Dennis Tuuri

We continue this morning in our series of talks going through the book of Micah. And as we said last week, chapter 4 we divide it up into three sections. And so we come now to the third of those three sections. And this is the section that has a specific command given to the people that are redeemed and restored and rescued by God.

And so the context we look at this morning is vital that we remember. We talked about the passage that begins chapter 4—that is “but in the last days”—and last week we spent a lot of time developing the fact that this means in the days of the Messiah, this is what Jesus Christ has accomplished by his coming and his work on the cross. And so chapter 4 gives us a picture of what to expect in the church age, if we want to call it that, in the messianic kingdom that Christ has inaugurated with his work on the cross.

We said last week that there was a lot of comfort and consolation given to those people that responded liturgically in verse 5 to the truths of verses 1-4 of the chapter—that God will establish his kingdom, that Messiah is the chief cornerstone, and that the temple will be built, the mountain of the Lord will be built as it were upon him, and all nations shall eventually come and bow down and worship him. Our response to that is we will walk in the name of the Lord our God though all the other nations don’t. We know that eventually they will, and in the meantime we will also, and we dedicate ourselves to God in verse 5.

And then verses 6 through 8 are comfort and consolation to people who have so moved in obedience to God and the truths of the scriptures. And that comforting consolation is that though we may be a limping outcast because of the sins of our covenant communities and our churches, yet God promises to restore us and make us a dominion nation.

And so verses 9 through 13, I think the key section of this is the command that will follow, a set of reassurances from God that build up to that command. And you know, I was thinking this morning on my way here that we’re going to be talking about four reassurances in the text leading up to a command to arise and thresh, which is the title of our talk this morning.

And I was thinking, what a gracious heavenly Father we have. What a gracious God we have. Certainly, it would be appropriate for him to do nothing but go directly to the command and say, “Arise and thresh.” But no, I think in these verses that precede that verse, he gives us a set of at least four reassurances that we shall have the wherewithal to arise and thresh. And then he goes on after the command and gives us promises of victory on the basis of our obedience to that command.

And what I’m saying is that certainly if God just commanded it of us, that would be enough. But no, he goes out of his way to provide us reassurances and motivations beyond just obedience as it were. He gives us assurances that this will be a successful endeavor. And that’s a gracious God that we have.

Well, let’s get to those reassurances. First of all, I believe that the text begins with a set of reassurances given, and I’ve put four of them. Now I have to let you know here that all the commentators do not agree that all these verses starting at verse 9 going up to the command to arise and thresh—not all commentators agree that verses 9-12 are reassuring verses, and specifically this first one is the one of most contention.

“Why dust thou cry out aloud? Is there no king in thee? Is there a counselor perished?” Some commentators believe this is a sarcastic question issued by Micah saying, “See, you know, it’s as if you don’t have a king. Your king can’t help you now.” And they think that so this is more of a scolding sort of a verse rather than a reassuring verse.

But I think that the context of this passage—that all of chapter 4 really addresses—as many commentators have recognized, those people that are faithful, that understand their sin, have come to repentance on the basis of God’s judgments as described in Micah 1-3. That context means that we have here words directed primarily to those that are the regenerate covenant community of God or who are the obedient covenant community of God.

And so I think that the context shows that, and most commentators would agree that at least beginning with verse 11 or a little sooner in the chapter that there are reassurances given. So the fact that reassurances are there is evident to all commentators. The fact that chapter 4 refers for the first sense to those people that are coming to repentance—for their sinful deeds are acknowledged—and I think that dictates that we should take verse 9, if there’s some question about it, and there is, to be also a set of reassurances to the people.

Now there’s some textual reasons why I believe that as well, some in how these terms are used in other portions of the scriptures that we’ll get to in a minute. First of all, I think that the first reassurance then given in verse 9 is the reassurance of the everpresent and immortal counselor king.

All of these reassurances start with a statement of distress and then the distress is answered. The statement of distress in this first reassurance is “Why dust thou cry out aloud?” Why do you scream, as it were, as a result of the judgments that have come upon the city? Knowing ultimately those judgments come from the hand of God, but still the Assyrians and the Babylonians later are going to come upon the city. And so there’s distress.

And the answer to that distress I think is then woven in the statement. Is there no king in thee? The question rather—is there no king in thee? It may sound like a mocking at first, but remember that they did have a king. Jehovah God was to be their king, and whatever civil king they had was to be subservient to Jehovah God, or Yahweh, and pointing forward of course to the coming of the great king of kings, Jesus Christ.

Of course they did have a king in them. In other words, and remember these verses are addressed to the daughter of Zion who is going to be brought to repentance and is being brought to repentance and so comes back in conformity to God’s will. And the reassurance here is then the basis of that: you do have a king, and you are moving in obedience to that king here.

And so he’s reminding them here that you do have a king in the context of your sufferings, and that king will take care of you. The question here—Allen in his commentary on this passage suggests that the king was present but held of no account. And certainly secondarily, we can say that’s certainly true of the statement given to those in Jerusalem, for instance, at the time of Sennacherib’s invasion.

He was reminding them that their king—if their ultimate king, if the one that they worshiped—was Molech instead of Jehovah God or Yahweh, if their king was the civil state, then that king wouldn’t ultimately be able to deliver them. So, I think there was that bit of rebuke in this as well to those who weren’t repentant. But primarily, I think what he’s saying here is that you do have a king in context.

And one of the verses that I’ve listed on your outline to support that is Jeremiah 8:19. Jeremiah 8, we read the following: “Behold, the voice of the cry of the daughter of my people because of them that dwell in a far country. Is not the Lord in Zion? Is not her king in her?” You see the parallelism there. “Isn’t the Lord in Zion? Why are they crying out?” He’s saying in Jeremiah 8, “Isn’t her king in her?” That’s a parallel sort of situation—people are crying out, and in Jeremiah it has clearly indicated that the question “Is not her king in her?” refers to the Lord in Zion.

Additionally, in Isaiah 31 verse 1: “Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help and stay on horses and trust in chariots because they are many and in horsemen because they are very strong. But they look not unto the Holy One of Israel neither seek the Lord.” The point of Isaiah 31:1 is that if you look to the king of Egypt for help instead of to the king of Israel, Yahweh, your covenant God, then you’re going to have woes upon you.

And so the fact that Yahweh was there and present was being reinforced in this reassurance, I believe, to their cries out loud. Additionally, the reassurance goes on to state that their counselor is alive. Question is, “Is thy counselor perished?” And again, I think this is a parallel to the other version, so indicates that its primary reference is to Yahweh. And he’s saying that, you know, ultimately, don’t worry about this. Realize that in the context of these sufferings, you have a king present and you have a counselor in Yahweh who has given you his scriptures.

In Isaiah 30:1, we read, “Woe to the rebellious children, sayeth the Lord, that took counsel but not of me and that cover with the covering but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin.” So in Isaiah 30, remember of course Isaiah is a contemporary of Micah. He says that woe to the nation that takes counsel not from me but takes it from somebody else. The point is Yahweh is in their context in their historical context there, and they should be taking counsel from him.

So he is their counselor. And to those who are repentant and recognize what is the purpose of God’s judgments, Micah is giving them reassurance that Yahweh God is there and he is their counselor.

Psalm 32:8 says, “I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go. I will guide thee with mine eye.” And that word guide is the same word that’s here translated counselor, or the root word rather for counselor. And so God counsels his people and he does it through instruction and through teaching us in his way.

And so in a context like ours today, and in the context of the people that Micah was writing to, he’s reminding them that they still have the scriptures. God is still present and alive as their counselor. He cannot die. And the scriptures can’t be destroyed. They’ll last forever. His holy word. And through that word we receive instruction and counsel.

And so he’s reassuring them here that thy counselor cannot perish. You may think he’s gone, but he isn’t, and he’s present with you as long as you submit yourselves to the scriptures.

Additionally, another text that I think demonstrates that the counselor here being spoken of is Christ, or is Yahweh rather pointing forward to the coming of the Messiah, is Isaiah 9. And in Isaiah 9, of course, the birth of Christ is foretold. And it says that his name shall be called “Wonderful Counselor”—same word here used again, a contemporary prophecy. And so when he says “thy counselor perished,” the point is no, he’s not perished. Yahweh is with you. Your covenant God is your king and your counselor.

And so it’s a reassurance. So we have the reassurance of the everlasting and eternal counselor king of the covenant peoples.

We next have the reassurance of the results of birth pains. He compares their pain here to birth pain. In verse 10, “Be in pain and labor to bring forth, oh daughter of Zion, like a woman in travail.” You see, the distress spoken of is prior to that at the end of verse 9: “for pangs have taken thee as a woman in travail.” So we have these pangs upon the daughter of Zion as a woman in travail.

And he goes on to give the assurance that labor to bring forth—that birth pangs are that they’re birth pangs. And the reason why he’s choosing birth pains as the picture for the sufferings they’re going through is that it’s not death throes, okay? It’s life throes as it were. It’s birth pains that’ll lead forward to birth, and that’s a good thing.

And so he reassures them that there will be a positive end to the sufferings that they’re now suffering.

He also gives a reassurance of future deliverance. Goes on to say, “For now shalt thou go forth out of the city, and thou shalt dwell in the field, and thou shalt go even to Babylon.” That’s the statement of distress. You’re going to go into captivity. You’re going to have a reverse exodus here is what I think is being portrayed. They’re going to be taken out of the promised land. They’re going to camp in fields. They’re going to sojourn. They’re going to, you know, like in the wilderness, they’re going to be sojourning in the wilderness, in this field for a while. And they’re going to be taken into Babylon.

And so, it’s like a reverse exodus. But it’s even worse because Babylon is worse in a very real sense than Egypt. Babylon has connotations of course of the Tower of Babel, in which Babylon was developed and that kingdom was established. The Tower of Babel is the symbol, the archetypal symbol as it were, of the city of man reaching up to try to deny the creator-creature distinction, trying to say that we shall be God and raising up this big tower to assert that.

And also Nimrod of course attempted to build a worldwide society based not upon Yahweh or not upon God, but upon man’s abilities. And so Babel is a symbol of all that, and Babylon is as well.

And so this reverse exodus—they’ve been unfaithful to the covenant. They don’t have deliverance. And in fact, they have the reverse. They’re going to be judged. And they’re going to be judged worse than going to Egypt. They’re going to go to Babylon, the symbol of one world order under apostate man, the giant city of man.

By the way, I think it’s interesting here to note that when you contrast Jerusalem and Babylon—obedience, you’re in Jerusalem, and Jerusalem is the city of God. And there you have freedom. And when you fail to act in obedience, taken into captivity again, you go back to Egypt or actually to Babylon, the city of man, and there you’re enslaved.

And so you have this contrast: the city of God, the city of man, freedom or slavery, obedience or disobedience. And I suppose in one sense, we’re always either in one of those two cities. We’re either in obedience to Yahweh God and the covenant, having been brought into conformity to it and into peace with the covenant on the basis of Christ’s work, and been given the gift of the Holy Spirit, and we either reside in obedience and freedom in the city of God.

When we apostasize from that, we enter the city of man, and we no longer have freedom. We now have slavery, death.

Okay, so that’s the distress—that they’re going to go into captivity, a reverse exodus, a reverse hyper exodus as it were, even worse than the original enslavement they had in Egypt, into Babylon. The deliverance though is also spoken of. The answer is first of all deliverance: “Thou shalt be delivered.”

And if Babylon is an ultimate symbol of the city of man and of enslavement, then this deliverance spoken of also then is going to be larger in context than deliverance from Egypt. And so the reassurance he gives them here of future deliverance—they will actually go to Babylon. They’ll actually be redeemed or delivered rather—is it’s a super deliverance.

And the second part of the answer and the assurance he gives is deliverance. The second, first is deliverance. The second is redemption there: “The Lord shall redeem thee from the hand of thine enemies.” And so we have now a redemption spoken of as well, reassuring the people that indeed the captivity will not last, that they’ll be redeemed and delivered by God.

I was thinking of this aspect of deliverance and how in the scriptures frequently the word for salvation used in the Old Testament—one of the connotations is of wide open spaces, freedom, you know, to move, freedom to get up and get around. And in Babylon, they were in captivity. They were enslaved. They were tied in.

And I was thinking that we’ll get into this a little bit later, but I think one of the reasons why all this happens is to make us realize the tremendous gift of deliverance that God has affected for us. We take that for granted frequently. We were talking this morning with Diana Brooks about how we were on vacation, and we were in my father-in-law’s, I don’t know, camper, motor home sort of thing, but it’s real small. And we spent about 3 weeks in it. And we came home and we pulled up in the driveway and we felt kind of, you know, how you feel a little bit disoriented when you get off vacation going back to your home you haven’t seen for 3 weeks.

We went inside and the ceilings all seemed about 20 ft tall, you know, and it just seemed real big. Felt like we’re kind of swimming around in this big pool. And of course, that’s because we had been in this little tiny camper for 3 weeks. And I think the same thing is true of this deliverance. You see, one of the reasons for this whole process is to make us aware of the graciousness of God and affecting deliverance.

We live and walk in the freedom we have and frequently we take it for granted. We sin. God ties us back up in slavery to somebody or something or to our own sinful lust or whatever. He delivers us from it. Then we recognize the great thing that he has done in delivering us. He brings us into wide open spaces. And he does that on the basis of his redemption. Of course, pointing forward to the work of Jesus Christ.

I’ve listed Isaiah 48 there, I believe it’s a good verse to read through in its entirety. We won’t take the time now, but again, there the idea of deliverance is spoken of. And I will read a couple of those verses. Verse 20: “Go ye forth of Babylon, flee from the Chaldeans with a voice of singing. Declare ye, tell this, utter it even to the end of the earth. Say ye, the Lord hath redeemed his servant Jacob. And they thirsted not when he led them through the desert. He caused the waters to flow out of the rock for them. He clayed the rock also and the waters gushed out. There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked.”

Okay, the reason I bring that up is again to show that the deliverance from Babylon is again talked about in terms of language of the Exodus from Egypt, the rock being split, the river coming out, and deliverance coming forward. And they’re going to come forward singing and rejoicing.

The same thing is spoken of in Isaiah 52 verse 9: “Break forth into joy. Sing together ye waste places of Jerusalem. For the Lord hath comforted his people. He hath redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations. And all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God. Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from hence. Touch no unclean thing. Go ye out of the midst of her. Be ye clean and bear ye the vessels of the Lord.

For ye shall not go out with haste, nor will go by flight, for the Lord will go before you and the God of Israel will be your reward.”

You see again there the deliverance from Egypt pictured, a future deliverance that Micah is now using to reassure the people that the problems they have now will be eventually reversed, and that they’ll, when repentant to God for their sins which takes them into captivity, they’ll have an even greater deliverance than Egypt was, because now they’re not going to go out in haste as they did from Egypt.

And we don’t have to eat Passover. We don’t eat communion downstairs standing up any longer, do we? They stood up because they were in haste, and we sit down because he says here that they won’t go out in haste. They’ll go out slowly with the Lord at their head. They’ll go out leisurely as it were. And so Micah uses that to reassure the people in times of distress that there will be a future deliverance from Babylon that will be tremendous and mighty and even greater than the deliverance from Egypt.

The fourth reassurance he gives in verse 11. Again it starts with distress. “Now also many nations are gathered against thee that say let her be defiled and let our eye look upon Zion.” And most commentators of course take this in reference to Sennacherib’s invasion, his camping about the walls of Jerusalem, etc. And so it’s more of a present deliverance that he’s talking about now. The Babylonian deliverance would be yet future. This one is more contemporary to them.

And you can tell that in verse 11. It says, “Now also many nations are gathered against thee.” And so there’s distress point. It is a present distress. And there’s also a present deliverance. Then also these men will look upon Zion. The idea there is that there’ll be conquering of her and they will, she will appear to have been forsaken by her God. But he answers in verse 12 and gives the reassurance of the following.

“But they know not the thoughts of the Lord, neither understand they his counsel, for he shall gather them as the sheaf into the floor.”

And so he says here that yes, you have present distress, but there will be also a present deliverance from that distress as well as a future deliverance from Babylon. The reassurances of that, as well as the reassurances that you’ll have an eternal king who cannot perish and a counselor whose word is always sure and steady for you, and as well as all those other reassurances that he’s giving them here—and that the reassurance that your birth pains are just that, there will be a positive end to this whole process.

He gives them the reassurance that their present situation also will be remedied and God will supernaturally act to deliver them from their foe, and that he is only gathering the nations that he might bring them as it were to the threshing floor and that he might judge them and deliver his people.

And so it’s important to recognize again here that there is a great assurance from God, a reassurance from God through the mouth of Micah to the repentant people of present deliverance as well as future deliverance.

Calvin in commenting on this specific aspect of assurance says that often the actions of the ungodly are like a cloud which obscures our vision of God. You know, you have problems. We have problems either at home, in our workplace, whatever, in the civil affairs of the nation. And frequently those problems seem real large in our eyes as it did to the people of Micah’s day.

And he reassures them just as we need reassurance from God on a regular basis through the scriptures and also through the secondary means of his people to encourage us. We’ve got to reassure each other that God is sovereignly in control of all this and that our eyes, our vision of God, shouldn’t be clouded by the temporary problems that we find ourselves in the context of. But God has a purpose for it. He will bring deliverance to those who repent and who seek his face. He will show them his mercy, his redemption, and his deliverance.

And so, it’s important to recognize that. And so, Micah reminds the people of that in these instances as well. He reassures them that God is in control.

It’s interesting here, of course, the contrast between the nations around that don’t know God’s purposes and the people of God that should know his purposes. And I want to reinforce again that his counsel is known primarily through his inscriptured word. Psalm 147:19 says, “He showeth his word unto Jacob, his statutes, and his judgments unto Israel. He hath not dealt so with many nations, and as for his judgments, they have not known them. Praise ye the Lord.”

See, so when he says here that they don’t know the council of God, he’s not saying that it’s something that the people of God can’t know, that it’s hidden in terms of his eternal decree. That’s not what he’s saying. He’s saying that eternal decree, the effects of it, and the way it works itself out in history is recorded in holy writ. Psalm 147: He shows us his word. He gives us his statutes and his judgments right here in this book.

And so, we know his counsel. The heathen nations don’t have this book. They don’t have regard for it. They don’t read it. And so, they don’t know the counsel of God. And they’re confounded by the processes of world history because world history is built upon this textbook. This is how God reveals himself to us. Says this is what world history is based upon—by revelation of myself to man and in judgment and also in deliverance.

But the nations don’t know it because they don’t read the Bible. Point of that is this: Don’t look upon the counsel of God as something that you can’t know. You read the scripture and you’ll know then what you need to know. And Micah was reminding the people here of what they already should have known based upon the simply Deuteronomy 30, if nothing else, as we looked last week—about judgments of God, deliverance and his glory going forth into all the world.

Okay, so God reassures the people here. Now, it’s real important that we recognize that the reassurances we’ve talked about have been primarily in the context of the people that Micah is writing to. But there’s a second view of that, and that is that the reassurances really point ultimately to the work of Messiah, to Jesus Christ, and the reassurance that he will establish this kingdom spoken of in Micah 4.

After all, Jesus is the mighty counselor, of course, and the great king of kings. It’s his birth that those birth panges really ultimately point forward to. It’s not just that birth pangs have a nice end and a baby. The point is that ultimately those birth pangs of the nation of Israel eventually will one come forward from that line of mankind, God incarnate on the earth, and he’ll be born. And so the birth pangs point forward to the birth of the king of kings and the mighty counselor, Jesus Christ, Messiah, the anointed one.

It was Jesus Christ of course who affected the greatest redemption and deliverance, of which all the historical redemptions and deliverances of the old covenant are but shadows and symbols and vague shadowy images at that, compared to the great redemption offered in Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ was also the one who was looked upon with gloating eyes by the nations. Psalm 22:17 says, “I can count all my bones. They look, they stare at me.” See, they were staring at Christ the way that the nations are described as staring at Jerusalem. You know, we’ve got him now. This sort of thing. We’re going to make this guy pay now. He says he’s God. Let him bring him, let him call down angels and deliver himself. Let him get down from the cross.

And so, he was the one gloated over and is still being gloated over, of course, by films such as The Last Temptation of Christ. But remember that all that is for the purpose. God gathers the nations who will rebel against him for the purpose of demonstrating his wrath and his judgment against them. And that is grace in delivering those who are repentant and bringing them to repentance. The fact that they’re repentant itself is an act of grace of God of course.

So Jesus Christ was the one that was gloated upon but he was also the one that was resurrected and given all power in heaven and on earth. He led forth captives in his train as it were, and he ascended. When he was resurrected and he ascended to the right hand of the Father, he assembled the nations against him. But ultimately not for their benefit, but for the purpose of threshing them and bringing them to submission to himself.

Reassurances then and now are evident. And I think what’s really important here is that these reassurances have a reason to them. They’re not just to make us have a lot of comfort. Comfort’s good. And we talked about that last week. And these reassurances are the same thing, but they point forward to then the command, which is the central part of the text.

The commandment has been issued, and the reassurances point forward to the issuance of that commandment. The commandment has two parts to it: Arise and thresh.

Now arise—I think one of the implications there is you’ve got somebody coming up. The idea of resurrection I think is probably pictured here somewhat. Death to life, judgment to deliverance, losing being judged, being subject to the nations to now subjecting the nations to yourself. And so there’s a reversal spoken of in the phrase arise. And that’s important to catch here.

Additionally, arise is frequently used in the scriptures as a method of convening troops. You say arise and all the troops come forward and come up out of their homes as it were into active battle for God. It’s called arms as it were. And so there’s a call to arms here issued to the people of God on the basis of all these reassurances that he’s just given to them.

And they—I thought that today, for instance, you might say: You might say to the Christians today, get up from being a doormat. Arise, get up. It’s time to get going. It’s time not just to realize that God has done something to redeem you. It’s time to get up and to move forward in obedience to your King of Kings.

And that obedience is talked about here in terms of threshing. Arise for the purpose of threshing. “Thresh, O daughter of Zion.” Reference here goes back to the fact that God has brought these nations together to be threshed as sheaf—as a single sheaf. I think the text actually indicates correctly in the Hebrew there—as nothing as it were compared to the mighty arm of God. They may be many nations physically, but in God’s sense and in God’s power, they’re but a single sheaf, and they’re brought there to be threshed.

And now he calls the daughter of Zion to arise and to thresh those nations. I guess this gives us a little different picture than we normally think of when we sing the hymn “Bringing in the Sheaves,” doesn’t it?

Uh, God brings in the sheaves, and he brings them in for the purpose of threshing out those sheaves. Remember that sheaves—chaff as well as the usable portion of the wheat in them as well. And so I think that one of the pictures here being spoken of as well is that these nations have a lot of chaff in them. And the nations that are totally chaff will be blown away as wind. We’ve read that in many psalms and throughout the scriptures.

But there are also the sense here that there will be a good product out of that threshing. The nations will be brought into submission to God through the secondary mechanism of the church. That’s the daughter of Zion. And the church is told to arise and to thresh.

The amazing thing of course here, and the thing that we just cannot, don’t want to walk away from lightly—we want to really make sure we focus on this—is that it doesn’t say here that Jesus will arise and thresh. Of course, he does. He is the one that goes forward in part of the troops. But the specific reference here indicates that in the last days, it is the daughter of Zion.

Now remember, the daughter of Zion has been the one that’s been talked about the rest of this chapter—is one that’s been redeemed and forgiven and has become repentant for her sins. So that’s not a picture of Jesus. He took our sins upon himself. He had no sins to be repentant of. You see?

So it’s a picture of us, not of him. And the picture here is that the daughter of Zion has been brought back to repentance before God, redeemed, delivered, and is now has a task to do. And that task is to arise and thresh the nations.

Now, this is really important stuff in terms of understanding this passage. It means that the scriptures don’t point forward to a once-for-all act of God in Jesus Christ at his second coming to subdue the nations. You see, it’s obvious here that the church, of course, in the power of the Holy Spirit and the enablement that we’ll talk about in just a minute, goes forward preaching the gospel of Christ and in so doing it threshes the nations. It exerts God’s judgment as it were in the nations and brings nations and men to submission to Jesus Christ and to Yahweh God.

It’s interesting—this correlation—lots of them in scripture. But Isaiah 41 shows the same correlation between redemption and threshing. Let’s see Isaiah 41—let’s start reading. Oh, we’ll start in verse 10. “Fear thou not, for I am with thee. Be not dismayed, for I am thy God. I will strengthen thee. Yea, I will help thee.”

Now, you know, we know him, of course, based upon those particular verses from scripture. Fear not, I am with thee. Be not dismayed. And again, here, it’s important to remember what the context of these verses that we sing frequently are. And it goes on to say, “I will help thee. Yea, I will uphold thee at the right hand of my righteousness.”

“Behold, all they that were incensed against thee, shall be ashamed and confounded. They shall be as nothing, and they that strive with thee shall perish. Thou shalt seek them, and shall not find them, even when they contended with thee. They that war against thee shall be as nothing, and as a thing of not. For I, the Lord thy God, will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not. I will help thee.”

“Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and the men of Israel. I will help thee, saith the Lord, and thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.”

On the basis of the redemption, then he goes on to say: “Behold, I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth. Thou shalt thresh the mountains and beat them small, and shalt make the hills as chaff. Thou shalt fan them, and the wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them, and thou shalt rejoice in the Lord, and shalt glory in the Holy One of Israel.”

“Fear not, I am with thee. Be not dismayed.” But that isn’t just to give you personal peace and affluence and comfort in the midst of tribulations. It’s to remind you of Isaiah 41, that says, on the basis of your redemption, God makes you into a threshing machine.

This is probably a real… No, I won’t use that image. It’s not good enough. Point is that God makes us into a threshing machine for his purposes. You see, it’s not just consolation offered here. It’s consolation to the end that we obey the commandment to arise and to thresh.

Reminded me also when we were reading there was a psalm responsibly earlier. We sing a lot of times this song—we don’t… I’m sorry, not a song now but you hear this reference a lot—about how God has placed our feet on mountains. “He have make my feet like hinds’ feet and setth upon my high places,” and you hear that used in a lot of ways in different devotional works about how you kind of remove yourself from the trials and tribulations or you’re higher and get more in touch with God and forget the things of the world.

But the psalm goes on to read as we read earlier, of course. Psalm 18 goes on to talk about how God has girted us with strength for the battle. We don’t stay up there on a mountaintop someplace. The point is that God prepares us for battle, and we go forward. He trains our hands for war. He makes a threshing machine out of us. He makes this troop of marines as it were to go out disciplined, redeemed by him, bought for his purposes into the world, affecting the purposes of God in our culture and in all things we put our hands to do.

Really important to see that.

Well, how is this possibly going to happen? How can he make a group of people such as us into a threshing machine, you know, into a mean green machine or whatever it is? Well, he promises to enable us. That’s the third point of our outline. He says, “For I will make thine horns iron.” And this is again a marvelous passage.

We know that the horn of salvation ultimately refers to Jesus Christ. But he says now that he’ll make our horn iron. Now, the horn was a picture of victory, of military very strength. Now, remember we talked before about Micaiah, the namesake of Micah, our prophet, who prophesied correctly in the context of a bunch of false prophets in the time of wicked King Ahab. You remember that? We talked about that. He had a lot of his yes-men prophets around him.

And one of those guys, when he wanted to—when Ahab wanted to know if he should go up and war against the Arameans—one of those guys made a horn. He fashioned a horn, you know, and some of the commentators have said he probably actually put it on his head and started dancing around, says, “Yeah, yeah. Go out there and get all those Arameans. You’re going to thresh those. You’re going to gore those Arameans until they’re destroyed. You’re going to win.” He made this big horn and put it on his head.

But see, that’s a biblical imagery of strength and military victory. And God promises here now that that prophet was lying to King Ahab and he didn’t gore the Arameans. And Micah told him that. But Micah now tells us that we will gore the Arameans as it were. We will have the horn of strength in the basis of Christ’s work. Jesus Christ will give us his strength as it were, and so we’ll go forward into military victory.

And we’ll go forward with hoofs of brass. He says, “I will make thy hoofs brass.” The nation here is compared to oxen. There were a couple of different ways of threshing things in the times of the writing of this prophecy. One way was just to have oxen walk over the grain and break it up a series of times. Wind would blow it through and blow out the stuff that wouldn’t settle. Okay. So the hoofs of the ox were frequently used as the only instrument for threshing.

Other commentators think that based upon the Isaiah passage we read earlier, that the horns here spoken of are those horns that would stick down from the iron threshing instrument, which would be dragged over the floor with the grain on it, and that the hooves of the ox would just pull this thing. Either way, the point is that the church is described here as a threshing machine with military strength and victory, and then on the basis of that strength and the horn of strength, the hoofs then being brass indicates that the nations that are threshed are brought under subjection to those hoofs of the covenant people. They trot them underfoot. Doesn’t mean they destroy them totally. It means they subject them to themselves.

Of course, ultimately, of course, to Yahweh himself.

Now, notice again here that it doesn’t say that under the feet of Jesus Christ all these things will occur. It says that under the feet of the covenant people, the nations will be brought into submission and subjection. This is remarkable.

It’s not the mission. In other words, what these texts are telling us—it’s not the mission of the church, the daughter of Zion, the new Jerusalem that Christ has initiated with his work on the cross. It’s not the mission of the church to remain in humiliation for the rest of its earthly existence. Humiliation is not the calling of the church according to this passage. Humiliation is but one step on the road that leads us to repentance and then consolation and comfort. But that’s not the end either. The end is that we might proceed then into the obedience that God has called us to: arise and to thresh and to bring the nations into subjection to him.

Of course, we should know this. 2 Timothy 2:12 says that if we have suffered, we’ll also reign with Christ. And so suffering is a precursor to reign. The church today has stopped at the suffering stage. And so it’s failed to fulfill its obligations according to this specific command to the church.

Revelation 2 reminds us that the power over the nations promised of course to Jesus Christ that he’ll rule the nations with the rod of iron. Revelation 2 goes on to say that he who is faithful in all these things and remains faithful throughout his life, he’ll be a person who rules the nations with the rod of iron as well. The church has said to you rule the nations with the rod of iron. That’s a remarkable thing. Christ gives his dominion and authority to the church as his secondary means on earth to affect increasingly the obedience and subjection of the nations.

But God gives us the command. He gives us reassurances. He gives us a picture of the enablement. And then he goes on to give us a promise of the victory—that this will be accomplished. Goes on to say, “And thou shalt beat in pieces many people.” He says, “I’m commanding you. I’m going to enable you. And more than that, I’m going to tell you right now that it will work. You don’t have to worry about the efficacy of this. You will beat in pieces many people.”

Isaiah 28:28 says, “Grain for bread is crushed. Indeed, he does not continue to thresh it forever because the wheel of his cart and his horses eventually damage it. He does not thresh it longer.”

And I think this is true. The picture here we’re being shown of the threshing of the nations. They aren’t threshed till that’s the end of all the nations. The point is the nations are threshed that they might become repentant, humiliated, and brought into submission to God, the ideas of subjecting all things to God himself and to the Messiah, Jesus Christ. And that’s the purpose of the conquering that we’re told to do. We’re to conquer and to bring thoroughly under subjection in the verses that we’ve just read about here.

He goes on to say that the end result of all this will be the worship of God: “And I will consecrate their gain unto the Lord and their substance unto the Lord of the whole earth.”

We don’t do these things for our own pleasure. We don’t do these things for our own well-being. We don’t do these things because we don’t like unrighteousness in the nation and we’d rather live in a nation of righteousness. That is ultimately not the reason we are supposed to do these things, to arise and to thresh and to conquer. The ultimate reason is for the worship of God, for the glorification of God, that all things might be dedicated and consecrated to him.

Now the term here used here is a technical term, and it says that this is holy war. And holy war means that all the spoils of the war go to the consecration of God, because he is the one who has given the enablement, the command, the reconciliation and redemption that makes all this work possible and effectual. And so the giving to him of all the spoils of all this is an indicator that we recognize that God is the one who is ultimately triumphing through his people, as it were, because he has accomplished all these things.

It’s also of course to point out to us what our proper motivation is. The motivation here is to do all these things to the glory of God and to recognize that we’re worshiping God when we do these things. And this is quite important.

Also, let’s make it real crystal clear here what this last verse implies in terms of our motivation for doing what we’re doing. The motivation for what we do on earth, what we want to achieve as the end result of our endeavors—okay? What we want long term out of this command to arise and thresh and to get active, applying our faith to all things. The end result is that God might be worshiped and glorified, that all things might be consecrated to him and to his purposes.

It’s not our goal ultimately to raise godly children who don’t get in trouble. Okay? Now, that’s a good thing to do, but the end result that we’re shooting for is not the well-being of our children. It’s not the well-being of our nation ultimately. It’s not our own personal peace. It’s the glorification of Yahweh. It’s to demonstrate the magnificence of God in the earth. It’s to bring those children singing praises to God. That’s the end of the thing. Not that they live lives of quiet personal peace and success.

You see, the ultimate purpose of all this is the glorification of God, the consecration of all things to his purposes.

Now, we know that, but it’s easy to forget it. It’s easy to take the secondary steps along the path here and forget what the goal of all of it is. But if we forget what the goal is, we’re going to stop short way too early in that process. We’re going to get content with some of those intermediate goals. That’s the history of God’s people: they be content with the peace of the land and they forget that the peace must be really the peace of Jesus Christ where all men are singing praises to God.

And that’s a job that will never be done. And so we don’t want to stop at intermediate steps. We want a land of conservatism. Talking about this last week, we don’t want a conservative president, a conservative house, and a conservative senate, and all these other things. Even if they enact all kinds of neat laws that conform themselves nicely to the word of God, that is not the end result that we’re looking for.

What we’re looking for as the end result is a nation of men who won’t call themselves legislators anymore because they recognize that there’s one law, and that comes from God. That we’re looking for a Senate and a House that are not legislators but are representatives of the people who will protect those people from evildoers according to the scriptures and reward the righteous in the land and who will sing forth the praises of Yahweh and of Jesus Christ of the Holy Spirit at their convocations.

That’s what we’re looking forward to. See, not a nation of peace and conservatism. Okay?

As we said as we began today, all of Micah points forward to this command really—the judgments of one to three, the establishment of the kingdom promised in Micah 4 verses 1-4, the obedience of the people declared in verse 5, the comfort and consolation offered in verses 6-8 of chapter 4. All these things point up to this command of the people of God to arise and to thresh.

We’ve been given the assurance of God’s sovereign role in history. And now the purpose of all this is brought forward that we might arise and thresh. And so it’s a command to us. It’s a command that we have to recognize its relevancy to us today. And I thought maybe as we kind of wrap this up, it might be interesting to think of some of the things that get in our way of threshing, that get in our way of rising up in all things that we do and bringing the world, our sphere, whatever God has called us to do, into submission to God.

First of all, of course, one of the obstacles to threshing is theology. Bad theology. We said that today it’s that today’s church, like the community of professors in Micah’s day, have rejected Yahweh as king. Everybody today, and that many people in the church do what’s right in their own eyes—or maybe a better way to put that—do what’s right in their own glands, because usually it’s a question of feelings as opposed to even what they think is right.