Dennis Tuuri

We continue this morning going through our series of the book of Micah. We start a new chapter this morning and also a new section of the book of Micah. We said last week that a prophet gives us pictures, images as it were, and then interprets those images for us with the language that he uses. And this morning the picture we’re forced by God’s word and his providence and bringing us to this portion of scripture this morning to consider is a very gruesome picture indeed.

But it’s a very important picture. There are three basic sections to the book of Micah. Those sections are denoted by the words of the use of the term “shama” or “hear.” Remember we’ve talked about how that means have big ears. Put your big listening ears on. This is very important. And we concluded last week the first section of the shama to hear all peoples and all worlds every nation of the world to hear the judgment that God brings forth.

And then after giving that judgment in terms very general terms in terms of the nation that he told us about the gathering of the remnant again. And so all this would result in blessing to the people, the true people of God, the covenant people.

Chapter 3 begins a section dealing with leaders. This morning we’ll consider God’s indictment of the civil magistrate. Next week, God’s indictment of the prophet. And then when we return from vacation, three or four weeks, we’ll consider God’s indictment of all the three offices given to the nation to protect them and to nourish them. Those offices being prophet, priest, and king seen together. And after that, there’ll be a section in chapter 4 where we have great blessing from God denoted to come to the remnant again. The coming of the Messiah, the coming of the true king, the true prophet and the true priest to affect reconciliation with the true covenant people and to save them from the oppression of their own ungodly rulers and also then of the judgment that God sends forth the Assyrians, the rod of his anger.

So, this passage of scripture begins this section that’ll go through to the beginning of chapter 6 and it begins, as I said, with the central admonition to hear to put on your listening ears. So this is an important picture for us to consider even though it is a somewhat grim picture.

If you have an outline, you’ll see the first point we’re going to consider this morning is the duty of the magistrate to do justice.

Verse one of chapter 3 says, “And I said here, Shama, have big ears. Listen up. This is extremely important. I pray you, oh heads of Jacob and ye princes of the house of Israel. Is it not for you to know judgment?” And so he’s talking here in this section specifically to the heads of Jacob and the princes of the house of Israel. And we said before that this parallelism that you see heads of Jacob, princes of the house of Israel is primarily a device in terms of a twofold witness or to be used liturgically in terms of responsive readings.

But there’s also of course slight differences or nuances of meanings in the terms that are used there. Although they’re basically synonymous heads and princes. The term head, you might remember that from our study going through the offices of the Old Testament is the term “ro.” I remember in Deuteronomy 1 Moses says, “I took your ro. I took your heads and I made them heads.” Ro pre-existing functioning and he makes them heads over the people.

Micah 2:13 that we read last week says that the Lord goes out at their head at their “ro” the Lord goes forward as the representative of the people. In chapter 4:1, we’ll see the same term used to apply to the house of the Lord. The mountain of the Lord, we could call it the mountain house of the Lord will be the “ro,” the head of the mountains. And so the word here specifically used for heads of Jacob, referring of course to the civil leaders, has a particular connotation of being an exalted one.

They have a high status as it were. And of course, we know that biblically that means that they have a high status. That also means they have a high level of accountability because they’ve been given more privilege, more responsibility. They’ll be judged the harsher for it. And so he reminds them here that they’ve been given an exalted position by God. And so they’re going to suffer greater judgment if they fail to exercise that position in a godly fashion.

Civil leadership is an imaging of God. It’s an exalted position which images God to the people in terms of his provision for the people that the person has placed as a head over.

The second term used princes there is the term “kazen” or “ken” and that seems to have the implication from Isaiah 3:6 and 7 which we won’t look up now but it seems to have the implication of one who binds up one who makes others well and secure in their position. And so like the head of a nation for instance militarily would be a “kazen.” He binds up the nation in terms of protecting them from other people and also in terms of nourishing them and binding up their illnesses as well.

In Isaiah 3 the reference is to one who has some degree of financial prosperity and he’s asked to be the “kazen” of the people binder up of the people to heal them and he says no I don’t want to do that but in any event the emphasis there seems to be upon the functioning in terms of binding up or helping the people and so he reminds them of two things here with the terminology he uses he uses terminology reminding them of their exalted status and the increased responsibility and judgment to come upon them should they fail to exercise that correctly.

And he also reminds them of their responsibility to actually guard the people from outside invaders and also to bind up the people as well in terms of healing them. And these are the civil magistrates. This is the magistrate, the judges that are supposed to do this justice.

He says here, heads of Jacob, princes of the house of Israel, is it not for you to know judgment? And so they have a responsibility. Their duty is to do justice. First, they do justice by knowing God’s law. Is it not for you to know judgment? Know there has an intellectual component to it. In other words, the civil magistrate has to know what the requirements of God’s judgments are. If he’s going to exercise God’s judgment, he has to begin by intellectually knowing what those judgments are.

And so, Deuteronomy 17, which why don’t we go ahead and turn to that and read the passage dealing with the king. Deuteronomy 17 passage actually is 14-20, but we’ll read verse 18.

It shall be in Deuteronomy 17:18. It shall be when he, that’s the king that they’re going to appoint later when they get into the land, when he siteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests, the Levites. And it shall be with him. And he shall read therein all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to keep all the words of his law and these statutes to do them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brethren, and that he turned not aside from the commandment to the right hand or to the left, to the end, that he may prolong his days in his kingdom and his children in the midst of Israel.

See, he had to write out a copy of the book of the law. He had to know what the law required of him. He had to do this thing. He had to acknowledge God’s law over him. And then it goes on to say that he had to fear God, he had to keep the first tablet of that law. And he had to not have his heart lifted up above those of his countrymen. He had to keep the second tablet. He had to realize he was a servant to the people of God. He had to love his brother as he loved God.

And remember the stipulation here in Deuteronomy 17, he says when you go into the land, you can have a king, but he can’t be a gentile king. He can’t be like the king of the nations around you. He can’t rule over them dictatorially on the basis of his own law. He has to rule over them on the basis of God’s law. And God’s law includes loving the people and being a servant to them.

Those are the requirements of judicial officers and magistrates. Those are the same requirements today. And so, they had to know God’s law first and foremost.

Habakkuk 2:12 refers to the Chaldeans, but it says, well, let’s turn to it. Habakkuk 2:12. Woe to him that buildth his town with blood and establish a city by iniquity. And now this context is he’s saying this to the Chaldeans who were not covenant people. Okay? And he still says woe to those civil rulers in non-covenantal nations. In other words, nations outside of Israel in call to the Chaldeans here to gentile nations. He’s saying woe to gentile rulers who build the city with bloodshed and iniquity.

Now turn back to the book of Micah in chapter 3:10 rather chapter 3:9-10 or start with verse 9. Hear this I pray you heads of the house of Jacob and princes of the house of Israel that abhor judgment and pervert all equity. They build up Zion with blood and Jerusalem with iniquity. You see there’s a parallelism here. And the reason I point this out is to show you that the requirements not to build up a city with blood and not to rule by iniquity. In other words, to not to ignore God’s judgment and so build up a city by blood and iniquity is not just a prohibition on the covenantal heads in the nation of Israel. It’s also required that the gentile leaders as well acknowledge God’s law in that fashion and they’ll be judged on the basis of it.

And so what we’re talking about this morning has application not just to Israel and its covenant heads. It has applications to every nation that has ever walked on the face of this earth. And so it has applications to our nation as well.

Calvin in commenting on verse one of this passage in Micah 3 says the following. We indeed know that without the spirit of God, the acutest men, the most able, in other words, those who are acute and knowledgeable, are wholly unfit to rule. We are thus reminded that even they who are endued with the chief gifts are wholly incapable of governing except the spirit of God be with them. So he says you can have sharp men. You can have people that have a lot of gifts in terms of knowledge and intellectual attainment and even maybe some sort of ability to be conformed to some sort of standard. And yet he says that what they’re incapable of governing. They’re wholly unfit to rule except the spirit of God be with them.

And now Calvin didn’t see the spirit of God as some sort of amorphous thing. The spirit of God is revealed in the word of God. And so Calvin said in the basis of this passage and as we’ve just demonstrated from Habakkuk And also from its correlary in Micah 3:10, Calvin says, “The scriptures say that if a civil ruler has all kinds of ability but has not the spirit of God, he is wholly unfit to rule.” And that says a mouthful, tremendous volumes about our rulers today.

The spirit is linked to the word of God. Wisdom to rule comes by asking God, but by understanding that wisdom is found primarily in his scriptures and then applying those scriptures to situations. And so the civil ruler that fails to do that is not ruling well, he’s ruling poorly. They have an obligation to know the word of God, and that includes knowing the word of God relative to their own office, of course, and that includes a recognition of God’s law upon them in terms of limitations.

The civil state is a limited sphere. The family has obligations, the church has obligations, individual have obligations, the state has obligations. And each of those spheres are limited. And so, the king, if he’s going to understand, he has to write off the book of the law and know it intellectually. He has to know the limitations that book of the law places upon him as a civil magistrate that it’s not in his province to do things outside of what he’s specifically told to do by the scriptures.

And it’s also that includes the presupposition of the word of God, which is that God reigns on his throne in heaven, and he reigns over the affairs of man. The civil magistrate has to recognize the presupposition that God is, that he reigns in the affairs of man, and therefore he has a limited authority over people. You see, that’s so important because if he doesn’t acknowledge the presupposition that God is, and that God reigns and God takes care of things, if we follow his law.

Then if you reject that presupposition, the state now will accumulate to itself all kinds of laws and regulations and control over people because they deny the reign of God in heaven. They then say, “We’re going to take over the reign of God on earth.” Okay? So they have to recognize the presuppositions, the limitations of God’s law, and they have to know the law’s requirements itself. But it’s not enough to know God’s law intellectually.

I said that when he says that it’s to you to know judgment, that certainly has intellectual component to it but it has a moral component to it as well an ethical component. You see in the scriptures the word for knowledge includes immediately in the context with the word denotes that is action on the basis of that knowledge. See we’re so removed from having biblical concepts and constructs we’ve been raised with. We seem to think of knowledge primarily as an intellectual attainment and whether we act in obedience or not is something secondary to knowledge. But in the scriptures the word for knowledge and specifically in the Old Testament the Hebrew word knowledge or to know something means to know and to act. And if you don’t act on the basis of what you know, you didn’t know it biblically. You have some sort of intellectual attainment, but you don’t know it.

And so the knowledge required of the civil magistrate to know judgment includes an ethical component. He must not only know God’s law, he must do God’s law. And doing God’s law includes as two primary components of it to punish evildoers and to reward the righteous. To hate evil and to love good.

If well, let’s look at a few verses about that first. Punishing evil. Romans 13. We’ll read that once and then reference it a couple of times in the next couple of minutes.

Romans 13:3-4. Rulers are not of terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then be afraid of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same. For he is a minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid. For he hear he beareth not the sword in vain. He is the minister of God and avenger or revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.

And so Romans 13 says and other places of scriptures say as well that the civil magistrate has a twofold function. to bring God’s wrath against the evildoer, but also to reward or to praise the righteous, the good man. And so this twofold component is exactly what Micah 3:2 says they didn’t do. He says what you’ve done is you’ve hated good and you’ve loved evil. So you’ve got to reverse. What you’re supposed to do is love good and hate evil.

And so it’s important to see that God’s hatred for the wicked is commanded of the civil magistrate. Now Psalm 5 tells us specifically that God hates workers of iniquity. Psalm 5:5, the foolish shall not stand in thy sight. Thou hatest all workers of iniquity. Thou shalt destroy them that speak leasing. The Lord will abhor the bloody and deceitful man. God loves the righteous, but he hates the wicked. And that’s repeated in Psalm 11:4-7.

The Lord is in his holy temple. Okay, he’s king over all the people. The Lord’s throne is in heaven. His eyes behold, his eyelids try the children of men. The Lord trieth the righteous, but the wicked, and him that loveth violence, his soul hateth. Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest. This shall be the portion of their cup. For the righteous Lord loveth righteousness, his countenance doth behold the upright. His countenance behold the upright. His blessing is upon the upright. But because of righteousness, because of God’s justice, he hates those who do injustice and do unrighteousness. and are workers of evil.

That’s God’s requirement on the basis of his righteousness. And if the civil magistrate is to image God’s position in terms of justice in the nation, the civil magistrate must share God’s presuppositions that the wicked in the land are to be hated and are to be judged by them.

Psalm 31:5 says, “Not just the civil magistrate, but all of God’s people are to hate the unrighteous.” Psalm 31:5-6, “Into thine hand I commit my spirit. Thou hast redeemed me, oh the Lord God of truth. And listen to this. On the basis of his redemption, he says the following in verse 6. I have hated them that regard lying vanities, but I trust in the Lord. You see, God hates them. He wants us to hate them. And he wants the civil magistrate to hate evildoers.

Psalm 139:21-22. Do not I hate them, oh Lord, that hate thee? And am I not grieved with those that rise up against thee? I hate them with perfect hatred. I count them my enemies. I count them my enemies.

Proverbs 8:13, the fear of the Lord is to hate evil. Fear of the Lord is beginning with wisdom, right? Means wisdom begins with the hatred of evil. And it just doesn’t of course just mean the evil of the other person. It means the evil in us. The evil we allow part that we allow to be part of our environment and creep into our homes. We’re supposed to hate that evil and get rid of it.

Amos 5:15 in a parallel passage to our passage this morning says, “Hate the evil and love the good and establish judgment in the gates.” That’s the essence of establishing judgment, to hate the evil, to love the good.

Isaiah 1:16, “Wash you, make you clean. Put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes. Cease to do evil.” So, it has personal application as well. We are to hate the evil in us, and we’re to hate the evildoer who continually does evil in the nation around us, and we’re to hate them with a perfect hatred. We’re to count them as our enemies because they are God’s enemies. This requires a sensitivity to evil. Evil being defined by the violation of God’s law.

But secondly, the civil magistrate is also to reward the righteous, as we’ve just said. Now, it’s important here, having looked at a few of these verses that can be kind of uh objectionable to us and sound real strange that we’re supposed to hate people. We’ve talked about the predictive portion of God’s law. That God’s law includes part of God’s law, not separate from it, but part of God’s law, the blessings and cursings that come to those people that obey it or disobey it.

And when we think of hatred, we put 20th century connotations to it. We think, “Oh, that lousy church, you know, That’s hatred to us. But see, hatred in God’s sight isn’t like that. It’s not some quick flash of anger against a person. What it is it’s the realization that this person is a covenant breaker. And his life is characterized by a complete denial and rejection of God’s covenant. And also as a result of that, then the oppression and murder and hurting of other people.

And God says that those covenant breakers, his curse rests upon them. And he wants us to recognize that intellectually that God’s curse rests upon these people. And so we’re to hate them in that sense, recognizing that their deeds brings God’s wrath upon their head. Now, this is particularly important when we talk about the civil magistrate, you see, because he images God in terms of justice. It doesn’t mean the civil magistrate is supposed to go out and rail against people.

It means he’s to execute God’s required justice. Hebrews says that every violation received its just recompense under the old covenant system of law. And so that’s a just recompense that we’re The civil magistrate is also to mete out on the heads of those who do evil. They’re supposed to hate that evil in the sense of acknowledging this person as being in violation and in opposition to God. And so we then count them as our enemies.

Count them as God’s enemies and expect and rejoice when God’s wrath comes upon them. And hopefully, of course, that wrath comes upon them to bring them to repentance. But if not, it comes upon them to lead them to destruction. Okay? They’re to do that. And they’re also then to love the good, to reward those in society who are righteous.

Stims in his commentary on 1 Peter 2 sums this up in is as the following in the following way. Civil rulers are explicitly commissioned to represent God as the judge. They give active expression to his righteousness and his wrath by inflicting just retribution on wrongdoers and by publicly commending and rewarding those who do well. All to whom such divine authority is thus delegated ought in its exercise to be like God by whose commission and in whose service they act. i.e. they should love righteousness and hate iniquity.

See that’s what it’s all about. Now the correlary of that of course is that when you see wickedness in order to hate the evildoer and to expect and want and if you’re the civil magistrate to exert God’s sort of justice against the evildoer. A necessary component of that, of course, that’s quite lost in our day and age is that we recognize the evildoer for what he is and moral rebellion against God. Not the result of bad parenting, not the result of a bad environment, not because of whatever food he happens to be eating at that particular point in time, but to recognize him in terms of being in moral rebellion against God.

You see, that’s a necessary component. And of course, that’s a specific area in which the civil magistrate of our day has greatly uh deny the reality of God’s law. Increasingly, people are the prison is no longer seen. Of course, prison isn’t a particularly godly system, but the punishment that the civil magistrate puts on the evildoers is no longer seen as retribution. It’s seen somehow in terms of rehabilitation. And that’s a that’s a humanistically defined rehabilitation.

God’s system of rehabilitation is retribution to bring a man to account for his deeds and to have him recognize that he’s responsible before God for violating his law regardless of what his reasons are. That’s retribution. And if you dish out retribution according to God’s standards of justice, that then becomes rehabilitation because the man comes to repentance and he changes internally. He comes to conversion and he comes to accepting the faith in Jesus Christ. That’s the biblical system for rehabilitation. It begins with retribution. And civil magistrate today by denying retribution has moved away from biblical rehabilitation.

But there’s a third factor also that the civil magistrate is to do in terms of exercising his God-given function, and that is propagating the gospel. That may sound just a tad funny, but if we’ll turn to 1 Timothy 2, 1 Timothy 2:1-3, passage we’re pretty familiar with probably.

I exhort therefore that first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings, and for all they’re in authority. And for what reason? That we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our savior, who will have all men to be saved and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. You see, there’s a connection here between praying for the civil magistrate and of course that includes the prayer that he would do his job correctly.

If he does his job correctly, that produces a peaceable setting in the nation. Peace being defined by God’s order, not by a sensation of hostilities, but a positive manifestation of God’s order in our society. And that peace then is seen as linked to God’s desire to bring all men to salvation. So prayer for the civil magistrate means that will produce a favorable environment for evangelization of the nations around us.

You see, it isn’t really true that the best way to evangelize is in the terms of a crisis environment or that the church grows best with the blood of martyrs. You know, that isn’t that there’s some truth to that, but it’s a little perverted, too, because at this passage clearly teaches that what we’re supposed to have for the propagation of the gospel and for evangelism to proceed in a abundant fashion is a peaceable setting in the nation with godly civil magistrates who have been brought to conversion themselves ruling correctly under the spirit of God and that then provides the order God’s order in the world around us to manifest and to demonstrate and to reinforce the preaching of the gospel and so the civil magistrate by doing his job correctly by knowing justice by understanding it and doing it then also provides the fertile ground as it were for evangelization.

And so that’s part and part of his responsibility as well. So that’s the charge of the civil magistrate to do justice.

The failure of the civil magistrate at the time of Micah was his failure to guard and to nourish. The failure to do justice of course, but Micah gives us some specific pictures here of what that meant. And I think that those pictures should be interpreted in terms of guarding and nourishing.

Verse 2, they hate the good, they love the evil, who pluck off their skin from off them and their flesh from off the bones, who also eat the flesh of my people and flay their skin from off them. They break their bones, chop them in pieces, as for the pot and as flesh within the cauldron. They hate the good. Their hatred of the good is first of all demonstrated by their removing of the covering of the good.

Okay? He says, “You love the evil, you hate the good, and here’s what you’re doing to people.” And so the obvious implication is these are good people. You’re doing this too. And what you’re doing to the people is first of all removing their skin. You’re peeling them. You’re plucking them as it were. Now the term for skin here or for pluck rather is the same term used in chapter 2:2 we talked about. And the only importance of that is that it has the implication to the very term used for plucking the skin off them of antisocial behavior of real devastation to the people that you’re doing this to.

The term skin that’s used here is first mentioned in Genesis 3 referring to the coats of skin provided by God after the sin of Adam and Eve. And so skin here in its very first use in Genesis 3 has the connotation of a covering or a protection for Adam and Eve after their fall into sin. Job 10, we won’t look at the references right now, but Job 10 verses 11 and 12, Job says that God has clothed him with skin. Okay? And so he’s the idea is that skin is seen as a garment for Job. Okay? And then of course, it’s his garment. It’s his protection. It’s his tabernacle that is attacked by Satan and is laid waste with a particular illness that he had with him.

Job 18:12-14, Job talks about how his strength is reduced. His covering that be given by God has been reduced. His skin has been attacked and he’s been taken out of his tent or his tabernacle. And so his tabernacle has holes in it now. Okay? And so he no longer has that protective covering that God gives us. which is our skin. And so skin in the context here is a protective covering of people. It’s important to note in this connotation that there are basically two kinds of stripping off from people. One is a stripping off of the skin as we’ve seen here.

Additionally, in Leviticus 1:6, you’re to skin the burnt offering to pluck this skin off the burnt offering before it was offered up. And then there’s also other words that talk about the stripping of robes off of people. And for instance, Joseph’s brothers stripped him of his coat. his coat of glory. Job 19:9 says, “He stripped me of my glory.” Aaron, when he died, Moses was told to strip Aaron of his garment, to take it off, and then to put it on Eleazar. Adam and Eve, of course, were preeminently stripped from their glory by God when they fell, and so provided a different covering.

Point is that I think that the term skin here refers primarily to the covering that we’re given to protect us. And so, it’s the failure to protect people like civil magistrate is supposed to do to protect the righteous in the land by exercising wrath against the evildoer. And in fact, he just reverses the process. He takes off whatever covering they’ve already been given by God. The protective covering of the skin by analogy, of course. I don’t think they actually literally strip people of their skin, but it’s an analogy. Of course, it’s a picture for us. And the picture is interpreted by other scriptures.

Isaiah 10:1-2 talks about this plucking off the rights of the poor by laws. Very pertinent to our day and age. Isaiah 10 verse 1 is woe to them that decree unrighteous decrees and that right grievousness which they have prescribed to turn aside the needy from judgment and to take away the right from the poor of my people that widowers may be their prey and that they may rob the fatherless and what will you do in the day of visitation and the desolation which shall come from afar to whom will you flee for help and where will you leave your glory?

They had plucked off the rights of the poor. They had robbed the poor through enactment of laws and civil decrees. And remember Isaiah is contemporary with Micah. And so Micah is saying the same thing that the civil rulers instead of protecting the innocent and punishing the wicked are actually robbing the innocent of their covering of their possessions and the guarding things that God had given to them by civil decree.

Tiberius the emperor when advised to raise taxes by some of his governors and he had done it several times said it’s the property of a good shepherd to shear his sheep, not to skin them. Well, here the civil magistrate who was supposed to be a good shepherd was skinning the people doing the reverse of what they were supposed to do.

Secondly, their hatred of the good is demonstrated by the removing of nourishment. Flesh is then he says you strip off their skin, you take their flesh. And he says you take their flesh, you strip off their skin. So there’s kind of a double witness to that as well. Flesh is nourishment primarily. It’s our it’s what indicates whether we’ve been nourished well or not. If you’re not nourished well, your skin stays pretty well intact. It’s a covering, but you lose weight and so your nourishment level indicates that your flesh goes down. Your muscles as it were, your muscle structure deteriorates. Conversely, if you’ve been giving had a lot of nourishment, maybe too much nourishment, your flesh gets rather bulgy. Your skin doesn’t change much, but your flesh gets bulgy. So, flesh is related to nourishment.

This is seen in Exodus 21:10. Remember, we talked about Exodus 21:10 before in terms of divorce. Says that there are three things a husband required to give a wife. You cannot deprive her of food, raiment or conjugal rights. Food is the same word here used for the flesh. And so you can’t deny her of food. Sustenance, the nourishing provision of the of the husband toward his wife has to be kept intact. And so we know there that it refers to nourishing and that the raiment refers to guarding.

And the civil magistrate, he’s not to take away their skin or their flesh. The flesh is nourishment, the skin is guarding. Additionally, in Psalm 78:20, the people cried out in the wilderness and described in that psalm, can he provide flesh for his people? Same word used here, nourishment, in other words. And God nourish his people out here in the middle of the desert. Let’s go back to the flesh pots of Egypt and have their nourishment for us instead. But God does nourish his people. And so the flesh is seen as nourishment.

So they fail to nourish the people. They failed to guard the people. And the result of that is demonstrated by the removing of the strength of the people. The bones themselves which have the connotation of the strength of the body which makes you upright and gives you strength and form to add this other upon too the bones of the strength of the person and those are cut up as it were and chopped up and thrown in the cauldron.

The bones in other words in this picture I think that Micah paints for us as the connotation of strength. The flesh is the leaving leafing out as it were of that central bone. The flesh leaves out in prosperity. That prosperity is covered by skin and that provides a covering and a guarding function for the body. And so the civil magistrate had gone through a three-fold process of removing skin, removing flesh and destroying bones, removing covering, removing nourishment and then destroying the strength of the people.

In that way, Calvin’s commentaries says that under the similitude of butchers, the prophet sets forth their savage cruelty. They take off the skin, they eat the flesh, they break the bones to pick out the marrow. The insatiable avarice of the princes is herein described. Calvin also says it’s very important for rulers to do their job correctly because they have a lot of power. Not to be people affect this kind of devastation upon a people.

Calvin says, “Now this passage teaches us what God requires mainly from those in power that they abstain from doing injustice. For as they are armed with power, so they ought to be a law to themselves. They should be self-governing, in other words, is what he’s saying. They assume authority over others. Let them then begin with themselves and restrain themselves from doing evil. For when a private man is disposed to do harm, he is restrained at least by fear of the law.

cause and darest not to do anything at his pleasure. But in princes there is a greater boldness and they are able to do greater injustice and this is the reason why they ought to observe more forebears in humanity. Hence lenity and paternal kindness especially become princes and those in power. But the prophet here condemns the princes of his age for what deserved the highest reprehension. And their chief crime was cruelty or inhumanity in as much as they spare their own subjects.”

So Calvin says the civil magistrate wields the sword. He wields power. Because of that, he has to be more self-governing than other people because if he’s not, he doesn’t have the law over his head to come down upon him. Now, he has God’s law. Of course, God judge will judge him as we’ll see in a couple of minutes. But the point is there’s no fear of civil retribution against him. Now, this is why, by the way, standards for that sort of office are higher than standards for other sorts of office. And if you have a man who cannot control himself in terms of greed or avarice or in terms of relationships with other people, other women or other men, then he is not fit for office because he’s not self-governing. If he isn’t self-governing, that office is going to be a raw exercise of power, hurting people and not helping them.

He has to be able to govern himself. He’s self-governing before he’s given a position of responsibility in terms of the civil government. That would remove probably most of our legislators from Salem if you look at the lies they’ve led. Okay.

It’s important to recognize though that Micah doesn’t just say they failed to do what’s right. They haven’t guarded the people. They’ve stripped away their guarding. They haven’t nourished the people. They’ve actually taken away their nourishment. They haven’t produced a strong population. They’ve removed the strength of the people. It’s important to see it’s not just a rejection of what’s good, but they’ve actually done what’s evil. He doesn’t say just that you hate the good. He says you love the evil. Man isn’t neutral. Man is either in cooperation with God through Jesus Christ or he’s in rebellion against God. He’s either worshiping God or he’s worshiping the devil. He’s either doing what’s right or he’s doing what’s evil.

And so the civil magistrates here are actively doing what is evil. Allen in his commentary on this passage of scripture says that Micah accuses the judiciary of abandoning timehonored and God-honoring standards and putting in their place an immoral set of legal expedience. They had ceased to make what was good the criterion of their verdict. Instead, they deliberately cherished evil. Now, Richard’s going to talk about this more in a couple of weeks in his sermon on uh he’s going to talk on some of the elder qualifications from Titus 1 that a man had to be holy and a man had to be just and a man had to be a lover of what’s good.

But it’s important to recognize that’s a criteria that the scriptures place before us. in the elder qualifications that a man had to be a lover of good. The scriptures, as we said before, makes it important for us to realize that we’re to love what’s good and hate what’s evil. Just like Titus 1 says, the elder is to be a lover of what’s good. Romans 12:2 says that the law is holy and just and good. Those same things. And Richard will draw out that correlation real well in a couple of weeks when he preaches. But it’s I guess what I’m trying to get at with that is that to love the good must include as a necessary component of it loving the law of God because the law is good and holy and just.

And so if a man is going to love what’s good, he has to begin by loving God’s word. And so this isn’t just aimed at the simple man. This is aimed at us. We’ve got to love what’s good, too. And we don’t want to find ourselves hating what’s good. And to do that, we have to begin by loving God’s word. Psalm 15 says, remember that’s the psalm that says, “Who shall abide in thy holy temple?” What are the requirements of citizenship in the kingdom of God and in God’s holy city.

And he goes on to say that one of the requirements is in whose eyes a vile person is condemned, but he honoreth them that fear the Lord. It’s a requirement of citizenship. It’s a requirement of us individually, not just the civil magistrate, to condemn the vile man and to honor them that fear God.

Finally, I also want you to realize in terms of application to yourself about this loving the evil or loving the good and hating the evil that Psalm 52 ties that to the use of the tongue. And Keith is going to address the tongue in his sermon in a couple of weeks. But it says in Psalm 52 says thy tongue deviseth mischief like a sharp razor working deceitfully. Thou lovest evil more than good and lying rather than to speak righteousness. Thou lovest all devouring words, oh thou deceitful tongue. Point is that if you’re going to be a lover of what’s good, you got to love the law of God. You got to recognize it’s a requirement to love what’s good in terms of citizenship in Zion in the holy city of God to be a Christian. In other words, And that also that loving good is is very strictly tied in Psalm 52 to using your tongue correctly and loving what’s good in terms of your speech.

Okay. So the civil magistrate has had his responsibilities reminded to him by Micah. He’s had his sin pointed out by Micah. And then Micah moves to the judgment of the civil magistrate in the last verse, verse 4.

Then they shall cry unto the Lord and he will not hear them. He will even hide his face from them at that time. as they have behaved themselves ill in their doings. They behave themselves ill in their doings. And so he says that as they have behaved themselves, so the judgment comes upon us. Fitting return in other words is what’s described here in terms of God’s judgment. Their failure to guard the people correctly and in fact removing the guarding skin of the people metaphorically there leaves them without God’s guarding when judgment comes upon them.

The plain teaching of this verse is that they cry to the Lord. Why? Because judgment is come upon them. The term cry out here is a technical term in 2 Kings 8 and following. It’s used of a woman who goes and petitions the king for an injustice does done against her. We won’t look it up. You can look it up later maybe. 2 Kings 8. The point is that under judicial system that God has established, people were supposed to be able to come and petition the civil magistrate. And this crying out was an official petition to the king on the part of this woman.

And what he’s saying is that when these civil rulers who have done wrong and the judgment comes upon them, they’re going to God for relief and God isn’t going to hear him. He they’re not going to God’s not going to come down and guard them from the Assyrians because they failed to guard the people and in fact ripped away the guardian.

So God’s going to take away their protection in terms of the fortified cities. And of course that’s what happened to them.

Secondly, their failure to nourish the people and to provide for their sustenance leaves them without God’s blessing and God’s nourishment. Says that he will hide his face from them. You know, every Sunday we pronounce the blessing from Number 6. It says the Lord make his face shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee and give thee peace. God’s face being upon the people is a gracious blessing of peace to the congregation. That’s what we that’s what we pray for God at the with that passage of scripture at the end of every service in the first half of our formal worship service. So the fact that God hides his face from these people means that he won’t help them. He won’t be gracious to them. He won’t nourish them. He won’t give them his peace which is a sign of his is love because they failed to nourish the people correctly. So they then get appropriate judgment upon them from God. Failure to have guarding from him and affair to be nourished by him.

All this points out the failure of justice in the time of Micah. Justice is the mortar that holds the society together as one commentator has put it. And Micah’s society was collapsing from the absence of justice in it and things were in decay and declension. I think we have to say today that justice is sorely lacking in our nation today. We live in a nation that’s abandoned justice and a nation that as a result of that abandonment of justice being God’s righteous standard. A nation that is as in a result of as a result of that abandonment of justice is in its death throes in declension and collapse.

It is the responsibility of the magistrate to do justice. Today the magistrate is required to do the same. thing as we pointed out from Habakkuk 2:12. But do they know God’s law? They’ve not even aware of the fact that it exists in terms of civil laws. Do they know God requirements? No. They’re puffed up. They believe themselves be the only law in the world around us. And so they accumulate to themselves more and more power forsaking God’s system of justice.

They punish not the evil, they punish the righteous and reward the evil. In our day and age, we said that the civil magistrate is responsible to guard the population to protect them from evil. And what kind of a situation do we live in today? We live in a situation where the people are not guarded at all. We live in a situation where the people’s protection is taken away.

Preeminently that can be seen of course in terms of abortion. The poor ones, the oppressed ones, the orphaned ones in the womb are not given the protection of the civil magistrate. And in fact, just as in the days of Micah do they not only fail to guard, they turn around and ruin the people that should be guarded. And so the civil government, state and federal, goes out and gives people money to do that injustice. They don’t just fail to guard the abort the orphans in the womb, the pre-born infants. They pay people to go out and kill them and to actually literally chop up their bones with scalpels and to do other or with scalpels rather. And so the civil magistrate fails to guard people in our land today.

The parents that are trying to guard their children. The civil government makes it increasingly more difficult to do that. I saw in the papers this last uh week that Ted Kennedy has produced a proposal to begin education at ages three or four and provide for that across the nation now. And so what the civil magistrate is doing is not just an absence of helping Christian parents take care of their children to nourish them in their home and to protect them from those which attempt to get in and take the children away. They’re actually actively going into the homes and trying to pull those children out through either seduction by way of tax benefits or through outright taking kids out of homes as goes on across the nation regularly.

The people are fa the children who are trying to be guarded by their parents are actually ripped away from the parents by the civil government. I saw in the paper last week that the Portland housing authority wants to remove all guns including registered handguns from their housing projects. And so while in the midst of this tremendous what is apparently a big gang problem and drug problem, the protection of the people is not provided.

They’ve a obviously failed to protect the people. And not only do they fail to protect the people from the gangs, they go in then the people that would want to protect themselves. The use of registered handguns, perfectly legal, perfectly in the in the in the best traditions of our country for 200 years, being able to defend your home against intruders. They want to rip the guns out. They want to remove they don’t they don’t stop at just failing to guard the people from the from the juvenile delinquents, from the wicked that are in the projects.

They remove the guarding that the man attempts to bring to his own household. You see? So, it’s just like in Micah’s Micah’s day. They remove they strip off the clothing. They strip off the guarding.

I thought it was very interesting in this morning’s Oregonian.