sense of being its cause, but as being its purpose. On God's side, the revelation of pardon is the guarantee at the same time of power; on man's side, the willingness to be set free from the power of sin is an essential element in faith, and an indispensable qualification for the enjoyment of pardon. If a man is unwilling to fulfil the Divine purpose he disqualifies himself for the standing in Divine grace. The acceptance of forgiveness carries with it the obligation to become holy. The Prodigal was accepted, pardoned, restored, without any bargaining as to the future;34 but the return was the promise of a worthy sonship, and the welcome was the guarantee of the perpetual bestowal of the privileges of the home. The unmerciful servant was pardoned wholly and solely because of the master's grace; but he refused subsequently to live a life of worthy response, and the grace was withdrawn.35 The goodness of God leads men to repentance,36 and the mercies of God lead men to holiness.37

In the last place the prophet praises God for His faithfulness.

Thou wilt perform the truth to Jacob, and the mercy to Abraham, which thou hast sworn unto our fathers from the days of old.

Man may be faithless, but God abideth faithful; He cannot deny Himself.38 Judgment may have to fall, and the fulfilment of the promises may have to wait; but God's word will not return to Him void, what He has said He will assuredly perform.39

The faithfulness of God is usually associated with His promises, and it is so here. But it is well to remind ourselves that God has given to us words of warning as well as of promise, and that His faithfulness applies to the one as well as to the other. It was exemplified as much in the destruction of the unbelievers through the Flood as in the salvation of Noah through the Ark; and as much in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans as in the Return of the Jews from Babylon. But here it is linked up to the promises; and it was because Micah was able to praise God for His faithfulness that he continued to be a man with a sure and steadfast hope in the midst of circumstances which were apparently hopeless.

In Micah's doxology, then, we can find the incentive and inspiration for our own times of darkness and difficulty, whether personal or national. It is just in so far as we can rejoice in the pardoning love of God, in His power to set us free from the bands of our sins, and in His faithfulness to His word and promise, that we can, filled with all joy and peace in believing, abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost.40 But we must see to it that we cultivate not only the hope which patiently endures trial and waits on the Lord for deliverance, but also that which actively co-operates with God in service and sacrifice, and sets its affection on those good things which pass man's understanding, but are revealed unto us by the Spirit, the things which God hath prepared for them that unfeignedly love Him.