Dennis Tuuri

# Micah 1:6-9

Therefore, I will make Samaria as a heap of the field, and as plantings of a vineyard, and I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley, and I will discover the foundations thereof, and all the graven images thereof shall be beaten to pieces, and all the hires thereof shall be burned with the fire, and all the idols thereof will I lay desolate, for she gathered of the hire of an harlot, and they shall return to the hire of an harlot.

Therefore, I will wail and howl. I will go stripped and naked. I will make a wailing like the dragons, and mourning as the owls. For her wound is incurable, for it is come unto Judah. He has come unto the gate of my people, even to Jerusalem.

The younger children may be dismissed now to go down to their Sabbath schools.

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This passage begins with the word “therefore,” and that means we should try to understand the context of the specific verses we’re going to be talking about. The context we’ve been talking about really for the last couple of weeks—one, the introduction to the book of Micah, and then the next four verses last week. And remember we said that verses 2 through 5 picture a court scene where God calls the whole world as witnesses against them from his holy throne. He’s the witness, he’s the judge, and he declares the judgment come upon them. And he then, after declaring this judgment, says that this is for the sin of Israel or Jacob, the sin being Samaria. Then it’s also for the sin of the southern kingdom as well, which is Jerusalem. And so the judgment is covenantal judgment. It begins with the house of God and will extend to the whole world. And so we see it beginning now with the judgment upon the house of God in these verses we look at this morning.

These verses describe the judgment that came upon Samaria in 721 BC, when after three years of a siege it was finally taken by Assyria and made a vassal state of Syria in a complete sense. Thousands and tens of thousands of Samaritans were deported at that point in time by the Assyrians, and they moved in people from other conquered lands to populate Samaria. And so these verses picture the destruction of Samaria. We’ll talk about that for a few minutes in terms of why Samaria was judged, and then we’ll draw some implications that the last verse of the passage of scripture that we read makes for Samaria, makes for Jerusalem and Israel, and also I think by way of application some application for what we see in America today as well.

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Samaria—we brought this out before—but in First Kings 16:24, we read where Omri, one of the kings of the Northern Kingdom, some fifty years, if my chronology is correct, after the establishment of the Northern Kingdom (that is, as the result of judgment upon Solomon and then judgment upon his son Rehoboam, who failed in his opportunity to have a united kingdom), made this separation.

Still, Jeroboam, as we said last week and the week before that, took the northern kingdom and made it completely separate in terms of establishing its own worship system as well. And that’ll be very important for what we’re going to talk about this morning. But in any event, then some years later, Omri became king, and in First Kings 16:24, he buys this plot of land and he then builds the new capital there at Samaria.

It had been at Shechem before that. And so Samaria was established as the capital of the northern kingdom, as we said last week. And it fell in 721 BC.

So Samaria, the picture of Samaria, is also the picture of the northern kingdom in a very real sense—God’s judgment or comment rather on the northern kingdom. And Samaria can be found in 2 Kings 17:20-23. So you might want to turn there.

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2 Kings 17:20-23. And the Lord rejected all the descendants of Israel and afflicted them and gave them into the hands of plunderers until he had cast them out of his sight. When he had torn Israel from the house of David, they made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king. Then Jeroboam drove Israel away from following the Lord and made them commit a great sin. And you remember Jeroboam: to strengthen his kingdom, he established alternative places of worship. He was afraid that the people went down to Jerusalem to worship still, which is what he was supposed to let them do, according to the prophet who had given him the message that God is going to put him in charge of the ten northern tribes.

He’s afraid that if he allowed that to continue, his own empire would be hurt. And so this great sin is the original imposition of a false system of worship involving two golden calves.

Verse 22: “The sons of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam, which he did, and they did not depart from him until the Lord removed Israel from his sight, as he spoke through all his servants the prophets. So Israel was carried away into exile from their own land to Assyria until the day.”

And so that’s basically the story of the northern kingdom in a nutshell. Jeroboam started them in sin. They continued in sin until God’s final judgment in 721 BC, and they were carried off to Assyria and were no longer a people ever again. That’s the history. That’s the outcome of the judgment upon Samaria that’s talked about in Micah 1 in the verses we just read.

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Now, the description of the downfall of Samaria begins in verse 6. “Therefore, I will make Samaria as a heap of the field, and as plantings of a vineyard.”

This same word is found in Psalm 79:1, where Jerusalem also will be made in heaps, as Psalm 79 tells us, by the enemies. But Psalm 79 clearly says that those enemies are operating as God’s wrath against Jerusalem. Jerusalem also will be made in heaps.

Joshua 8:28, when Joshua conquered Ai, he burned Ai and then made it into a heap and a desolation forever. Burning, a heap, and desolation. The same term is found in terms of the judgment against Samaria. So Samaria has become, as it were, like Ai. In other words, it’s become a pagan city totally, and so God’s wrath will come upon it.

We see that in the very first reference—that Samaria will be made as a heap of the field. Micah 3:12 says the same thing about Jerusalem. It’ll become a heap. And it says specifically the reason for that, in Micah 3:12, in reference to Jerusalem, is this:

“The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money. Yet will they lean upon the Lord and say, ‘Is not the Lord among us? None evil can come upon us.’ Therefore, shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.”

So in Micah 3, we read specifically, in reference to Jerusalem, the capital of the southern kingdom, that the failure of their prophets, the failure of their priests, and the failure of their kings will bring God’s wrath upon it. It will be made a heap. And a heap is a sign of utter destruction. The city is broken down. It’s burned. It’s ruined. It’s just become heaps in a field of stones, as it were.

The root word—the root of the word “heap”—means to turn over, to deviate from a way. In other words, to be bent or crooked from a particular way and therefore to overturn. The same root word is used in Ezekiel 21:27, which we should probably go ahead and read real quickly. This gives us kind of the overall judgment upon Samaria—what’s going on here.

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Ezekiel 21:26-27: “Thus sayeth the Lord God, remove the diadem and take off the crown. This shall not be the same. Exalt him that is low and abase him that is high. I will overturn, overturn, overturn it, and it shall be no more until he come whose right it is, and I will give it to him.”

Now, the word “diadem” and “crown” there refers to both the priest’s term and also the king’s crown. And so the priest and the high priest and the king are both overturned, as it were, according to the prophecy of Ezekiel, to make way for the one who would perform those offices righteously. And of course, that’s Jesus Christ, who combines both offices in himself.

The point is that part of the flow of history here—part of what’s going on in Samaria—is this overturning process that will eventually lead forward to the coming of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. After the final exile, the Babylonian exile of the southern kingdom as well. And so it’s part of this whole overturning process where men do things, they fall away from God, they sin, they’re judged by God, they’re overturned, everything is turned upside down, they’re made a heap through this overturning process, and God’s judgment comes upon them.

And that’s part of the historical flow until we get to Messiah’s time. And then Messiah begins to overturn all the kingdoms of the world around him.

We for instance read in the book of Acts where the men of the city said concerning the Christians at the time. I’m pretty familiar with this story because we named our younger son Benjamin. His middle name is Jason. And the house of Jason was where the Christians met. And the leaders of the Romans came to them and they said that these Christians have overturned the whole known world by preaching another king—one Jesus Christ.

And so when Jesus comes, he establishes the definitive king, the definitive high priest, and the definitive prophet. And then through his church, that message is preached. And he then overturns all the kingdoms around him through the preaching of the gospel.

But in any event, Samaria then is going to suffer the judgment of God and overturning, overturning, overturning. It becomes a heap then, as a result of God’s judgment.

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The imagery in these first few verses that we’re looking at this morning follows in specifics now to Samaria what the general terms in reference to the whole world are declared to be in the verses we looked at last week. Last week, in verses 2 through 4, it said that in verse 3, “the Lord comes down out of his place. He treads upon the high places of the earth. The mountains will be molten. The valleys will be clefted as wax before the fire, and as the waters that are poured down a steep place.”

Okay, so you’ve got this image of God coming, shaking the mountains, clefting the valleys. The mountains tumble down and get eroded away into the valleys. There’s this downward movement of God’s judgment upon the whole world eventually. And here in Samaria, it gets very specific in terms of God’s judgment against the city of Samaria where you have the actual walls of the city being pictured as going down the valleys, becoming a heap, as it were, at the bottom of the hill.

Remember, we talked about this before, but Samaria is built originally upon a hill—about 300 feet up where the hill was—and so this image of God coming upon it, as a smaller mountain as it were, overturning the high places of the northern kingdom, which was Samaria, the representative or covenantal head, and then this judgment causing the flowing down of those people being abased and washed into the valleys. The high people shall be abased. And so Samaria’s judgment is that the city is abased.

The word “poor” refers to the same sort of thing. It refers to a judgmental word. In the verse we see that God will make a heap of the field, “as plantings of a vineyard.” So it won’t be a cultivated, a civilized area anymore. It’ll become agricultural. That’s the imagery involved here.

And then “I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley.” This judgmental process of washing down the high places, as it were. “And I’ll discover the foundations thereof.” It’s interesting. The word used here for foundations is only used thirteen times in this form in the Old Testament. And eight of those times refers to the bottom or base of the altar in the temple and in the tabernacle.

Now, I think that’s real important to remember that the only firm foundation we have is in true worship—the altar, worship and consecration to the true God who would send his Messiah to be sacrificed on that altar. And so Jesus Christ is the only foundation. Of course, the New Testament makes that quite clear.

Samaria’s foundations are uncovered. The word “discover” actually means to uncover the foundations. And it becomes obvious what the foundations of the city are when compared to the wrath of God. They don’t stand in the wrath of God. In opposition, of course, to that, we know that the righteous—they have a firm foundation, and they will stand no matter what happens around them.

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Proverbs 10:25 tells us that “when the whirlwind passes by, the wicked are no more, but the righteous have an everlasting foundation.” Their foundation is that foundation at the base of the altar, as it were. It’s in God and his approach to worship. It’s in Jesus Christ, the sacrifice that would come and take his place upon that altar. That’s the firm foundation. And the righteous have an everlasting foundation. In times of judgment, they stand firm.

Samaria was not righteous. Samaria’s foundation was found wanting by God, and so it was destroyed.

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Psalm 137 describes the people in the Babylonian captivity. Now, remember, Samaria is the northern kingdom, the capital of the northern kingdom. Jerusalem is the capital of the southern kingdom. Samaria falls in 721 BC, and Jerusalem hangs on till the 500s. And so it’s another 150 years before Jerusalem goes into captivity.

Now, when Samaria is conquered, it’s by the Assyrians. The people, as we said, many of them—tens of thousands—are deported to Assyria. The southern kingdom, when it falls, those people are deported to Babylon. And so Psalm 137 talks about after this whole process that’s being talked about in Micah 1, this progressive process of starting at Samaria, going to Jerusalem, and then judging the Assyrians as well.

When that whole process is complete, the people that were in Jerusalem are now in Babylon. And Psalm 137 describes them weeping besides the rivers of Babylon. And verse 7 says that they remember and ask God to remember the men of Edom. That’s a figurative term there, Edom, for an enemy of God. They were really Babylonians, of course. The men of Edom who said to Jerusalem, “Raise it, raise it even to its foundations.”

The point is that Psalm 137 shows that Jerusalem also was raised down to its very foundations. Its foundations were improper before God, and so it was judged. But the people that God uses to judge it also will be judged for their judgment upon Jerusalem. They asked for the razing. They wanted the razing—the destruction down to the foundations of Samaria and then Jerusalem. And then finally, the Assyrians will be judged in the same way, and their very foundations will be washed away.

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Now, this all should keep us pointed toward what these things all point toward, which is the coming of Jesus Christ. Remember, Jesus said in Matthew 24:2, speaking of the beautiful city Jerusalem and of the temple, that not one stone would be left upon another. You see, God’s judgment would come in AD 70 upon the apostate city of Jerusalem, having rejected the Messiah in this same fashion. And so we read of this judgment—we read upon the judgment coming upon Jerusalem as well, 150 years later.

But we also read further down along in history to the coming of Messiah, his rejection, and then Jerusalem in AD 70 is also judged in the same fashion—God coming down, making a heap of the city, and total destruction in Jerusalem.

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These verses then describe the judgment of Samaria. And I think it’s important we recognize why they were judged. They were judged, first of all, because of their belief in material prosperity.

Material prosperity. Turn with me to Isaiah 28:1-4, please. You’ll see a picture of Samaria as it stood before this judgment.

Isaiah 28:1-4: “Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a fading flower, which are on the head of the fat valleys of them that are overcome with wine. Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one, which as a tempest of hail and a destroying storm, as a flood of mighty waters overflowing shall cast down to the earth with the hand. The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim shall be trodden underfoot. And the glorious beauty which is on the head of the fat valley shall be a fading flower, and as the hasty fruit before the summer, which, when he that looketh upon it seeth, while it is yet in his hand, he eateth it up.”

See, this is a picture upon judgment upon Samaria. Ephraim is used as one of the words that Isaiah uses for the northern kingdom. And the northern kingdom center is Samaria, and it’s the crown set upon the hill. It’s the garland, as it were, on the head of the fat valleys of them that are overcome with wine.

And there’s an image here that you should get in your mind. These people are drunk. You’ve seen drunkards sometime wear garlands upon their head. They get stupid drunk, but lampshades, okay? Lampshades on the head. And so Samaria is pictured here as the lampshade on the head, the garland of the head of the drunken northern tribes.

Now, they probably did engage themselves in actual drunkenness, but there’s much more than that being talked about here. They’re drunk, as it were, with their worship, with the idolatrous images they had created. But the point is that they were a beautiful thing, a pretty lampshade, a beautiful garland, and Samaria was that kind of cap, as it were, to the northern kingdom.

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We said that Samaria was built by Omri, and he had two reasons really for his location of relocating the capital to Samaria from where it had been before. One reason was that it was then in the way of many trade routes. It then became the center of trading activity, and so it became very prosperous. It was a prosperous city. It overlooked a rich plain and a valley. The valley below Samaria off this hill was a very rich plain. Many things would grow there abundantly. And so it had a lot of material prosperity to it. It was a great, lofty crown, like Isaiah 28 tells us here.

The word “crown of pride” could be better translated as “a lofty crown.” They saw themselves as high, and they’re going to be abased. But the point is that one of the reasons they saw themselves as high is because they were—they had this glorious beauty, material prosperity. They’re at the head of a growing, luxurious valley, as it were, almost as the garden of God. And so that was one of the reasons why he put it there.

It’s interesting also that in First Kings 20:34, we’re told that Omri, when he established the capital rather at Samaria, allowed the Syrians to set up bazaars in this new city while he was constructing it. Took about six years, I think, to build it. So First Kings 20:34 tells us that he established it there. We know because of the trade routes, he also then brought in bazaars from Syria, a foreign land of course with idolatrous people in it, to set up markets in Samaria and make it a prosperous place.

And so it was. For instance, Ahab continued his construction which Omri had begun. Ahab was Omri’s son, and Ahab built a house decorated or paneled with ivory. Okay. So it was a very luxurious place, as shown by the house that Ahab had built there.

So Samaria was judged for its reliance upon material prosperity. It was placed there for material prosperity in trade routes, bazaars, etc. But secondly, Omri put it there because it was on a hill and that was a good place for defensive purposes. And so he thought it would make a very good defensible capital. And indeed, it was. It wasn’t until 721 that Samaria was actually taken by anybody. So it lasted, you know, several hundred years there in where it was, and then in 721, it took a three-year siege by the Assyrians, who were real good at bringing down capitals of competitive nations. It took a three-year siege by them to bring Samaria to its knees and make them become a vassal state.

And so they also relied upon their national defense as a source of their security. Their foundation was material prosperity. Their foundation was national defense—a good, defendable location.

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Ezekiel 13:14 says that the prophets that told Jerusalem “peace, peace where there is no peace,” they’re compared to those who put untempered mortar on walls. And when God’s judgment comes, that untempered mortar falls to pieces. All reliance for defense upon anything other than the express word of God is judged by God in history. That’s what history is all about—judging those false idols and bringing them to destruction.

So Samaria’s foundations of material prosperity and national defense were tried by God, and they were found wanting, as verse 6 tells us.

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But this wasn’t the extent of Samaria’s judgment. It wasn’t just for material prosperity and national defense. Essentially, Samaria’s judgment was because of religious syncretism. And that religious syncretism was brought into ruin, which is the second point of our outline. And that’s talked about in verse 7.

“All the graven images shall be beaten to pieces. All the hires thereof shall be burned with the fire. All the idols thereof will I lay desolate. For she gathered of the hire of an harlot, and they shall return to the hire of an harlot.”

Now, you remember last week when we said that the essence of Samaria and Jerusalem’s sin before God is false worship. It’s a violation of the second commandment in terms of idolatry. That’s the essence of why God’s judgment comes first upon the covenant people and then upon the whole world as well—because of their false images and their false idols. The primary sin being talked about throughout these couple of sections here is worship problems, a failure to approach God correctly, mixing worship of God with false idols, and bringing those things into some kind of syncretistic order. That means putting them together into one thing—trying to alloy, as it were, worship of God with the worship of demons.

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Now, I said last week that some people don’t like that reference in verse in the first couple of verses of Micah that we talked about last week, and they don’t want to—they want to say that Micah didn’t really write that. Well, the same thing’s true about this particular verse. Several commentators that I’ve read say that, well, this verse here, verse 7, is just stuck in there by a later redactor between verses 6 and 8, because we know Micah’s real concern was social sin and not religious sin.

But see, that’s imposing a worldview upon the book of Micah. We want Micah to speak for himself in the inspired word of God. And the inspired word of God says that Samaria’s judgment comes upon it because of its idolatry.

The idolatry is described in a threefold fashion. First, there are graven images. There are hires. And they are called idols. I don’t know if we can get real specific in terms of breaking out what these three things refer to separately, but I think that we have a threefold witness to their idolatry here for sure.

Remember, God says it by the mouths of two or three. All things are confirmed. And so we have a threefold message here that Samaria was in idolatry. And that means it was in deep idolatry. It was idolatrous to the core in terms of mixing the religion of Jehovah with the religion of other gods.

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By the way, in Isaiah 10:10, we won’t turn to it now, but Assyria—the judgment that comes upon Assyria—is also said by God to be religious judgment. So even though we have a pagan, unconverted nation in Assyria, Isaiah 10 says the judgment of God comes upon Assyria also for her religious sins, primarily her rejection of the God of history.

Micah 5:12 says that same thing—that Assyria will be judged for its graven images. Maybe we should turn to that real quick.

Micah 5:12: “I will cut off witchcraft out of thine hand. Thou shalt have no more soothsayers. Thy graven images also I will cut off, and thy standing images out of the midst of thee, and thou shalt no more worship the work of thine hands. I will pluck up thy groves. I will destroy thy cities. I will execute vengeance and anger and fury upon the heathen such as they have not heard.”

You see, these descriptions in Micah, which we’ll get to several months down the line here, are talking about God’s judgment upon the nations. Now, having described the judgment upon Israel and Samaria and then Jerusalem and Judah in the northern and the southern kingdom in these first few chapters, in chapter 5, he turns to the heathen nations, and they’re also judged for their religious idolatry and the rejection of the true God.

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Now, we also then, as a result of this, we have a threefold picture of idolatry: engraven images, hires, and then idols. And maybe I should just say a word about “hires.” That’s not a word we’re particularly familiar with. It’s a word that’s basically repeated toward the end of verse 7, which in a summary statement—all of her idolatry is really the hires of an harlot. “Hires” referred to the wages that a harlot would receive. And I think what we’re being told here is that Samaria, and later Jerusalem as well, the very hires, the reward for her idolatry, then became a source of idolatry to her.

Let me give you an example. Hosea 2:12: “I will destroy her vines and her fig trees, whereof she hath said, these are my rewards that my lovers have given me. I’ll make them a forest, and the beast of the field shall eat them.”

You see what happens with harlotry is you get rewards for harlotry. You get wages, and then you start to worship those wages themselves. The way that Samaria and Jerusalem then began to rely upon these vines and the orchards and things that she thought was a result of blessing from Baal upon her—blessing from these other false gods—then you start to rely upon those things in terms of material prosperity. And so “hires” there refers to idolatry in that sense.

There’s a threefold judgment of God upon this though. We’re told that the graven images are beat to pieces. We’re told that the hires are burned with fire. And we’re told that the idols will be laid desolate. Okay. The idols thereof I will lay desolate. And so you’ve got a threefold image of idolatry in correlation to that. You got a threefold image of destruction, beginning with breaking into pieces.

And of course, when the Assyrians would come to a land, they would break things up. They would break what they could into pieces. They would then burn what they couldn’t break into pieces and haul away. They’d burn that part of the city with fire. And whatever is left is just laid desolate—just laying desolate there. And so you have this progression in judgment as well that pictures the Assyrians coming to a land and wreaking their havoc upon it.

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It’s interesting that in Joel 2:3 talks about a land that was once like the garden of Eden becomes a desolate wilderness, and the cause at that time was a locust plague. Desolation in the scriptures is a picture of returning to an unregenerate state. It’s returning to being out of covenant favor, as it were, with God. It’s a movement from the garden into the howling wilderness. And so Samaria, while it thinks it’s a garden, Jerusalem, while it thinks it’s a garden, becomes a desolate place.

You know, one of the images of that should be real easy for us to think through a little bit is the land of Israel now. If you look at pictures from Israel now, it looks like a terrible, desolate place. But you know, it wasn’t always like that. At one time it was quite luxurious. And yet after their destruction in AD 70, there was progressive judgment by God, and progressively the land became more and more desolate. It moved from being a garden area, as it were, with trees and everything, to becoming desolate.

Apparently the beginning of much of that destruction of the land was the removal of literally thousands of trees to crucify Christians upon at the time of the Roman invasion. And so the removal of those trees first, then later the trees were taxed. People couldn’t afford to have trees, so people wouldn’t have trees anymore. They couldn’t have them. They had to cut them down. And so eventually the trees were stripped off the land. And trees, of course, the removal of trees means you have erosion and you have tremendous downward deterioration of your fertile area. And that’s what’s happened to Jerusalem. And it’s part of the historic judgment of God upon a nation and upon an area that rejected Messiah.

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And then finally, we’re told that there’s threefold idolatry. There’s threefold judgment that comes upon it. And then we’re told in the summary sentence at the end of verse 7 rather: “For she gathered of the hire of a harlot and they shall return to the hire of a harlot.”

And perhaps part of the imagery here that’s being used to picture what he’s talking about is that if you had idols and you had idols made of silver and gold and you’d retrieve those silver and gold through harlotry, with false religions, then when the Assyrians come through as soldiers or want to, they take things like that, they would melt them down, use them for coins, and then actually hire prostitutes. And so they do return to harlotry in a literal sense.

But overall, I think what we’re told here, obviously, is that whatever gain we get that’s ill-gotten, that’s improper from God, is not gained to us. But lo, but it is indeed loss. And so the ill-gotten gains of Samaria are turned into losses by God’s historic judgment.

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I would mention, by the way, in terms of this religious syncretism that Samaria is suffering judgment for: the book of Hosea is a contemporaneous sort of prophecy against the northern kingdom from within the northern kingdom prior to its fall. And Hosea is an excellent book to go through and look at what they were doing in terms of religious syncretism.

Specifically in Hosea 2:7 and 10, we won’t take the time to look it up now, but you’ll see there that they were worshiping God as if he were Baal. And so you have this admixture, as it were, between proper worship and improper worship. And all this is harlotry. God says he refuses to be mixed with other religions.

Now, it’s interesting that if you remember—and I’ve mentioned this a couple of times, probably the impact hasn’t quite struck home yet—First Kings 12:25. Let’s look at it again. And this is the establishment of the northern kingdom by Jeroboam and his false worship.

First Kings 12:25: “Then Jeroboam built Shechem in Mount Ephraim and dwelt therein and went out from then and built Penuel. And Jeroboam said in his heart, ‘Now shall the kingdom return to the house of David. If this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the Lord of Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn again into their unto their lord, even unto Rehoboam, king of Judah, and they shall kill me, and go again to Rehoboam, king of Judah.’ Whereupon the king took counsel and made two calves of gold and said unto them, ‘It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.’”

Now, what I want you to realize here is that Jeroboam has a larger purpose that he is serving besides worship of these false idols. Jeroboam’s idolatry does not begin with these golden calves. Jeroboam’s idolatry begins with the security of the national state that he has of Israel. Okay? He is concerned for his kingdom, his civil affairs, as it were.

And as a result of his concern for that, he creates false worship to draw people away from worshiping God in Jerusalem. But that worship is a civil religion in that it serves the civil state’s purposes. You see what I’m saying? Jeroboam brought religious worship in its formalized sense under the dominion of state worship. He had the security of the state as his primary motivating factor, and he brought his religion under that factor.

So what’s his idol? His idol is the civil state and the security of his own kingdom. That’s Jeroboam’s initial idol.

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Now, when God judges Samaria, it is with Assyria. We’ve talked a lot about this the last two weeks. We won’t spend a lot of time on it now, but remember that Assyria’s whole deal is religious warfare. Remember, the king of Assyria is called the great dragon, the great serpent, all these other high deity titles that he ascribes to himself. He attempts to bring all of the religions under himself. He’s a bigger Jeroboam, is what he is. And so the northern kingdom started with a man who worshiped the civil state, as it were, made that his idol. And it ends being judged by Assyria, which brings all religions and all idolatrous worship in a syncretistic fashion under the king himself, under the civil state. You see, it’s lex talionis. It’s eye for an eye. It’s the law of the land here in work.

God brings the people to judge them because that’s what the sin they were involved with—religious syncretism. These passages from Micah in verse 7 show that God is ringing an indictment against any people or nation that puts anything in the place of him. And it doesn’t have to be a carved image. It doesn’t have to be a golden thing. Jeroboam’s original idolatry was the civil state. And Assyria’s idolatry will be the civil state as well.

And so it was more than happy to bring in some of Jehovah’s worship patterns. And in fact, we won’t take the time to look it up, but later on just that happened. After Assyria had made Samaria a vassal state, there was a people that were said, “Well, there’s lions in the streets. We’ve got to do some sacrificing here the right way.” And he let them sacrifice to God in the way they thought they should sacrifice to him, the governor of the land.

The point I’m trying to make is that they didn’t try to make everything uniform in terms of their religious structure. They let you do whatever you wanted to do as long as it served the purposes of the civil state. Okay, that’s Assyria. And that was the northern kingdom as well. And so God through Micah here sounds the judgment upon idolatry—a threefold witness to Samaria’s idolatry and its resultant threefold judgment from God.

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It’d be a good idea to look up a little bit more of what this religious perversion was, both in Samaria and then as it affected Jerusalem as well. And look just within the book of Micah, Micah 3:11.

Micah 3:11: “The heads thereof judge for reward. The priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money. We just read this, didn’t we? Yet will they lean upon the Lord and say, ‘Is not the Lord among us? None evil can come upon us.’”

You see, part of the religious perversion of Jerusalem and then prior to that in Samaria was an easy believism—a security of the believer. Once saved, always saved, if you will. Once covenant people, always covenant people. And we can do whatever we want in terms of prophet, priest, and king. Rule whatever we want. Say whatever we want to say God’s word says, against him, even though it isn’t God’s word. Prophesy against God, and everything, but isn’t God still among us? Don’t we still name his name? Don’t we still perform some of those same religious functions that he wanted us to perform? Don’t we have the covenant sign amongst us in this covenant community? Aren’t we God’s people? Is he among us?

Easy believism was part of the religious perversion and idolatry of the people of Jerusalem and also the people of Samaria.

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A misrepresentation of God’s message is found in that portion and also in verse 5 of Micah 3.

“Thus saith the Lord, concerning the prophets that make my people err, that bite with their teeth and cry peace. And he that putteth not into their mouths, they even prepare war against him. They bite with their teeth and cry peace.”

They proclaim what is not God’s proclamation. Peace when there is no peace. Peace when they’re biting you with their teeth.

And then as we just read in verse 11: “for hire the priests teach for hire. The prophets divine for money.”

They don’t speak God’s word. And as a result, they misrepresent God to nation that they’re ministering in the context of. So you’ve got easy believism on the part of the people and the priests and the prophets and the king. You’ve got a misrepresentation of the word of God—saying black is white. When the God’s word says black, they say it’s white. When God’s word said judgment’s coming, they say peace be upon you.

Self-reliance. Micah 5:10-13: “It shall come to pass in that day, sayeth the Lord, that I’ll cut off thy horses out of the midst of thee, and I’ll destroy thy chariots. I will cut off the city of the land and throw down all thy strongholds. I will cut off witchcrafts out of thine hand. Thou shalt have no more soothsayers. Thy graven images also I will cut off, and thy standing images out of the midst of thee, and thou shalt no more worship the work of thine hands. I will pluck up thy groves. I will destroy thy cities.”

We read some of that before, referring to Assyria, but also referring to Jerusalem and Samaria, as we’ve touched upon this briefly already. The idea that their own hand, their own prosperity, their own national defense would serve them in times of trouble—self-reliance instead of reliance upon God.

Okay. Easy believism, a misrepresentation of God’s word, and self-reliance were part of the idolatrous practices of Samaria that were found wanting by God and judged as a result of it.

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To give people a picture of this, Micah then says in verse 8: “Therefore, I will wail and howl. I will go stripped and naked. I will make a wailing like the dragons and mourning as the owls.”

The word “wail” there is a typical mourning phrase. It’s used usually in relationship to death. The word “stripped” usually indicates bare of foot. And so he goes both barefoot and also naked in the sense of just having a loincloth about them.

Job 12 shows, we won’t look it up now, but Job 12 shows that same image of people being led away captive both stripped and naked. Those same Hebrew words are used there, plundered, as it were, and being overcome by other people.

What this picture shows—and by the “dragons” there, most translators think that word is actually jackals, and “owls” there is probably ostrich. Okay. So what’s going on here is that Micah says, “I’m going to wail and howl. I’m going to go stripped and naked. I’m going to give verbal assent to mourning. I’m going to show you that we’re going to be stripped and naked, and we’re going to make a wailing like the jackals and mourning like the ostriches, screeching.”

I should probably do some of that, but I won’t do it. The point is, first of all, that he’s picturing God’s curse upon the people. Wailing is for death. And what he’s saying is that Samaria is going to be judged unto death here. Okay.

Some of these images—for instance, the jackal and the ostrich—these are unclean animals. Okay. And also other scriptures tell us that when God’s judgment comes upon a people in a full sense, then the unclean animals—the beasts of the field, as it were—come in and start dwelling in the city.

Jeremiah, we won’t look up the references, but Jeremiah 9:10 and 11, for instance, says that Jerusalem becomes a wilderness and desolation. It’ll be made a heap of ruins and a den of jackals. And there’s lots of scriptures that talk about that in terms of the incursion of wild beasts into a land that’s judged.

Isaiah 34:13 says: “Their thrones will come down to her palaces. Nettles and brambles will be in its fortresses. It’ll be a habitation of jackals and a courtyard of ostriches. The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the jackals.”

So this idea of making sounds like these beasts pictures to the people that these beasts, in accordance to Deuteronomy 28, are going to be part of the curse that God brings upon Samaria and then also upon Jerusalem. So he’s making a sound like these wild beasts that invade. He’s making mourning sounds to remind them of death. He’s going stripped and naked to remind them that they’re going to go into captivity.

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Isaiah 20:1-5: Isaiah goes around naked and barefoot for three years, in Isaiah 20, the first five verses, to demonstrate how God would bring that particular fate and its accompanying shame upon Egypt through the king of Assyria. So Isaiah also engaged in this picture, as it were, to the people around: “This is what’s going to happen to Egypt. And Micah is saying this is what’s going to happen to Samaria, and this is what’s going to happen to Jerusalem. We’re not going to have feet on. We’re going to have a loincloth around us.” And that’s a picture of being taken into captivity by a marauding nation.

So he pictures to them God’s curse through this picture of his personal wailing, as it were.

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Now, I thought about this in relationship to Francis Schaeffer’s movie that several of us saw a couple of years ago. Was that called “A Time for Anger”? Francis Schaeffer’s movie. Was that what it was called?

“How Should We Then Live?” or “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?”

I’m not sure. I know we saw another one that was called “Wired to Kill.” That’s what it was. “Wired to Kill.” That was a very uncomfortable movie. And I’m not condoning everything he did in that movie. But I think maybe what he’s trying to do there, and maybe what—and certainly what the prophets did in their time—was to show a picture to the people of what would happen in terms of God’s judgment upon them if they didn’t come to repentance.

And so Micah made sounds that reminded them of the wild animals that would invade. He stripped himself to show they’d be plundered. He wailed and howled, showing that this society would be judged by God into death. And so Francis Schaeffer makes a movie and says, “Look at folks. This is what’s happening down the line here if we don’t turn and turn quickly.” I think that’s probably what he was trying to do. It would be a prophetic voice to us.

And we have to understand that the prophets often times worked in that way. And so we see these. We have to realize that’s what’s going on. But secondly, if it’s a picture of God’s judgment and God’s curse upon man, it’s also a call to repentance.

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Isaiah 32:9-15 in that particular portion of scripture, the complacent women are told to mourn for the pleasant fields and the fruitful vine, the lands that will become thorns and briars. The idea is that these are complacent people. And Micah comes to a people that are complacent and slow in their reaction to sin. So he gives them this picture to bring them to repentance.

Hopefully, Calvin, quoting on this particular portion of scripture, says: “The prophet here assumes the character of a mourner that he might more deeply impress the Israelites, for we have seen that they were almost insensible in their torpidity, in their slowness. It was therefore necessary that they should be brought to view the scene itself, that seeing their destruction before their eyes, they might be touched both with grief and fear. Lamentations of this kind are everywhere to be met with in the prophets, and they ought to be carefully noticed.

“For we hence gather how great was the torpor of men in as much as it was necessary to awaken them by this form of speech in order to convince them that they had to do with God. They would have otherwise continued to flatter themselves with delusions. Though indeed the prophet here addresses the Israelites, we ought yet to apply this to ourselves. For we are yet we are not much unlike this ancient people. For however God may terrify us with dreadful threat, we will remain quiet in our filth. It is therefore needful that we should be severely treated for we are almost void of feelings.”