Dennis Tuuri

Those of you who were watching what I did up here realize that I switched Bibles. I went from my King James version, which we read the verse out of to a New American Standard. That’s because this book is a little easier to move around quickly in. And I’ll warn you now that we’ll be moving around quickly in the scriptures this morning as we seek to look at an overview of the book of Micah. As I said, we’re beginning now a series going through the book of Micah.

And it’s important that we don’t gloss through this first verse too quickly and so we’ll spend the rest of this morning discussing this verse. The verse is an introduction to the book and it’s important to see what God would have us remember then as we go into the rest of the book from the information that he gives us at the first verse and so it’s important that we look at this briefly.

As I was looking through this it identifies the source of Micah’s prophecy, represents the vehicle through which the prophecy comes which is Micah the Moresathite, and talks about the time of the prophecy the days of Jotham Ahaz and Hezekiah kings of Judah and the topic of his prophecies which would be Samaria and Jerusalem. For those of you who like alliterated points I did alliterate those four points in the outline to make it the source, the speaker, the setting and the subject of the prophecies. I didn’t spend a lot of time on that though but it is sometimes a little easier to remember what was said and I hope you review some of this with your family this afternoon perhaps and particularly this morning talk will be easy to do that with younger children.

We’ll be going through a lot of Bible stories as it were that are important for us to remember as we come to the prophecies starting next week of the prophecy more directly. The first point that is made in the scriptures this first verse says it’s the word of the Lord that came to Micah. Okay. And that’s real easy to gloss over that real fast but let’s just stop and make a couple of short points here although important ones for us.

First of all, notice that it’s the word of the Lord. And the word Lord there in capital letters in your translation means that it’s the word Jehovah. And remember, we’ve talked before about that’s the special covenant name of God to the covenant people that it’s directed to. And so, the first thing this tells us is that it’s a covenant word. And that’s going to be important because as we go through Micah, we’ll see elements of a covenant lawsuit.

God brings judgments to the nation of Judah and also the northern tribes of Israel by way of pointing out to them their violation of his covenant. And so the prophecies are frequently of this form. They’re covenant lawsuits. God comes to them and says, “You broke my covenant.” And that’ll become real obvious as we go through certain portions of the text. It’s important to remember though that it is a covenant word to us.

And so if we’re covenant people of God, which we are in the new covenant made by Jesus Christ, then ushered into covenant relationship with Jehovah. And so these same lawsuits that apply to the nation of Israel also can be brought against us should we break his covenant oath the way that those people did. They were covenant people, but they couldn’t rely on the fact that they were covenant people and not move into covenant obedience and still expect God’s blessing because they moved in covenant disobedience.

The covenant word became to them a word of cursing and not a word of blessing. It’s very important for us to remember. Secondly, this is a sure word that comes to Micah. It says that the word of the Lord came to Micah. Okay, it the word here meaning came means that Micah—it wasn’t Micah’s feelings that determined what he was going to say to the nation of Judah or the nation of Israel. It wasn’t Micah’s thoughts.

It wasn’t the circumstances that Micah found himself in. But it was the sovereign Lord of history who was going to speak through Micah. It came to Micah. And so we see here that it is a sure word for Micah that it came from Jehovah God. And the third aspect of the word came there the first portion of this verse rather tells us it’s a covenant word. It’s a sure word because it is a covenant word from the sovereign lord of history.

But third, because it says came, it also means it’s an external word to Micah. The word of the Lord came to Micah from outside of him. Okay? It came to him. So, it was outside of him. There’s an external source of authority behind what Micah is going to say here in these prophecies. That is absolutely critical. If the church would just realize this one point today, we’d move in a fairly rapid fashion, I think, toward repentance and then toward obedience.

The church in general in our country—the reason I say that is that all too often today in the churches that we’ve come out of and even in this church, decisions that should be subjugated to the command word of our king. Instead, those decisions become subjugated to our personal whims, our own thoughts, our own circumstances that we find ourselves in and that we encounter instead of to the sure word of the Lord.

Today, you hear people frequently speaking that God has directed us to particular actions and frequently people will say, you know, well, God made it clear. This is what I wanted he wanted me to do and this worked out. So, this must be God speaking to me because the circumstances worked out such that it became a good thing to do. This worked out for me and therefore it’s God’s will. Even though so many times the thing that’s worked out, the action they take is in direct violation to the law of God.

See, people don’t know the law of God today. All they know is they have some sort of relationship to Jesus. And so, they rely then upon that relationship and that feeling orientation and the circumstances we find ourselves in to make ethical decisions. But the book of Micah, if it means anything to us, when he says here in verse one that this came to the word of the Lord came to Micah, meaning an external source of authority, it should point out to us that we must have an external source of authority as well for evaluation and for command from God.

And so, as we go into this week, be careful to evaluate yourselves. You don’t make decisions upon personal whims or upon the circumstances we find ourselves in, but cleave to the word of God, to his revealed law word. And of course, what that means is then that we have a great responsibility to understand how it relates to all of our life. Unfortunately, all too many people in our churches don’t do it because they’ve not been taught how to apply the word of God to everything that we do.

As we go through the prophecies of Micah, we’ll see direct violations of God’s law in and not so direct implications in terms of actions that we might think of. And so, we’ll have to put on our thinking caps, go to the word of God, and understand how Micah saw so clearly that certain actions that we might think are perfectly appropriate were actually violations of God’s word. So, Micah will help us to discern how to apply God’s law to our specific society.

There’s a lot of economic things said for instance in Micah’s word and many times today economics is seen as some sort of neutral secular sphere in which the law of God has no pertinence but we know better. So we need to realize here that it is a command word an external word that came upon Micah. This is really so important. I hate to move on from it but we need to go on to the bulk of what we’re going to be talking about in a couple of minutes.

The history of the region. But again, I want to stress one more time that what this first verse tells us among other things is that we must not rely upon our emotions, upon our circumstances, upon our own thoughts of what’s best and what’s wrong to make decisions that we make every day. We must rely upon the word of God. And when we fail to do that, we’ll incur the covenant lawsuit that Micah prophesied against the covenant people in his time.

They had rejected the covenant word. They weren’t outwardly rejecting Jehovah. We’ll see that as well. It’s all too easy today to see the parallels then to our church and to the church in America today that says we’re covenant people. And we know that God is leading us in this way because we look at the circumstances. We must be people of the word and of the book of the external source of authority. And I might also point out that’s why there’s so little difference between the churches and the world around us in terms of persecution.

You start referencing an external source of authority for your decisions as you go through life and that is the one thing that is specifically verboten or forbidden in our society. All options are okay. We were talking Wednesday night in our Bible study about pluralism. Sure, it’s fine if you want to have Christianity and one option among many in terms of religions as long as you know you’ve made that decision and you can decide what portions of the Bible you want to apply to your life.

That’s okay in our society. But as soon as you say it’s an external source of authority, a command word outside of myself that I must obey and by implication that you must obey and then to the person you’re talking to and they’ll rebel against that immediately. That’s the one verboten area today of thought and philosophy to have an external source of authority. But that’s what Micah had. Okay. So that’s the source—God’s external command authoritative word which is a covenant word.

The vehicle, the speaker as it were is Micah the Moresathite. And while it may not seem important to go through a couple of other Micahs, we’re going to do that for a couple of minutes here. There are a couple of Micahs that have quite a bit of scripture devoted to them, but they’re not the same Micah as we encounter in the prophecies of Micah. The name Micah comes from Micah Yah, which means who is like the Lord.

And that was a common name. There are probably 10 or 12 occurrences of that name in the Old Covenant records. And there are two that have specific portions of scripture designated to them, but I want to go over them briefly. One to make sure you don’t confuse them with these other Micahs and two because it does have implications of what we’re going to be talking about this morning and in the rest of the months to come in terms of the Micah’s prophecy.

Now Micah that gives that is the speaker of God’s word is not Micah the apostate. That’s my designation for him. Micah the apostate his record is found in Judges chapter 17 and 18. And what we find there we have two postcripts to the book of Judges. And this is the first of the two given there to indicate the failure of the Levites in terms first of religious apostasy and then of moral degeneracy and failure to guard the bride of the covenant Lord Yahweh.

But the story in Judges 17 and 18 concerns a man named Micah. Micah in this case in Judges 17 and 18 we find out that he’s a thief. Number one, he stole pieces of silver from his mother. Okay? And she uttered a curse apparently that he had heard that whoever took that money may he be cursed. And Micah was religious to the extent that he believed that curses could take effect. And so to avoid the curse, he returns the silver.

But it’s interesting to note that even though he was of course part of the covenant people here in the context of the story, he’s part of Israel and God’s covenant people. He does not include with his returning of the money the 20% restitution that’s required when a thief comes forward of his own volition. And so he’s not a lawkeeper. He’s apostate in that sense. But he returns the money and his mother then and holy dedicates the money to God.

She says, “Well, I’ll use all this money for God and I’ll make an idol for my son out of this money.” Well, she then turns out she only uses 200 pieces of the silver instead of 1100 pieces of the silver. So, we can see that her son probably picked up his practices of dishonesty and theft from her because now she’s stealing from God after dedicating 1100 pieces. She uses 200 pieces to make this idol and she makes this graven image and she gives it to her son in a molten image.

He then takes this and begins to start worship in his home there in his own household. He makes this idolatrous worship center. He makes his son priest over this worship center. And later then a Levite comes along. And by the way, it’s interesting to note that later we find out about this Levite that he’s apparently the grandson of Moses. So we have a generation of Moses here into the second generation, the grandson of Moses who is this Levite.

He comes walking around looking for a job and Micah makes him a deal that he can come and be his household priest. He’ll give him a pretty good wage for the time and take care of him and everything. And so then in kind of like an apostate view of the Levites replacing the firstborn son, here the apostate Levite willing to serve at this idolatrous worship center that Micah has set up replaces Micah’s son and becomes his Levite.

However, the tribe of Dan is not settled down in their land yet and they come walking along the way to take over a city named Laish, which was okay to conquer because they were supposed to conquer the land about them. The land wasn’t totally conquered at this point in time in the judges, but it wasn’t part of Dan territory. So, they’re apostate as well. They’re going after territory that isn’t theirs.

And on the go to go take over Laish, they go by Micah’s house and they found out from some spies they had sent out that he had these beautiful idols there and they had this Levite worshiping him. And the tribe of Dan comes along on the way to conquer Laish and they take both the idols that Micah had created here with the mother’s 200 pieces of silver and they take the Levite that Micah had to worship in his home.

So, it’s kind of humorous in a sense here. The thief is stolen from himself and the Levite, the apostate Levite is kind of stolen and conjoined with this idolatrous worship center and they go then to the city of Laish and Dan takes it over and they then set up a much bigger idolatrous worship center. They tell the Levite, you can be a Levite, a priest over not just a small household but over a whole tribe here over the tribe of Dan.

And so it’s apostasy from beginning to end. Dan then becomes a place of idolatrous worship and that continues for some time. In fact, and this is what’s pertinent to our what we’re getting at in a couple of minutes in terms of the divided kingdom that Micah prophesied to when the kingdom first occurs in history in the contention between Rehoboam and Jeroboam, Jeroboam of the north, Israel and Rehoboam of the south.

Maybe a little bit of background here be good. After Solomon, Solomon’s reign, Solomon’s son Rehoboam reigns in his stead over Judah, but Jeroboam is given the 10 tribes of the north, which becomes known as the tribes of Israel. And so you have this divided kingdom. Jeroboam is given those by God and a prophet comes to him and tells him you’re going to have these 10 tribes if you do what’s right and obey the laws of God.

And then Rehoboam is a wicked king and he tries—Jeroboam actually tries to patch things up even after that. Rehoboam says, “No, we’re not going to do that. You guys got to obey me and I’m going to exact big taxes and make you slaves, etc.” And so there’s this division. Well, what’s important here is that Jeroboam then in the context of that division then is knows he’s specifically required by God to allow the people to worship at Jerusalem.

We have a divided kingdom, but there’s still one worship center at Jerusalem where people have to worship. Remember in the wilderness he was they were told God will set up a place where he has to be worshiped. That place will be Jerusalem. And so Jeroboam knows he’s supposed to do that. And that was a condition of him getting these 10 tribes of Israel. But Jeroboam doesn’t do that. Jeroboam in First Kings 12:25, let’s just look there.

First Kings 12:25. Then Jeroboam built Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim and lived there. And he went out from there and built Penuel. And Jeroboam said in his heart, “Now the kingdom will return to the house of David. If this people love to offer sacrifices in the house of the Lord of Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will return to their lord, even to Rehoboam, king of Judah, and they’ll kill me and return to Rehoboam, king of Judah.” So the king consulted and made two golden calves, and he said to them, “Is it too much for you to go up to Jerusalem?

Behold your gods, O Israel, that brought you up from the land of Egypt” and he set one at Bethel and the other he puts in Dan. So Jeroboam apostasizes here, creates two golden calves. These are actually what led you out of Egypt, not Jehovah God. And he sets up one at Bethel because of its old associations with the promise. And he sets up the other at Dan. Now why did he set it up at Dan? Because it had already been of longstanding a place of idolatrous worship because of Micah and his false Levite.

And the false Levite and the apostate Levite being stolen by the people of Dan, setting up Micah’s silver images in Dan and making an idolatrous worship center out of it. And so although Micah doesn’t have any direct correlation to our Micah, yet what began at the time of Micah with his apostate worship surrounded by or around the silver images that he had created expropriated and stolen by the tribe of Dan becomes an idolatrous worship center at the city of Dan.

Then finally that’s institutionalized when Jeroboam later in the divided kingdom makes Dan one of the two recipients of the golden calves that he makes the two golden calves to prevent people from going down to worshiping at Jerusalem in direct violation to the law of God. Now, it’s interesting that in the time of the Micah that we’re going to be talking about and his prophecies that the time involves the ending reign of Uzziah into Jotham’s reign and then Ahaz and Hezekiah and that Jeroboam who is the one who did these bad things.

There’s a Jeroboam II who comes along later on a contemporary with Uzziah and his reign is handed over Uzziah’s reign is handed over to Jotham as we said in the time of Micah. Samaria we’ll be finding out a lot about Samaria through the prophecies of Micah and Samaria has implications not just for a divided kingdom but also for a divided theocracy with divided worship. And so it’s important that’s why I told you this little story of Micah the apostate to show you how they became divided worship in the in the two kingdoms as well as a divided kingdom and that’s important for the prophecies of Micah that we keep that in mind.

Samaria becomes the capital of the northern kingdom and we’ll talk about that as we go through these prophecies. It was originally established by another king named Omri and it then became the center for religious apostasy. Ahab eventually built a temple to Baal there in Samaria and so it in a sense replaced Dan as the center for idolatrous worship. It’s interesting that the calf that Jeroboam the first had set up at Bethel, one of those two golden calves was called thy calf, O Samaria in the book of Hosea.

And so Samaria also becomes an apostate worship center. But that’s not the Micah we’re going to talk about this morning. But it is important to see the relationship of that Micah and then to in God’s providence many years later finding ourselves in a tremendous dissension between the northern and southern tribes and warfare and this sort of thing going on that we remember how it all began back there and how the idolatrous worship began with Micah the apostate back given as this postscript to the book of Judges.

It’ll help us to understand then some of the prophecies of Micah. Another Micah that this prophecies are not made by and this I put forward to you as a positive example of a good Micah in another place of scripture is in First Kings 22. And here Micah is a prophet the son of Imlah. And it’s kind of an interesting story as well. This happens during the time of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, about 150 years before the prophecies of Micah.

The record of this good Micah, the good example of another Micah is found in First Kings 22. And I don’t know, probably some of you remember this particular incident recorded in scripture. There’s a there’s two kings here involved here. We have Jehoshaphat who wants to capture territory from the king of Syria. He wanted to have a prophet tell him whether he should go up against the king of Syria. He was the he then asked the king of Israel who was the wicked king Ahab whether he had any prophets who could advise him.

And so you’ve got two kings involved here, a pretty good king Jehoshaphat and a wicked king Ahab. And Jehoshaphat goes to Ahab to have get some help from Ahab in terms of getting a prophecy. And Ahab says, “Well, I’ve got some prophets, but most of them are just liars really. They just tell me whatever I want to hear. And Jehoshaphat said, “Are there any good prophets left?” And Ahab says, “Well, there’s one good prophet left who really says God’s word, but I don’t like this guy because he always prophesies ill of me.” And of course, a good prophet would do that to King Ahab.

Jehoshaphat says, “Well, I want to hear from him anyway.” And so Ahab calls forward and says, “Okay, bring out Micah, son of Imlah, to prophesy about me.” And Micah comes up and he says, “Well, should we go take these Syrians?” Now, all of Ahab’s false prophets have been saying, “Oh, yes, okay, go up and take Syria. It would be great. You know, you can go ahead and take this territory. So they ask Micah to come up and Micah says, Ahab says, ‘Well, should I go up against these people and take this town?

And he says, “Oh, sure. Go ahead and take the town. Great. Go ahead and do it.” And Ahab says, “Now come on. How many times do I got to tell you? Tell me the truth here.” So Micah was just making fun of him and, you know, kind of mocking his false prophets at first. And Ahab says, “Tell me the truth.” And Micah says, “Fine. You want to know the truth? Here’s the truth. You’re going to be killed.” And he says it through a prophetic voice as it were.

He doesn’t say it quite that way, but that’s the implications of the prophecy. And Ahab says, “See what I told you?” He says to Jehoshaphat, “This guy always prophesies ill of me. Why do we ever bring him up here?” And he sends him back to be taken care of back where he came from. And he sends him back to prison and to bread and water and meager proportions of bread and water at that. So he’s persecuted for his true prophecy of Ahab’s coming death.

They do go into battle, Ahab and Jehoshaphat. Ahab is concerned though because he knows that in his heart that this guy’s probably right. And so he disguises himself as he goes into battle and he makes Jehoshaphat look like him. And so they go after Jehoshaphat first. The troops do that. They come up against Jehoshaphat says, “I’m not him.” And they say, “Okay, great. We’ll let you go.” And then they go try to find Ahab, but they can’t find him because he’s in disguise.

But God has other plans. It says that an archer shoots an arrow at random, as it were, and the arrow comes down at random, whatever that means, and comes in and strikes Ahab in the joints of his armor, piercing him and causing and giving him a fatal wound. And he stands up in his chariot the rest of the day bleeding to death slowly through this chance arrow shot of course through the providence of God through the cracks of Ahab’s armor.

Ahab’s chariot after he dies is then taken to a place to be washed. And we’re told by the scriptures that the harlots used to bathe there. And we’re also told that as the blood had filled the bottom of the chariot, they took it there to be washed out. And the blood and the dogs come along and lick up the blood of Ahab in direct fulfillment of the prophecy of Ahab’s wicked reign and then his wicked his destructive end by God that the dogs would lick his blood.

Now this also has implications for our Micah. We should keep in mind Micah’s judgments will be in the context in the historical context of good and bad rulers. Some rulers that heed his advice and rulers who don’t heed his advice. And we’ll see that as we go through it. Okay. Well, those two are not the Micahs we who gave these prophecies. And I think they’re kind of interesting stories to sort of help us set the stage for the context of Micah’s prophecies. But Micah that—and I and I reason why I get into some detail in these is to point out by way of contrast how we’re told little or nothing of the Micah that writes the prophecies of the book of Micah.

We’re not told Micah’s genealogy. We’re not told what he did for vocation. We’re not told anything about him except for one piece of information and that is that he came from a town named Moreseth or Moreseth Gath. Micah the Moresathite and so we’re told only the place of his origin. Now that probably indicates to us that his roots his he was probably born in and raised as a child in Moreseth Gath which is about 25 mi southwest of Jerusalem.

But he probably then stayed for the most of his adult life in Jerusalem. And that would explain why he’s called Micah the Moresathite because that would distinguish him from other Micahs in Jerusalem proper. And there’d be no need to call Micah the Moresathite if he stayed in Moreseth and did his prophecies from there. So we think that’s probably the case. Now we’ll read in a couple of weeks here about Moreseth Gath and just you’ll understand that terminology sometimes in the scriptures.

When you see a name like that frequently what’s going on is you’ve got a little town which is Moreseth then being identified by its geographic proximity to a larger town which is Gath. And so you’ve got Moreseth Gath Moreseth—it’s sort of like you could say Beaverton Portland. You know you might not know where Beaverton is but people knew where Portland was. And so by association, they know the general region where Beaverton was.

And so we know that Micah came from quite a small town, a rural town, a rural setting, not an urban setting. That’ll be important as we go through his prophecies as well. Okay, that’s the vehicle Micah. And it probably should drop those sort of connotations in our mind in terms of the divided kingdom, divided worship, good and bad kings, those who listen to prophets and those who don’t. Okay? But the most important thing I think that we can get out of this first verse, besides what we’ve said so far, about the source of the prophecy and the speaker of the prophecy is the setting for the prophecy.

This is a good bit of information we’re given here and again we shouldn’t just go through it real briefly. We should pause and think a little bit about the implications of the time frame in which Micah prophesied. It says specifically that time frame is in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. These names are given to us for a reason. It help us to understand later when we get to the specific prophecies of Micah.

Help us to understand those prophecies if we understand the time period and what was going on in the historical setting for those prophecies. So, we have important information here. I’m going to start with the back end of that phrase, kings of Judah. That’s important to realize here what’s going on because it doesn’t say the kings of Israel. It says the kings of Judah. And we made reference already this morning a little bit to the fact that there was a divided kingdom at this time.

And please forgive me if I take just a minute here to sort of run through a brief history of the covenant people that brings us up to that time. Abram lived apparently somewhere roughly. I’m going to give you real rough dates here to sort of help you kind of hang some things on a chronology. Abraham lived roughly around 2,000 BC. The birth of Moses in the Exodus occurred roughly 500 years later around 1500 BC.

The next 500 years, okay, so we have 500 years from Abraham to the Exodus. The next 500 years include the wilderness wanderings, the coming into the land, the conquest of the land, and then the rule of the judges. So that’s the next set of 500 years. And then we come to the United Monarchy. After the time of the judges, we then go to the time of the kings and monarchs and we end up with the time of the United Monarchy essentially lasting from around 1050 to 930, a little over 100 years long.

Now, I say it’s essentially from 1050 to 930 because there were periods during the United Monarchies under first Saul and then David and then Solomon. There were periods in there where there was some division. The death of Saul during the time of the monarch, the United Monarchy, resulted in some division for David. He became king of Judah. You remember we talked about him king of Judah. But the tribes of Israel weren’t originally united with him at that point in time.

There was a division and that we’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes as to why that occurred as we get toward the end of our talk this morning. There was some division again after David defeated Absalom and after Absalom’s rebellion is successful. The handled by David. There’s a brief time of division there as well, but basically it’s a united monarchy from 1050 to around 930 or 931. The height of that monarchic period is of course the reign of Solomon in which we have definitely a united kingdom for the entire portion of his reign.

We have a tremendous prosperity. Silver is like dirt. You know, silver was as common as stones on the ground is what the scriptures tell us. Great time of blessing and prosperity and a picture as it were of the coming messianic king of Jesus Christ. And that was a tremendous thing. But then toward the end of Solomon’s reign, of course, he multiplied horses, he multiplied gold, he multiplied wives. The very three things the scriptures tell us were specifically prohibited to kings in Deuteronomy 17.

And so because of all this, Solomon falls into idolatry and the judgment of God. And then at the end of Solomon’s reign, his son Rehoboam loses the 10 northern tribes. As we said, that was prophesied prior to that occurring. Jeroboam is approached by a prophet and said, “You’re going to have the 10 northern tribes if you obey God’s law.” Jeroboam ends up with those tribes. And then he apostasizes as well.

But that was when the divided kingdom occurred at the end of Solomon’s reign with Rehoboam, his son, and then the counterpart Jeroboam in the north. And as I said, they tried to patch things up. Jeroboam did. Rehoboam, we talked about this before in the time of the eldership. When we talked about the office of elder, Rehoboam rejected the council of his old wise elders. He took instead the council of his young who said the basically the 10 tribes of Israel had come to him and said look at you know we’ll be united again but you have to promise not to treat us so harshly and enslave us like your dad did and tax us so heavily that’s how Solomon multiplied gold to himself you see at least part of it was the taxation that he incurred upon the people and Rehoboam thought about this for a while and took the bad counsel of his young Turkish elders as it were not actual Turks you realize but in the modern sense of the term young Turks and they said well you tell those guys you’re going to be tougher than Solomon you know, if he’s like a little branch, like a big trunk, you’re really going to let these guys have it.

So, Rehoboam, fool that he was, listen to that advice. And the Jeroboam then was made officially the king of the 10 tribes, which constituted Israel. So, you’ve got Israel in the north, you’ve got Judah in the south, Judah’s small, there’s just Judah basically in the tribe of Benjamin associated with it. Then you’ve got the 10 northern tribes being Israel.

So, when you hear about in the divided portion of the histories of the Old Testament, the divided kingdom. You’ve got kings of Israel and kings of Judah. Okay? You have these two things going on simultaneously coming from the end of Solomon’s reign, the dissolution of the United Monarchy. The division then between the north and the south, between Israel and Judah. That divided kingdom lasts from 930 approximately to the fall of Jerusalem itself in 587.

Samaria and the northern kingdoms are conquered first and basically destroyed and then the southern kingdoms are conquered finally in the fall of Jerusalem in 587. The fall of Samaria signals the end of the northern kingdoms and that’ll occur during the time of Micah our prophet. And so it’s important to recognize that he saw the dissolution of the northern kingdom and prophesied then of God’s coming judgment in the southern kingdom which judgment finally came to full consummation in the fall of Jerusalem in 587.

There was a partial restoration of the monarchy or not of the monarchy but of the theocratic kingdom under Nehemiah, the temple was rebuilt 70 years later. But Daniel’s prophecy said that it won’t be a 70 years span that you’ll have to wait for the restoration to the land and the building of the temple, the true temple, but 7 times 70. And of course, that brings us up to the time of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, who is who built the great temple with his work on the cross and who is the temple of God in a special sense.

So what we have here, what I’ve tried to sketch out here real briefly is the context of Micah is the codex of the divided kingdoms, the dissolution of the united monarchy and the exemplar theocracy under Solomon when he ruled wisely during the first portion of reign according to the law of God. He knew it. He understood it. He applied it. He was blessed by God. It was a tremendous kingdom that he had indicated as I said that silver was as common as stones on the ground.

Great blessings from God. But God what he’s doing in this process of bringing this about bringing the promised people into the land going through judges pointing him toward a king eventually through Deuteronomy 17. He’s pointing to the king himself and to the true king who will come to reign for him, Jesus Christ. And so what you have in this advance toward Solomon’s era is a picture then of the great advance to come with the coming of the Messiah.

Okay? And with Solomon’s kingdom has to fall into dissolution, breaking apart, decreation if you want to use that term to remind the people that it’s not the end of history. The end of history is the coming Messiah of which Solomon’s reign is just a picture you see. And so Micah prophesies in the context of a sovereign God of history who has brought this reign of Solomon brought it into dissolution and decreation so that he then can 7 times 70 years later with the coming of Jesus Messiah create the true theocratic kingdom and the true monarch now sits at the right hand of God enthroned as it were and all the people we made his footstool.

That’s the historical overview. Okay. So Micah this period is characterized as the general declension of the theocratic kingdom, the destruction of the northern kingdom, and the pending destruction and God’s judgment upon the southern kingdom of Judah as well. Okay. The dates we’re talking about here run roughly for Micah now and his prophecies from 740 to 687 BC. And included in that time frame, as we said before, is the fall of Samaria.

Included in that time frame. And he prophesies about that and some of the prophecies we’ll get to in the next couple of weeks. It’s important to keep that in mind. That was the period in which he prophesied. Contemporary with Micah’s prophecy was Isaiah. Isaiah prophesied in the same period of time as you probably would know from looking at the inscription. The inscription of Isaiah’s prophecy says gives the same three kings those kings being Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah.

But it also adds on Uzziah who was Jotham’s father at the front part of that. So Isaiah covered a wider span of rule including four kings. And Micah is the last three kings, the same kings contemporaneously with the book of Isaiah. Isaiah’s prophecies are generally characterized as being oriented more toward the king, toward the rulers, toward the people of the upper class as it were. Micah with his humble background, his prophecies are generally although this isn’t true in a strict sense but generally more oriented toward the effect of all these things and the declension of the faith of the people of the countryside and the effects of the apostasy of the nation upon the smaller people as well.

So contemporaneously another parallel if you want to be reading in your scriptures some other parallel accounts is the book of Amos relating to the northern kingdom. Amos was prophesying to the northern kingdom basically the same period of time, Micah was prophesying to the southern kingdom. And the northern kingdom, of course, is going through a faster declension and decreation and destruction, but it would eventually come to the southern kingdom as well.

Okay. In fact, Micah has been called the Amos of the southern kingdom by some commentators. That’s the general overview. Now, specifically in terms of the kings that are mentioned in the time of Micah, we have three of them. The first is Jotham. Jotham means Yahweh is perfect. Jotham’s reign began in 750 BC. He was the son of Uzziah. And we should just briefly mention Uzziah’s reign here as being one of tremendous blessing again and a restoration.

Uzziah’s reign lasted 52 years. In 2 Kings 15:5, you’ll see this the reign of Uzziah being talked about and also in 2 Chronicles 26. In 2 Kings 15, Uzziah is referred to by his what some people believe is his throne name or royal name of Azariah. So Azariah and Uzziah are the same people in the context of this king. He was essentially a good king but he did not remove the high places of worship. His success is indicated by his long reign 52 years and also by specific references in 2 Chronicles 26 which we won’t bother to look up right now.

His apostasy occurred then in is recorded in 2 Chronicles 26. He was in kind of in a sense not in a in a large sense but sort of like Solomon in a sense that he had a long reign, successful and prosperous. Now, part of that was because the historical setting of his of Uzziah’s kingdom and he’s Jotham’s father now is the reason we’re talking about this., Assyria was the great world power at the time and Assyria had now had problems and they had their attention diverted for a period of time during Uzziah’s reign.

Assyria before that had happened though had basically wiped out Syria in Damascus which is at the north end of the northern kingdom. And so, Damascus was no longer a problem for the for either the Israel or Judah. And so they had relative peace in the land is what I’m trying to get at here during the reign of Uzziah. And as a result, things did real well. But Uzziah and Isaiah was blessed because of he did things mostly in accord with God’s will.

But at the end of his reign, he decided to go ahead and offer up his own sacrifices in the temple. He decided to not listen to the priests. And in fact, the scriptures say that the priests came to him with eight big valiant priests, big men who were to stop the king from actually offering up his own sacrifices on the altar there., they come to him and says, “You can’t do this thing.” Now, I’m convinced that the priest came with eight big guys because they were going to, if need be, take the very king who had been prospered so much by God and had done such good things for the land of Judah, they were going to take him out by force if necessary.

Okay. God intervened though, so they didn’t have to do that. Uzziah was struck with leprosy because of his disobedience to the command. The thing the kings had to do to continue to pray before God and be successful was to listen to the prophets and to listen to the priests. And so here was Uzziah not listening to the priests. His house was separate from God’s house. He was not to go in and and with his own hands offer up sacrifices and be a priest as it were because there was a separation of office here.

Uzziah wanted to make himself the king priest. Put both those things together in himself sort of like the pagan kings around him did and which is reserved in the theocratic kingdom just for Jesus Christ to come. Uzziah wanted to be Jesus now as it were. So he goes in to offer up his own sacrifices. He’s commanded by the priest to leave. He doesn’t do it and God strikes him with leprosy and that’s the end of his reign.

Jotham then begins to reign during this time. Leslee Allen in his commentary in the book of Micah says that we have to think of Uzziah’s reign comparable to that of Queen Victoria reigning over the last days as it were of prosperity. And so Uzziah’s time are seen as good times, but there’s a declension that’s starting to occur. here in the in the land of Judah and Jotham then becomes takes over the reign of being king of Judah coterminous with his father until his father’s death after several years of leprosy.

So men were basking as Leslee Allen puts it in the last rays of the lingering light of the reign of Uzziah during the beginning of Micah’s prophecy. Jotham’s reign is characterized as really pretty good in 2 Chronicles 27. It says that Jotham did right in the sight of the Lord. He did not enter the temple, it says specifically, which was one of the definitions for doing right if you were a king, not to enter the temple., Jotham’s name means Yahweh or Jehovah is perfect.

However, it says specifically in the context there, the people acted corruptly. Let’s look at that. 2 Chronicles 27. 2 Chronicles 27 verse 2. He did right in the sight of the Lord according to all that his father Uzziah had done. However, he did not enter the temple of the Lord. That’s verse two. He did it. He was a good king here. But verse, let’s see here. Yeah. Right goes on to say then that he denied the temple of the Lord, but the people continued acting corruptly.

And the word there for corrupt means to be decaying. as it were to be breaking up and to move toward destruction. and so the people here even though they got a good king now the people continue to act corruptly. It hasn’t been rooted out. Jotham rather becomes mighty because he ordered his ways before the Lord. And that’s told to us in verse six. Verse six. So Jotham became mighty because he ordered his ways before the Lord his God.

Now we’re also told however in the account in Kings that Jotham failed to remove the high places like his father. And so Jotham’s reign is characterized as a good reign. However, it’s also characterized by a people who are basically corrupt. And Jotham’s failure to persevere and to press on, not to relying upon what Uzziah did, but to go past what his father had done in destroying the high places. He doesn’t do that.

And so he doesn’t eliminate the corruptness of the people. He allows that to continue in terms of the high places in 2 Kings 15. And you might want to mark those two sections basically be going back and forth here for a couple of minutes. 2 Kings 15 verse 37 talking about the days of Jotham. In those days the Lord began to send Rezin, king of Syria and Pekah the son of Remaliah against Judah. Okay. So and Pekah there is the king of Israel.

And so what it says is that toward the end of Jotham’s reign now Syria has been rebuilt. It’s strong again at Damascus at the up at the northern end of the northern tribes and both them and Israel the northern tribe begins to come against the southern tribe. Now historians have said and it’s I think it’s certainly true that the two kingdoms of Israel the northern kingdom of Israel and the northern kingdom of that Damascus which of course were not covenant people were pagans those two kingdoms wanted Judah to go in with them to for an alliance against Assyria.

Jotham refused to do that and so he kept out of that. But as a result then those two northern nations north of them, Israel and Damascus then began to go down and to make war against Judah. They didn’t want him not to stay out of the thing. Plus they wanted to uh then press their warfare against him. And so toward the end of Jotham’s reign that begins to occur. Now there’s a couple lessons here with King Jotham we want to point out just briefly here.

One lesson is that it does the nation little good to have a political figure who’s good even when the people are corrupt. Jotham basically ordered his ways according to God’s ways. He was a good king. But still toward the end of his reign, God begins to judge him. And that’s what the Chronicles passage says specifically that Damascus and Israel coming against Judah was God’s doing in terms of judgment.

He judges them not primarily because of Jotham’s failures, but because of the people’s failures. They continue to act corruptly. And so, for instance, an nation today. If we could elect a Jotham, a theonomic president who is basically pretty good, it wouldn’t do us any good in saving God’s judgment if the people continue corrupt. And that’s quite important to remember. Most countries have the kind of leaders they want long term.

And if they don’t have the love for freedom that drives them to throw up oppression, they’ll be oppressed and they’ll be tyrannized by dictators. Another implication though for the king himself is that as we said in 2 Kings 15:35, it says that he didn’t take down the high places. So the lesson here should be that to bask in the light of past glories. To fail thereby to vigorously push on and to drive out the high places of idolatrous worship is just a short step down the path to apostasy and destruction.

It’s not enough just to hold ground. You got to continue to progress under God. You’ve got to drive out those high places. And so it’s true of us. We’re beginning to order our ways right before God by understanding Psalm and how it applies. But if we don’t persevere, if we don’t push forward and drive the high places that we have left in our lives, like we said last week, those sins that easily beset us, that keep us from running the race effectively, if we don’t drive those out and continue to move forward and mature in the faith, God will judge us the way he judged the northern tribe of the northern kingdom of Judah.