Dennis Tuuri

I meant to make an announcement prior to the beginning of the service and I’ll just make it now as we’re waiting for the line to finish up going downstairs that we have a short meeting with the covenant people of the church members of the church after the question and answer time this morning. Just a little informational stuff that should go on. Every family should have some sort of representative there though I’d like that to be true and that does mean both husband and wife have to be there, but if you want to, that’s fine, too.

But we’ll do that after the question and answer time. We continue this morning going through the book of Micah. And we have been very consistently reading of judgment for the last well for the total of this book so far, the first chapter and a half. And I suppose that if you were to get up in the middle of Portland or the middle of Washington DC or the middle of Salem and start saying some of these things and predicting what Micah predicted to come upon the nation, you would encounter what he encounters in the verses that we’re going to look at this morning, verses 6 and 7.

Your outline has two descriptive sayings for each of the four central points. The first one is a call for the muzzling of the message of judgment or shut up Micah. And I don’t there’s two reasons why I put that second title on there. One is because I think we’re getting more and more of the children as they’re growing up to sit in on this portion of the service and we like to help them to understand what’s being said here and that helps but also because this is the way sort of these verses read apparently and I don’t know Hebrew but the commentators all say that this is the way these verses read.

There’s a series of fairly staccato sort of words here very strong words and so it’s this kind of you know shut up stop saying these things don’t prophesy like that and the people that are saying this are themselves supposed prophets. And so this is kind of a repartee as it were back and forth between Micah and some men who don’t want him to say what he’s saying to, and remember we talked last week about the specific context.

Now, beginning of these verses is the first five verses of Micah 2, which Micah addresses to those who would violate the second tablet and oppress the poor. We’ll read more about that next week, but those who would covet lands and houses and inheritance and take them to the else and so grasping at land and possessions and this sort of thing in violation of the second tablet of the law and of course obviously also in violation of the first tablet of the law but those people are not the ones apparently that interject here and tell Micah to shut up apparently it’s a different group there’s a parallel verse to this first part of this verse prophesy you not say they to them that prophesy in Isaiah 30:10 and remember Isaiah was contemporary with Micah in Isaiah 30:10 we read you must not prophesy to us what is right.

Speak to us pleasant words. Prophesy illusions. Get out of the way. Criticize from the path. Let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel. And of course, this isn’t meant to be a literal restatement by Isaiah what’s being said. But this is in essence what these people are saying. Don’t speak God’s word to us. Don’t make us aware of the holy one of Israel in the midst of the covenant people in terms of judgment.

Now, this is a fairly as I said carnal and natural and frequent response to prophecies of judgment upon a people or upon a nation. There’s various motivations that men have for wanting to shut up, as it were, the mouth of the prophet, the word of God, as it were in that particular culture. There’s various motivations to try to suppress the teaching of God’s word and the implications of it. Some of those motivations I’ve listed on your outline.

Money, the specific context here indicate that there are land grabbers that these land grabbers are apparently being supported or collusion somehow at these men who are saying don’t prophesy these things. And so they have a vested interest in the particular order that is being challenged by the prophetic word of God. And so that particular special interest they have in terms of wealth or accumulations or possessions causes them to want to refrain from the call of God’s judgment upon that particular situation.

Secondly, we have the motivation of ease. We could call the first one the way that Schaeffer did affluence and the second one personal peace. The ease that we have in the culture honest that is terribly sinful and yet can be an easy culture to live in as it was in the days of Micah for those who are on top as it were. Don’t bother us. We prefer to leave our eyes closed to the world around us. And there’s some fear probably involved here as well as some people.

And you run across that today when you tell people that America is on the road to judgment. You have people that frightens men and women who have grown up in the church and don’t understand these things and don’t understand the imminency of God’s judgment and they don’t want to be bothered. They just want to have a nice quiet life. And indeed, there’s often times say unspoken alliance between many churches and their pastors.

You know, you can preach a fine interesting sermons, but don’t bother us. And if you bother us personally, then we have to be woken up as it were from our sin, and we don’t like that. So, don’t do that. So, there’s there’s this alliance with the preacher has certain limits he can preach within the context of. Personal peace or ease is another motivation to stop the word of God or attempt to. Cheap grace is another motivation.

We talked about this before. We’ll talk about it later in the book of Micah. But cheap grace posits a God who doesn’t judge. And so there’s a different belief system at work here. And when the church has an idea of cheap grace apart from God’s judgment, that also will then call for those who preach God’s judgment and that there is costly grace. It costs God something. It costs us something to participate in that life of grace.

And those people are attempted to be silenced by the apostate church that teaches a gospel of cheap grace. Man’s way is another motivation. He may say, “Yeah, things are bad.” Yes, God wants things to change. Yes, in spite of all the financial benefit we may get from things being bad, we still think things should change, but there’s a proper way to go about these things. You know, you’re not going to change people by confronting them.

You’re not going to change people by preaching that God will judge this particular kind of sin. You want to have good motivational techniques. You always stress the positive. You want to read Dale Carnegie’s book, you know, how to win friends and influence people. And so, Micah, don’t you realize that your way isn’t the right way? The psychologists tell us that man needs to be built up in his own self assertion of himself.

You know, we don’t we have people today who don’t love themselves. And so, we got to tell them, love yourself. You know, yeah, I hate the sin that you’re doing, but love yourself the sinner. And you have to accept yourself the way you are. And because you’re not preaching that, Micah, because you’re saying that these sinners will be judged by God. You don’t understand the psychology involved here. You don’t understand how we’re supposed to be lovers of self.

Never mind that’s a description of the last days, of course, when men fall away from the faith that they’ll be lovers themselves. And never mind the scriptures teach that men do love themselves. Point is, there’s a better way that the prophets who would attempt to silence the false prophets who attempt to silence God’s prophets, there’s a better way they would posit going about change and it’s not in accordance with the preaching of judgment.

And the fifth motivation is the embarrassment of a God of judgment. And this will never be admitted to of course, but I think it embarrasses, for instance, the contemporary church that we live in today to speak of a god who intercedes in terms of judgment. Somehow that just isn’t, you know, modern. That’s not what we believe anymore. It’s not what the culture wants to hear. It’s embarrassing to us to posit a god of wrath and to posit a god who would come and bring judgment upon a land.

It embarrasses us. And so we don’t like to preach the word of God in judgment. And you can think through situations that you’ve been involved with in your neighborhood perhaps or community events or in your own household perhaps and maybe spot elements of all these particular motivations in yourself. You know, they’re natural to the sinful man and we still have an element of that laying with us and we’ve got to root it out.

And so as we go through these lists of motivations. Remember that we’re not just talking about the other guy. The reformation reconstruction begins at home with yourself. God is a God of judgment regardless of how much we may be embarrassed by him. Those that are embarrassed by him will be embarrassed by him. Lex Talionis, the law of retaliation, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. If you’re embarrassed by God, you will be embarrassed by him, by his judgment.

Amos, another contemporary in the northern kingdom now as opposed to Micah in the southern kingdom primarily. Amos in chapter 7:12 the king Amaziah said to Amos don’t do this he said the same thing that these men were saying to Micah the same thing that Isaiah’s people told him don’t prophesy these things and Amaziah said don’t prophesy these terrible things about what’s going to happen to our land well God is a God of judgment though Amaziah had lots of bad motivations to try to prevent the preaching of God’s judgment Amos turned right around and told Amaziah what his particular form of judgment would be.

Amaziah was to have a wife who became a prostitute in the city. Amaziah’s sons and daughters would fall by the sword. Amaziah himself was going to die in an unclean land of the people over which he ruled were to go into exile. You see, no matter how much we may try to stop the word of God, God’s word is effective and God is a God of judgment. I said in Isaiah 30:10, we had the saying of the people then, don’t prophesy these things.

Prophesy smooth things to us, deceitful things, lies and illusions. The verse goes on to read, “Therefore, since you have put your trust in oppression and guile, iniquity will be to you like a bulge on a high wall whose collapse comes suddenly in an instant. You may think that it’s going to help you to walk in security by silencing the word of God’s prophetic judgment, but all you buy yourself is a false security.

And you buy yourself a security that will be one day brought to a rapid close and end.” You know, I was going to we had before hear a pot and I broke this pot. But you know the scripture that goes on in Isaiah and other passages like this say that when that pot is smashed of that man who’s embarrassed by the word of judgment and doesn’t want to hear it. When his pot is smashed, we don’t end up with broken pieces sitting on the floor.

The scriptures say there’s no shards left of that particular individual. It is a total smashing to judgment. It comes upon him quickly. We had a picture of that last week, didn’t we? In the tragedy that happened down in the southern part of the country, I guess it was with the store where the wall filled up with a ceiling, I guess, a roof filled up with water. It collapsed on people. And that’s what’s being talked about here, like a bulge in a high wall.

All of a sudden, you’re walking around in supposed security, but because you’ve neglected the prophetic word of God in judgment, one day, bam, that wall falls and you’re crushed and destruction has come rapidly upon you. I’m not saying those people were judged by God. But I’m just saying that’s a picture of what Isaiah says is a direct result of ignoring the prophetic word of God. God is a God of judgment.

And all these motivations will be found wanting in his sight and actually increase the judgment upon the people that attempt to silence the word of God. But it’s not just people themselves who are silencing the word of God. Amaziah the king or others in Isaiah 30, but these particular verses talk about them that prophesy being the ones who say don’t prophesy. It’s false prophets. In other words, false people that teach a different word of God as it were.

And this brings us to the second point, the complicity of the false prophet or Amos’ or Micah’s response rather, which is shut me up and they die. You have complicity in their judgment because of your failure to be a true prophet of God. Now, we know that this is the case that there are false prophets involved both from the language in verse 6, but also from this the end of this particular portion of these few verses in verse 11.

So, if you look down a couple of verses to verse 11, if a man walking in the spirit and falsehood do lie, saying, I will prophesy unto thee of wine or strong drink, he shall even be the prophet of this people. See, Micah begins and ends the second part of the condemnation of the violation of the second tablet from verses 6-11 with references to false prophets. And so the it is the prophets the supposed prophets themselves who are prophesying falsely who are telling Micah not to prophesy be like today having pastors who tell other pastors don’t preach judgment because we’re embarrassed by it or God’s not a god of judgment he’s a god of cheap grace or whatever.

And by the way there in verse 11 it actually a better translation might be if a man walking in wind in lies in the spirit and falsehood. Wind is what the word there is spirit. Falsehood is lies. And so the false prophet is the one who walks in wind. No substance to what he’s doing and he lies. Okay. What are some of the elements of the complicity of the false prophet? He is a complicitist. He is responsible as it were for the judgment to the death of those around him.

First of all because he’s failing to give a positive witness. You know God’s law says thou shalt not bear false witness. But an implication of that is the catechisms and creeds. the historic church has so clearly pointed out is that we have to give a positive witness to what God tells us to do. the psalms tells that if we see a thief and don’t speak out against him, we’ve actually participated as it were in his deeds of unrighteousness.

And so we have an obligation to speak a positive witness, not just to not speak a false witness. And of course, ultimately, of course, all that witnessing points to our witnessing to Jesus Christ. And when we witness of Christ, it’s not just a pointing out of people’s sin. It’s not just a denial of false prophets and false Christs. It’s a teaching of the positive witness of Jesus Christ. You see, you have to testify to what’s proper and good and true.

And these false prophets by ignoring the elements of judgment of God’s scriptures are falling into the condemnation that they fall into of the commandment rather not to bear false witness because they failed to give a positive witness. Secondly, because they deny judgment, the false prophet denies God’s law. And that if you think about that a minute a minute, you’ll see the implications. That’s true. No judgment.

What they’re trying to do here is silence Micah from speaking of the judgment of God. Okay? But the judgments of God that Micah are talking about is Deuteronomy 28, the curses of God. And they’re saying, don’t speak of the curses, but the curses are an essential aspect of the law. Okay? Micah can give predictive prophecy here because he knows what God’s law says. And he knows that law says if you violate this commandment, that these are the sorts of judgments that are going to come upon you.

Now, obviously, he had some supernatural inspiration from God as well. But my point is, they didn’t want to see the correlation between God’s law and judgment, but they’re wedded together. You can’t separate the two. And so, when they tell Micah, “Stop preaching judgment,” they’re really telling Micah not to teach God’s law. And when they deny that God is a God of judgment who acts in the lives of men and nations temporally as well as eternally, they’re denying an essential aspect of God’s law.

You know, Satan did that. The serpent in the garden said, “Hath God said that you shouldn’t eat all these from the tree from the fruits of some of these trees?” He questions God’s law. But his main attack then comes and he says, “You shall not die.” You see, he questions God’s law. Then he moves on to deny specifically, radically, totally, God’s judgment. And so when people deny God’s judgment, it’s a denial of God’s law in effect.

You see, and that was what the tempter first came to Eve with. And that’s what these sons of bales sons not of the living God but of the serpent as it were that Jesus will later refer to you brood of vipers you sons of snakes you’re doing the same thing and you’re they’re saying to the culture have really said these laws and certainly you’re not going to die for breaking these laws and so that’s their complicity is that they deny the judgment they also deny God’s law as a result God said in Deuteronomy 18:18 that he would raise up another a prophet like unto Moses.

Moses was a lawgiver. Moses issued the words of God in terms of the law, in terms of the blessings and the cursings that accompany that law. And God says in Deuteronomy 18:18, I’m going to raise up other prophets pointing to the true prophet Jesus Christ, but other prophets intermediately that’ll be like Moses confirming this law including the blessings and cursings. And they said, no, that’s not a prophet of God who teach speaks of cursings.

And by doing that, they deny the lawgiver. They deny the law. And they deny the source of that law, of course, God himself. We won’t take the time now. I prepared it and brought it three weeks running, but we’re maybe eventually we’ll get to it. But if you go through the Sack march to Jerusalem, remember we talked about that in the end of chapter 1, you can correlate many of those occurrences right back to Deuteronomy 28.

Read through that list with the towns in front of you and what we said about those towns and you’ll see the correlation between God’s judgment. He was teaching Deuteronomy 28 to these people. And the same thing’s true this morning. We’ll point that out in a couple of minutes. Third, though, by denying God’s law, they posit another law. You see, it’s not just a denial of God’s law. Whenever you deny his standard, you’re promoting a different standard of righteousness, holiness, or judgment.

And you’re saying that he doesn’t act like this. He doesn’t judge sin. He doesn’t have that particular aspect to his law. And so, in his essence, they’re determining or positing another law. And so, they’re falling into the fall of the fall that would happen in the garden. Of course, they’re determining for themselves what is good and what is evil and what the end result of that particular set of actions will be.

Whenever we move away from God’s judgment and move toward a denial of God’s law, we end up positing another law. You know, it’s so important we recognize that God has given to us one law and we can certainly make applications of that law to the life around to our lives around us. But God says, “Be very careful that you don’t add a word to this law because when you add something to that law, you have replaced it.

You have done just what Adam and Eve did when Eve determined for herself what was good and what was bad. She added to the law of God as it were. She changed it. She decided to have her own law. And so Pharisee, adding prohibitions against activities that God’s law doesn’t explicitly condemn, is a movement toward another law, and it’s a denial of God’s law. Autonomy to decide for ourselves what’s good and bad is the basis for all these other laws.

And that’s the autonomy of the false prophets in Micah’s day and age. Fourth, by denying God’s judgments, God’s victory is also denied. Right? You can’t have curse without blessing. Okay? And so, when, for instance, the serpent again tempted Eve by saying, “You shall not surely die,” he then brought Eve into a situation where she no longer was a recipient of God’s blessings either. And so, the society that fails to teach God’s blessings as well as God’s cursings are in essence denying God’s law.

God’s judgments, part of his law, the predictive element of the law, indicates that judgments, both blessings and cursings, come in correspondence to certain actions on the part of the people, not just externally of course, but performed from a heart righteousness, a heart that’s regenerate before God in Jesus Christ. And deny any element of that denies the whole thing. And so to deny God’s judgments also denial of God’s victory.

And fifth, the denial of God’s victory affirms a different kind of victory. And I want us to look at that verse 11 again for a minute and think it out a little bit. Verse 11 says that the false prophet he says, “I’ll prophesy into the year of wine and a strong drink, he shall even be the profit of this people. Now, you take our mindset today, which is primarily coming out of churches that have taught that all drink is wrong and sinful, and you take that implication of this verse, and you end up with certainly a part of what he’s saying, a legitimate part, and that is that any prophet that prophesies to people and lets them get drunk on this stuff and to abuse wine and strong drink is certainly wrong and sinful.

But I think there’s another element to this. I think that element is certainly there. But you see wine and strong drink and that specific combination if you trace those words in what verses those two specific terms wine and strong drink two different terms are together you’ll find that’s specifically for instance the formulation of the book of Deuteronomy in terms of the use of the rejoicing tithe. With the rejoicing tithe you’re going to use it to buy wine strong drink whatever your heart desires and rejoice before God.

Now why is that? You see wine and strong drink are indicative of the blessings of God. Okay. Well, the false prophets have denied the blessings of God. They’ve kept the form that God has used to as a secondary means to indicate his blessing to people, but they’ve grasped at that instead of at the truth behind those things that God’s blessing is upon his people who walk in obedience to his law. And as a result, they turn the blessings of God into cursings.

You can either use wine for one of two purposes. You can use it for his proper purpose and glorify God, and it’s a blessing to you then if you’re walking in obedience to God’s law. Or if you’re you’re going to deny God’s law and move against his spirit and instead be controlled by the spirit of wine and strong drink, you move to cursing under God’s law. And of course, these two terms are used in about 10 or 15 verses, many referring to blessing, many referring to cursing, just like wine itself.

And so, the prophet ends up with a cheapened blessing. Okay? It’s cheap first of all because it’s obtained without obedience to God’s law. And that’s certainly important to recognize. But it’s cheap also because the wine of the strong drink is itself the substance of that blessing. You see, when God gives us blessings of wine and strong drink or other blessings that children for instance, we have to look beyond to the blessings that God is giving to us that indicates his blessing upon the people with the gift of his spirit and of blessings that are of a supernatural sort.

In other words, what I’m saying is you don’t want to stop at the vehicle of God’s blessing. You ought to recognize there’s a greater blessing behind that. They’ve cheapened the blessing by way of acquisition. They’ve cheapened the blessing by way of substance. And as a result, They turned God’s blessing into something that could be consumed in a couple of minutes when God’s blessing of course isn’t like that.

God’s blessing abides upon us as we abide in Jesus Christ. As I said, all these things really are a denial of God. It’s interesting that the death of God school in this country some years ago, if I remember correctly, the men that posited that didn’t posit the death of God eternally exact essentially in all time. What they basically said was God is dead for us. He doesn’t in he doesn’t intercede in terms of our lives.

He has no relevance to modern society. And you see these false prophets were saying the same thing. They may still call themselves followers of God. They call themselves religious but they’re saying God is dead for us. His judgments don’t abide upon us and they throw out his judgments, his blessings, his cursings and as a result of that his law as well. Okay. The results of all this are the sixth element of their complicity in the in the judgment of the nation.

The results are disastrous results both for the prophets themselves and also for the land. Ezekiel 34, we won’t take the time to look it up right now, but if you read that, you’ll see that it’s the selfish shepherds who are judged by God. Those who don’t tend to the flocks, who don’t teach them and to feed them according to God’s word, all of it. And these people certainly were selfish shepherds, they’re rebuked and judged.

The prophets themselves then end up with disastrous results for themselves as Isaiah 30:10 said. Secondly, the failure to preach a full-fledged true witness to God’s word in terms of judgment means that there’s no standard of righteousness raised in the nation. As a result of that, there’s no conviction of sin. You fail to raise the standard of God’s law, including God’s blessings and cursings, and you now have no conviction of sin in the nation.

And when you have no conviction of sin in the nation, that means that there’s no repentance in the nation. And when there’s no repentance, there’s no reconciliation to God. And shame is increased as this verse says in verse 6, greater judgment, greater shame falls upon the nation in which the prophets are false prophets and fail to teach God’s blessings and God’s cursings. This was pointed out in a very overt sort of way, several years ago in 1981, Jerry Falwell had apparently said something to this effect that God could judge America perhaps with Soviet military might.

He wasn’t predicting it. He said certainly God could judge America with Soviet military might. Now, he lives in Lynchburg, of course, and Lynchburg of Virginia has a newspaper, and that newspaper had an editorial that came out a few days later when they were just absolutely outraged. They said the following this editorial, the implication that God would use the Soviet Union as an instrument of punishing America is rather difficult to imagine since Russia’s the great godless society.

This is a church oriented society, they said. Great churches and many good works abound throughout this land. The Daily Advance, the paper, concluded that Falwell should retract his statement. See, they were being just like the prophets of Micah’s day. What do you mean the Assyrians are going to come and judge us? We’re more holy. We’ve got God’s name upon us. We’re the house of Jacob after all. What are you talking about?

And today’s Christians oftentimes are like that Lynchburg, Virginia editorial, Christian editorial supposedly that denies God’s judgments and as a result brings sin and shame and more judgment upon the nation. We don’t have to look that far away. Of course, we could look at the Oregonian last week, the senior pastor of Hinson Memorial Baptist Church had an in my opinion piece in the Oregonian this last week in response to the gay sodomite homosexual picket of his church several weeks before.

I don’t know if you’ve read it. I’ll put a copy of this downstairs, but it’s a very distressing editorial. He says in part, let’s see, he says, “Of course, picking on the in my opinion, of course, acceptable demonstrators are making statements and determined petitioners are making a point. Neither side is doing anything so rational as listening to opposite views. Okay. He says later, most churches hold a basic principle.

Hate sin, but love the sinner. It’s an easy principle to grasp and apply to matters of health. Hate cancer, love the cancerous patient. Hate racial slurs, but love the racist. Hate exploitation of the poor, but love the exploiter. is all very nice that it is excruciatingly easy to hold. But he said it is however excruciatingly easy to hold one side of the principle ignore the others. Churches succeed in hating sin.

Do we do so well in loving the sinner? Most Christians believe homosexuality is a sin, something that offends God and does damage to other human beings and to oneself. Do Christians love homosexuals? If 20 years ago Christians had recruited homosexual church members, and he does say members, with an effort to understand their personal agony. The Father’s Day demonstration at Hinson’s front door might have been different or non-existent.

Will Christians be any more understanding with the current generation? Some of them have homosexual orientation. Now, that should be, you know, you should realize right away what he’s saying. He’s picking up the idea that homosexuality isn’t a volitional act of the will. It doesn’t start with an act of the will. It starts with an orientation that you can give into or not give into. And he goes on to say in habits and are in churches right now, what kind of reception will they get from churches when they come out of the closet.

He says Christians betray their standards and beliefs when they tell a homosexual that he ought simply to be ashamed of himself and straighten up and fly right. Now obviously if a person is involved in a sin that he’s having difficulty dealing with, he should be counseled and admonished and encouraged from scripture. But to posit that the problem today is the OCA that teaches that homosexuality is a terrible sin against God and will be judged by God and the nation that refuses to move away from homosexuality will also be judged which is what OCA teaches to say that’s the problem today that attitude instead of this ready acceptance and wanting to understand their personal agony and you know this sort of thing that’s telling OCA to shut your mouth up on this issue and it’s telling churches to shut your mouth up in terms of God’s judgment upon the homosexuality see says, “God hates the sin but loves the sinner.” What does that mean?

The scriptures are replete with references that God hates those who do violence. Those who are in self-conscious rejection and rebellion against him, God hates them. That’s why he sends them to hell. If God loved the sinner and hated the sin, who would go to hell? The sins would, but not the sinner. What does that mean? Sin is not some sort of abstract concept. Sin is an action that people engage in. And Hinson The whole point of this editorial was that the Hinson minister promotes conciliation.

I believe that Oregon Citizens Alliance is promoting conciliation. They’re doing just what Micah did to affect reconciliation. They’re preaching the word of God in terms of judgment. And when you do that, when you label this as sin and offensive and not acceptable behavior in this state, okay, you increase the awareness of the homosexual in terms of his personal sin. In this matter, he comes to conviction then for a sin and conviction is required before repentance and repentance is required before conciliation.

You see so OCA I think has in essence taken the place of Hinson in terms of being an agent of conciliation in terms of homosexual activity in the land. False prophets churches that are confused in terms of God’s grace frequently tell people not to preach judgment in the land but judgment is coming on the land. The failure of the church, as I’ve said before, to identify AIDS as a judgment of God against ungodly and terrible sexual practices is simply a failure to open one’s mouth to speak the clear predictive word that we see as an element of God’s law.

God’s law has blessings and cursings. I can mention other things. I can mention Billy Graham’s acceptance of the type of freedom that’s allowed now in the Soviet Union in terms of the churches there. Again, he’s not teaching the prophetic word of God of judgment upon that nation. A Williamsburg Charter I haven’t read the whole thing. They came out with they’re coming out with the declaration involving the principles of the separation of church and state and what that means and what it doesn’t mean.

I haven’t read the whole thing, but I do know this that they have several hundred signers lined up including uh Senator Kennedy, including Dukakis, including the people from the American Way. when these people are allies to something that a Christian group is trying to promote in terms of religious freedom and toleration, I have great misgivings about the use or the usefulness of that sort of charter.

Just this last week, I heard about, for instance, a conservative denomination in the Episcopal Church, part of what’s known as the continuing church, those that have broken away from the Episcopal Church because they’re upset with the liberalism in it. Yet, in that very continuing church, there are bishops heads over many congregations who affirm that abortion is not something that people should be taking to church discipline courts for.

And actually, confirm that abortion is not a sin until it’s past the first trimester after the fetus is quickened. You see, we have churches today that are objective examples, for example, that are apostate and they’re apostate and they show their apostasy when they deny the teaching of God’s judgment. Now, I’m not talking about Hinson. I wrote a letter to the editor in which I said that we appreciate Hinson’s holding to the word of God as the infallible word that it’s inspired and totally infallible only rule for standard and practice.

But I do think that letter is a movement toward movement away from the historic faith and the what the scriptures clearly teach in terms of God’s judgment and a movement then toward further judgment upon that church. And we pray that they would turn from that activity. Churches are doing today what churches did in terms of Micah’s time. They’re telling people to speaking God’s judgment against sin to shut their mouth.

But God’s mouth won’t be shut. And Micah responds. He says, “Uh, is the spirit of the Lord straightened? Are these is his doings. The point is that God’s arm can’t be stained from this activity. Doesn’t do any good to try to shut God’s mouth up. When you try to shut up God’s messenger, you’re trying to shut God’s mouth up. And that is ridiculous. It’s there’s no logic in it. It’s simply sin. And it’s a sin that we still have with us today.

There’s another aspect of this, of course, and that is finally the grace of judgment. Subtitle there for your outlines. You lose, we win. And this is extremely important to recognize. Micah addresses these false prophecies. He says, “Oh, thou that are named the house of Jacob.” And then he says a couple of things. And he ends the verse by saying this, “Do not my words do good to him that walketh uprightly.” They were saying, “You’re just doom and gloom.

All you are is on the downside.” But he’s saying, “No, no. God’s message of judgment is a positive, fruitful benefit to those that walk uprightly.” The requisite for the blessings that come upon such a one are both profession and practice. Oh thou that are named the house of Jacob. He’s saying you might be called the Christian church but profession of Christ is not enough. Practice of the deeds of Christ also are required.

You have to walk uprightly. So profession and practice are prerequisites of God’s blessing in terms of God’s judgments. By affirming God’s judgments, God’s law and God himself as the giver of all of this. The predictive blessings of the law also then must be acknowledged, preached, and believed in. Just as much it is just as much of a sin then to fail to acknowledge the grace, peace, and joy of God’s predictive judgments for the believers as it is to deny the cursings upon the lawless.

I went through a little bit quick, but the point is that it’s we can all say it’s bad to tell people to shut up about the judgment of God, but you have to recognize the other side of that is to fail to say there are blessings from God that flow to those people that walk uprightly even in the context of judgment is just as big a sin because it denies the predictive element of blessings the way that these men are denying the predictive element of cursings as a result of God’s law.

It’s all hooked up in the law. There’s a time to preach God’s judgment. But in the midst of that judgment, of course, we recognize that there is great joy and peace that comes as a result of that judgment and at the same time as it. Remember we talked before about how we’re not be involved in excessive mourning and excessive lamentations. No cutting of yourselves, no shaving the corners of your beard the way it some people did, no shaving the top of your head, mourning excessively.

Why? Because God’s judgments, God’s deaths, as it were, and his cursings are also life to us. And we’re people are supposed to affirm the life that God has brought. We’re to affirm the blessings of God’s judgments as well as the cursings. Now, I’m going to go back here a little bit and talk a little bit about the word that’s being used in verse 6 for prophesy. This will help you to see this last point here which is so important.

The word used for prophesy there is drip or drop. Okay, it’s not the word normally used for prophesying. So he says drip not say they that drip or say they to them that drip. They shall not drip to them. And so dripping or drops is the word used here. And it’s very interesting to do a study of this word and how it’s used in the Song of Solomon and Proverbs. We have that same word being used to describe on one hand the drippings of a righteous uh relationship between a man and a woman.

In verse 13 for instance of Song of Solomon chapter 5, it says his cheeks are as a bed of spices as sweet flowers, his lips like lilies dropping sweet smelling myrrh. Okay, but Proverbs 5 tells us that the lift lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb and her mouth is smoother than oil, but the end is destruction. And so the same dropping of the mouth as it were. What comes from a woman’s mouth is described in one hand as a blessing from God as in terms of the relationships that he’s established.

But outside of God’s law, it’s described as a curse. Well, the same thing’s true in terms of prophecy. Ezekiel 20 and 21 tells we have several verses there that tell Ezekiel to drop God’s word toward the holy places and prophesy against the land of Israel. And so, it’s descriptive of prophesying as it is in our verse in Joel 3:18. You read, “It shall come to pass that day that the mountains shall drop down new wine and the hills shall flow with milk and all the rivers of Judah will flow with waters and the fountain shall come forth of the house of the Lord shall water the valley of Shittim.

So in Joel 3:18, the droppings of God upon those mountains that Ezekiel is told to do in terms of dropping them upon the people are blessings from God. Okay? They drop blessings from God of new wine in the mountains in Amos 7. Remember we said that’s a parallel passage parallel book rather in the book of Amos. In Amos 7:16 you read, “Now therefore hear the word of the Lord. Thou sayest, prophesy not against Israel and drop not the word against the house of Isaac.” Later in Amos, we read in chapter 9:13, “Behold, the days come, sayeth the Lord, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes, him that seweth seed, and the mountains will drop sweet wine.

All the hills will melt.” Okay? And so in the same book there in Amos, we have a description of the dropping of God as it were. terms of judgment, but also the dropping of God in terms of blessing. It’s kind of like that thing I said earlier about wine. And in fact, the modern Hebrew uses the same word for dropping to speak of grapes that form wine because it means a drop. In the Bible, it’s used of a drop-like ornaments.

Point is that a grape, a grape is or wine is like this dropping as well. And so we have the dropping of sweet wine here. And so it’s used both in a negative and a positive sense throughout scripture. We said that Micah begins with the description of God coming down in terms of judgment upon the people. Remember we talked about that in the first chapter. And in Judges 5:4, the same description is used of God coming down.

And it says, “The heavens dropped, the clouds also dropped water.” Psalm 68:8, which we read earlier in the in Micah 1, the earth shook, the heavens also dropped at the presence of God. Even Sinai itself was moved to the presence of God, the God of Israel. Point being that in the midst of a description both in Judges in the Song of Deborah in Psalm 68 and here in Micah in terms of this view of God coming upon the people in judgment accompanying that is language that talked about God’s dropping blessings upon the land.

I thought about acid rain as maybe an illustration try to an illustration of this that isn’t quite good of course a very good illustration but it’s it’s somewhat there you have rain that comes down as judgment upon some men but those that are walking in accordance to God’s law the rain comes down as blessings from God. And so the very judgments themselves have aspects of blessings and cursings to them.

Deuteronomy 32:2 is kind of the paradigmatic statement, the main statement of what this dropping is to be. And in Deuteronomy 32:2, we read, “My doctrine shall drop as the rain. My speech shall distill as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass.” That really is the descriptive statement of God to his covenant people in the song of Moses there that describes from then on what these droppings are like and he says my doctrine shall drop as the rain and in Micah’s time the doctrine of God the teaching of God’s law and his blessings and cursings was dropping upon the nation as rain and rain has a two-fold picture throughout the scriptures rain is judgment to those judgment negative judgment to those who not walk not uprightly Remember that throughout the script of course the flood is an example of that.

Rain comes down and turns judgment. many other scriptures where God rains down from the heavens judgment upon the ungodly but rain is a positive blessing upon the godly. And so God says that as my doctrine comes out from my prophets upon the land. My judgments are foretold. They come down as rain. They come down as rain of destruction, hail, brimstone and fire upon the ungodly. But at the same time that judgment is coming down as blessing, strength, honey dropping is another word used in the scriptures.

Remember in the story of Jonathan, the honey is dropping as it were. The mountains dropping this sweet wine. At the same time, these blessings are coming down at the preaching of God’s word, judgment and fire and brimstone. On the other hand, sweet wine, honey, the dew of heaven, the rain that comes to water the world to those who walk uprightly before God. Good droppings, bad droppings, all at the same time.

Now, This is really important because what this means is that what we’ve been talking about for a week and a half or week and a half for a month and a half now as we’ve gone through the first chapter and a half of Micah, these things that have been so depressing to many of us, I think to think of the judgments of God and how they’re going to come upon this land in response to editorials like the one in the Oregonian and other activities that are going on in our land that these things are not a cause of tremendous weeping and sorrow for us.

Micah says, “My prophesying of judgment does good to those who walk uprightly. And when we teach God’s judgments, we should recognize that there are positive aspects of that judgment in terms of those who walk in accordance to God’s law. How do they manifest themselves? Well, first of all, they manifest themselves in a removal of sin, evil, and pollution from the land. There’s a moving out, as it were, of those people that are going to be judged by God by this acid rain falling on their heads, by the fire and brimstone coming down.

Secondly, there’s a restraint of evil in the land. There are strong warnings from this judgment as it falls upon those who walk not in obedience to God’s law. For us who are trying to walk to obedience to God’s law, we see what God’s judgment is doing to this particular group of people and we say we better not enter into that sin either. We see the judgment against homosexuality and against false and bad sexual practices.

And we say we better be circumspect in this area. And if we’re going to avoid these sins, we know that some of those sins begin with, you know, looking at things that we should not look at in terms of television shows or magazines or whatever, they’re going to prompt us to move towards sexual sin. And this judgment that God from God that’s prophesied and is now being fulfilled in our land in terms of AIDS is a positive restrainer then against the evil even in the covenant community.

Third, it strengthens the faith and a just God. We ask, how long will the wicked prosper like David did sometimes when God’s judgments pour down from heaven against the wicked? We say God is a God of justice. We know that from the scriptures, but he reinforces that faith in us when we see it in our land. we see AIDS, we should say we have a just God. And fourthly, our faith is strengthened in a present God, a God of history, a God who is active with that justice in our nation and in our times today.

You know, this is so important as well because when denial of this particular point that God’s judgments are manifest temporally end time, now not just at the end of the time. It was denial of this particular element of God’s predictive judgments given in Deuteronomy 28, blessings and cursings and obedience to his law. It was the denial of this then that led to the great American syncretism between Christianity and natural law theorists apart from God’s revealed law for instance involving elements of John Locke.

It was Locke’s belief that God was not temporally active in terms of judgment of the nations that led to this belief that God’s judgment was postponed. Therefore, we got to do something different today. And as a result, we have a country today that is based upon a syncretistic document. A nation that fails to acknowledge Jesus Christ in its founding documentation, its founding documents, a nation that fails to acknowledge God’s law specifically instead of just through some sort of secondary channel of natural law, that nation will not long stand in peace and righteousness upon the earth.

And that’s what we’re seeing in America today. That’s what we’re seeing in America today. In America today,