Dennis Tuuri

Micah 6:16

For the statutes of Omry are kept, and all the works of the house of Ahab, and you walk in their councils, that I should make you a desolation, and the inhabitants thereof unhissing. Therefore, ye shall bear the reproach of my people.

We continue in the book of Micah. We come to verse 16 which is I believe a summary statement of all of chapter 6 of the covenant lawsuits that God has brought.

He reviews in the first half the first three clauses here the sins of the people and then in the second half of the verse and the three clauses given there the judgments for those sins and he does it really in the context of a personification of what he is speaking to the personifications being Omry and Ahab. I don’t mean to say by that, of course, these weren’t historical personages. Obviously, they were.

They were kings of the northern tribes. And so, it’s important that we look just a minute and remind ourselves who those two kings were because the specification again of the sins committed now bring in the aspect of the civil state. Omry and Ahab were kings, civil magistrates of the northern kingdom. And so, our talk this morning is on the idolatrous state and judgment. Because these were idolatrous kings.

And it is important that we recognize the progression of history in the northern kingdom that God is here drawing out with its implications for the southern kingdom because it has implications for our kingdom as it were today in America as well.

The first king mentioned is Omry and I think I put in your outlines Omry the merchandiser and that’ll become more clear the reason why I put that as we go along here.

As I mentioned, these two kings are the northern kingdom in 2 Kings 21:3. We read in a judgment addressed at Manasseh that I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria and the plummet of the house of Ahab and I will wipe Jerusalem as a man wipeth a dish wiping it and turning it upside down. And so God in 2 Kings 21 instructs the people that the standard will be that of the northern kingdom. And indeed when we started the book of Micah remember in the first chapter there are references to the fall of Samaria which had probably occurred by that time already.

And God said through the prophet Micah that what you see is happening in the northern kingdom will happen to you as well because the sins of the northern kingdom are found in the southern kingdom.

Of course, a little bit of historical background. As we’re talking about the divided kingdom period. Solomon was the last great king of the United Kingdom following after David who had made the peace. Solomon brought great wealth and prosperity to the kingdom fell into sin. His son Rehoboam lost the kingdom because of his foolish counsel that he took from younger men. We’ll talk about counsel in a little bit here. It’s addressed in the scripture before us. And that produced a divided kingdom. Remember Jeroboam was the first king of the northern kingdom. God actually in his providence brought Jeroboam to the throne.

But Jeroboam immediately turned to idolatry by constructing alternative places of worship. So his people wouldn’t go down to the southern kingdom to Jerusalem to worship. And so to establish his civil empire as it were, he introduced into the nation idolatrous worship false religion. And for that Jeroboam was judged. Now in the northern kingdom you don’t have a lot of what historians refer to as dynasties or extended periods of reign by one family.

Omry and Ahab are an exception to the rule of the northern kingdom. In the southern kingdom, you had much more peace and stability, but because of the idolatrous practices of the northern kingdom that wasn’t the case. Omry, however, established a dynasty of sorts, his family ruling for 40 years. And Omry is a very significant king, although the scriptures tell us very little about him. There’s not much material on him, but of course, we have enough material to understand what God instructs us here in terms of the statutes of Omry.

Being the first specification of the sin of the southern kingdom. Now the understanding of that verse is and this is why we go sometimes slower than you might like us to go through the book of Micah that assumes a great deal of knowledge of historical events and what these people meant. The contemporaries of course living 100 150 years 200 years after some of these kings are mentioned understood those kings and understood their history.

And it takes us a little bit longer to slow down and consider the implications of these texts and to remind ourselves of the knowledge base that it’s built upon.

Okay, Omry, I guess we’ve mentioned him briefly before at the beginning of our study going through the book of Micah. I suppose the single most important accomplishment historically was the establishment of Samaria as the capital of the northern kingdom. It was Omry who bought that piece of land and who created the capital there and moved it from the capital cities that were already in the northern kingdom. He bought one capital at Samaria. Remember, it was on a hill, highly fortified, a strong city, and that’s very significant as we’ll point out in a minute.

Omry had an important dynasty historically and economically over a century after Omry’s death and him only having ruled himself personally alone for 8 years still over a century after his death Israel is styled as the house of Omry in a Syrian uniform text written 100 years later and so the stamp of Omry upon the northern kingdom upon Israel the northern side of the divided kingdom was very great and was recognized to be such by historians at the time and his importance is stressed the verse here before us.

He built Samaria. He had a very important dynasty historically and economically. And of course, he was the father of Ahab, which is also very important to keep in mind in this whole understanding of this text. His name also, I think, gives us a helpful way to at least remember the sort of man Omry was. Now, Omry sounds something like Omer, and you’re probably familiar with that form of measurement from the Old Testament.

And the reason they sound similar is because that’s the base of Omry. The same base for Omry and Omer are the same Hebrew word. And so Omry’s name is really another form as it were of Omer, another derivative of the same root word. The root word is used several times in scriptures referring to merchandising. For instance, in Deuteronomy 21:14, there’s a prohibition against a wife being put away. It says, “You shall not sell her at all for money.” This is a captive bride, but in any event, you shall not sell her at all for money.

Thou shalt not make merchandise of her. Okay. That’s the root word for both Omer and Omry. Again, in Deuteronomy 24:7, in the case law relative to the prohibition of making children of Israel slaves in the land, he says, “You will not steal any of the brethren of the children of Israel or make merchandise of him.” Okay? And so, the term means to accumulate to actually there’s another reference in the scriptures in Psalm 129:6 where it says in terms of a judgment that the mower won’t fill his hand with this particular grass.

He that bindeth sheaf won’t bring this grass into the sheaf. And that’s the same term binding of sheaf. And so there’s an idea of accumulating together goods and services merchandising in that sense and then seeing those things in terms of a medium of exchange. And so the root word for Omry is this idea of heaping. That’s the original meaning of the word bundling together. And then by way of connotation with the case law to bundle together for the purpose of merchandising.

And so I’ve labeled him Omry the merchandiser. That is then the root word for the word Omer. And Omer, of course, is a tenth of an ephah. And Omer is the specific designation of the manna given to the children of Israel. They were to go out and collect an Omer full. And that would be enough for them. There’s an idea of completion there. And the other, there are two significant uses of the word, that specific Hebrew word.

One is as the container of the manna, and the other is the sheaf that was waved as the first fruits at the harvest festival. And so that sheaf is also referred to with the same root of Omer Omry that whole classification of words. Okay. So what that helps us to see in our mind is that Omry was that sort of a fellow. He consolidated the power of the northern kingdom. He had a strong capital that he built and developed.

He had economic success. Another verse in scripture we know that he entered into alliances with other countries and would then set up their wares in the streets of Samaria. And so he had economic alliances with ungodly nations. And there were also religious alliances as well. And so Omry was this heaper together as it were a merchandiser the civil state entering into in a large way the commercial aspects of the society and the religious aspects of the society through the syncretism that he engaged in.

Now hopefully you’ll remember that Ahab was married to Jezebel. That marriage was arranged by Omry and Omry arranged that marriage because Jezebel was the daughter of Ethbaal the head of the Sidonian Empire. Tyre. So Jezebel was a Tyrian princess and the arrangement for the marriage was essentially a commercial one. Tyre was a successful area. Omry wanted good links to Tyre and so he arranged this marriage between Jezebel and Ahab.

And as a result also we have a degree of religious syncretism we entered into because Jezebel of course was a Baalist. And it’s interesting to note by the way that the primary deity in terms of Baal that she is represented as being a fanatic devote of was the one who was the king of the city. Now you got to remember that Baals weren’t you know it’s hard for us to sort of talk to think this through but Baals were not specific entities the way we think of a personal god.

Baalism is a worship of different forces in nature. Those forces are identified or idols are created to channel those forces but it is essentially a worship and an adoration and a service to forces much the way I suppose one way to think about it is the Force is with you. That’s a reminder of what Baalism is. And the specific force that Jezebel worshiped in with great gusto was the force of the king of the city, the civil state running the affairs of men brought together in the city.

And so that’s very helpful because it fits right in with this picture of Omry that the rest of the scriptures give us. Omry was successful in his commercial endeavors as well as his military endeavors. This religious syncretism brought a degree of success to his empire. We know that through two things. One, the fact that after Omry’s dynasty is talked about, from then on, we see Moab bringing tribute to Israel until later when they revolt. Prior to that, it wasn’t mentioned. So, the intimation there is that Omry subjugated Moab, another powerful rich state, to himself. And indeed, archaeologically, they have found a thing called the Moabite Stone, which records the history of Moab. And that Moabite Stone says the same thing that Omry did conquer Moab for a period of time. And so, Omry, I guess the way to think of him is as accumulator commercially, certainly politically through alliances, but also religiously as evidenced through the marriage of his son to Jezebel, a devote of the king of the city, that force.

And so Omry, I guess, was a period of time in the empire when it grew and prospered and there was peace, but its peace and prosperity was based upon pluralism. Pluralism in terms of the economic structures, an intrusion by the civil state into the economic affairs, the civil state entering into really a forbidden alliance. and essentially a pluralism of religion. We don’t see in the time of Omry an overt persecution of prophets for instance.

That doesn’t happen. It’s okay to be a prophet in the time of Omry. Essentially, it’s okay to believe in Yahweh, but it’s also okay to bring in as the queen after Omry dies, a woman who instead of worshiping Yahweh, worships instead the forces of the collective state. And so that’s the time of Omry, a pluralism was the rule of the day. And we may see this as not a particularly bad thing in our day and age.

But it’s interesting that the one comment that the scriptures give on Omry’s reign besides the one before us is found in 1 Kings 16:25, a summation statement. Omry did evil in the sight of the Lord and acted more wickedly than all that went before him. For he walked in all the way of Jeroboam. And remember Jeroboam was an idolater. And an idolater for the purpose of the civil state, he walked in the way of Jeroboam.

In his sins, provoking the Lord, the God of Israel, with their idols. And so, while it may seem to us like it wasn’t a big deal what Omry was doing, not overt killing of people and this sort of thing, and yet the scriptures give us the comment he was more wicked than any king of the northern kingdom to that period of time. And it’s because he was involved in idolatry, this religious pluralism that is so acceptable in our day and age.

Now, I said that Samaria is an important picture for this as well. DeGraaf in his excellent series of books, Promise and Deliverance, And by the way, I would recommend that if you’re studying a piece of scripture, look upon those books as a commentary. Most of us are using those books in some form, many of us are for teaching our children with the stories that are in it. But it’s also can be used very well as a good tool in terms of a commentary on different portions of scripture.

DeGraaf in commenting on this particular period of time in Samaria notes that Samaria became a city of opposition to Jerusalem of marked contrast with it as it went along. Whereas Jerusalem with its temple, DeGraaf says, was a witness to the service of the Lord according to his word, Samaria increasingly became a sign of life lived in freedom from the Lord and its objection to the civil state.

Good comment and a good way to keep in your mind a picture of what Samaria was all about. In contrast to Jerusalem, it was a city that was marked by freedom from the Lord.

Now, the second personification of the idolatrous state given to us is the reign of Ahab, the son of Omry. Now, Ahab, of course, most of us are much more familiar with Ahab, one of obviously doing some terrible things. He got into idolatry in a big way.

1 Kings 16:31-34 says it was a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam. He got heavy duty on it instead of the light way that Jeroboam and his father Omry had done. He introduced full-fledged Baal worship and he built a temple in Samaria. And so, you see the development of Samaria again in opposition to Jerusalem, freedom from the Lord becoming increasingly subjection to false gods and the civil state.

Verse 33 of 1 Kings 16 says that Ahab did more to provoke the Lord than all of his predecessors. So there’s an increasing wickedness happening now in this northern kingdom. He of course engaged himself in active persecution of the prophets. Remember Micaiah, son of Imlah, the namesake of our prophet that we’re talking about for the last few months. He was thrown into prison by Ahab after telling the truth after being adjured by the living God to tell the truth by Ahab relative to Ahab’s forthcoming death in battle.

Ahab threw Micaiah into prison and it says that he gave him bread and water of affliction. In other words, what that means is that he was thrown into prison with bread and water and very little of that. So, he was essentially being starved and thirsted to death. Of course, Jezebel, Ahab’s female counterpart in this whole thing, actually slew most of the prophets of the Lord throughout the land. Obadiah, one of Ahab’s right-hand men, hid 100 prophets in a cave and fed them with bread and water.

And so during the reign of Ahab and Jezebel, we have an active persecution now of the prophets of Yahweh. This is being worked out increasingly through Ahab. We see an active persecution of the citizenry. And of course, they are the biblical type of the persecution of the citizenry by Ahab. Of course, a historical event, but still it sort of summarizes what he did. It’s found in 1 Kings 21 where we have the murder of Naboth and the robbery of his vineyard.

Ahab wanted it. Jezebel got it for him. And Ahab said, “Great. I’m glad I got it now, and I’m glad he’s dead.” So, we have in the history of Ahab a complete external break with the Lord. No longer the pluralism. We’ve moved now into full-fledged persecution. We’ve moved into suppression of whatever in the citizenry won’t yield itself to the sovereign monolithic state, the idolatrous state. And so, we have a progression of evil.

Then, really though, Ahab was just working out what his father had started. And that’s the point of having it here in Micah 6:16. He says this stuff was worked out from Omry to Ahab, the doctrine of Omry, the statutes of Omry, the works of Ahab. And indeed, the very name Ahab helps us to remember that Ahab comes from two Hebrew words meaning brother and father. And it means brother of his father. And brother is often used in the Old Testament as a sign of a friend or a protégé or a compatriot.

And so Ahab is the extension of his father. Father becoming increasingly self-conscious about his rebellion against God. Ahab was not a shift from Omry. Really, Ahab was an extension of Omry and the working out of that self-consciously in the life of the civil state.

So those are the two personifications of the idolatry state that Micah 6 gives us. Now let’s look specifically then at what these specific sins of the idolatrous state were.

The first phrase of the three phrases relating to the sins is “for the statutes of Omry are kept.” Verse the first half of verse 16. reads, “For the statutes of Omry are kept. All the works of the house of Ahab, and you walk in their councils.” And so there’s three specific clauses there. The first clause is the statutes of Omry are kept. And I’ve labeled that in your outline, the state’s idolatrous law. The words kept there are an intensified form and mean carefully observed in the strongest sense of the term.

And the reference here is undoubtedly because we know that Omry is referred to specifically here as a merchandiser, as a commercializer, religious syncretism. So surely the statutes of Omry are those laws and that’s what statute means laws. The word the root for the word statute means engraved in stone. And so Omry wrote some things in stone and he didn’t write in stone what God wrote in stone in the ten commandments.

He wrote commercial laws, religious laws, political laws which were not the law of Yahweh. And so the doctrine of the monolithic state is talked about here. It’s its law structure. And what Omry did was to replace the law structure of Yahweh with the law structure of the idolatrous state, a king who was involved in religious syncretism and pluralism. Deuteronomy 8:11 of course says as many scriptures do that you must beware that you that thou forget not the Lord thy God and not keeping his commandments, his judgments and his statutes, his laws, his engravements in stone as it were.

Omry produced a change in the legal system. In other words, here’s what the scripture is telling us. He produced a change in the statutes from the statutes of Yahweh to the statutes of the civil state and religious pluralism. Omry produced a change in the law system. That is, he moved in a visible fashion to syncretism and pluralism in the law structure. He essentially removed the consideration of Yahweh from the law structure of the northern kingdom.

And that’s the specific sin that he did. And now that’s the sin by which Jerusalem is being measured and which Jerusalem moved increasingly into. And we looked at the last few weeks about the implications relative to the commercial areas and the ideas of the financial laws of God being broken relative to just weights and measures, evaluations, merchandising, advertising, etc. And so, Jerusalem was now doing the same thing as Omry.

It’s replacing the law code of God relative to financial transactions, but also relative to all other affairs with the law of the state. A rejection of God’s law then works itself out in a increasingly deadly and bloody fashion with Omry’s friend, as it were extension, Ahab. And so, we move to the second phrase and all the works of the house of Ahab. While Omry produced a change in the law structure of the northern kingdom, Ahab now on the basis of that change in law structure engages in deeds by the civil state that are idolatrous ex visibly idolatrous, visibly persecuting of the citizenry and visibly persecuting the prophets of Yahweh.

And so there is a progression going on here. And this second phrase, the works of the house of Ahab, talks of the practice of the monolithic state as opposed to the doctrine of the monolithic state established pushed by Omry. Omry the gatherer, the monolithic state gathering together in and the symbol of course is Samaria but certainly the alliances and everything under the state. Ahab as I said was his father’s friend and he worked out in epistemological certitude what his father had asserted in his change of law structures.

His father began the movement away through a movement of laws. Ahab continues the movement building upon the orthodoxy now an orthopraxy based upon the law of man. of the civil state and no longer the law of God. And so the results of that new orthodoxy become increasingly worked out through the son Ahab. And of course those results are absolutely horrendous and a abomination to God. It is important to note here the contrast between Ahab and Omry.

Omry apparently had at least a vestige of morality in what he did. You don’t have peace and prosperity in the reign in the empire doing what Ahab does. And in fact Ahab, of course, ends up in a bloody time. Ahab and all his children are killed. Jehu comes in and finishes them off, etc., etc. I guess what I’m suggesting here is that the peace and prosperity of Omry was because he was living on the capital of Yahweh worship as it had once been.

And so, he has a sense of morality. There’s no indication that Omry went out and knocked off guys to get their vineyards or that he killed off a bunch of prophets. There’s an external morality. The law code had been changed, but the morality was still in place based upon some sort undoubtedly of religious pluralism because that’s what Omry engaged himself in a remnant of true Yahweh worship apparently persisted in the northern kingdom in the time of Omry only to be done away with and moved away from in a full fashion through Ahab when one generation is raised up with a different law structure and hence a different god things change in the practices of the nation and that’s what these verses clearly tell us the residual morality of Omry is swept aside in a torrent of Ahab’s actions leading to death and to destruction, theft of land, as we said, murder, false worship, Jezebel, a devote of the civil state forces, full-blown persecution.

A change of statutes reflects a change in gods. And that change, so frequently glossed over in our day and age as pluralism, works itself out into the deeds of the civil state. And those deeds produce greater and greater amounts of death, destruction, judgment.

The third clause is ye walk in their councils. And I think that this in a sense combines the first two. A change in orthodoxy, a change in orthopraxy, a change in law, a change in deeds, and then a change in the council that the civil state gives to the population.

Now we know that council is extremely important. In Isaiah 30:1, contemporary prophet, we read that they take counsel but not of me. Man is a council taking creation of God. He is designed to take counsel from God and from God’s spokespeople. And when he refuses counsel from God, he turns to the council of man. And in this case, and frequently throughout history, he turns to the council of the civil state.

Now, there are other times in the history of the world when he turns to the council of the church and forgets his own desire for godly council. And the idolatrous church can also take the place of the idolatrist state in our text this morning at times in history. But at this particular point in time, the stress is upon the civil state and man was being influenced to walk in the councils of the civil state of Omry and Ahab.

When Ahab in his state policies asserts and teaches that Yahweh is just one of several gods and certainly not the director of state policies, not the writer of state laws, then Yahweh’s irrelevance and diminution is counseled to the subject people. The civil state asserts that on its part, the people who watch that civil state and of course that’s the civil state becomes much more involved in the lives of the people.

They see that and they are counseled by the civil state that God is irrelevant to their lives. And when Omry enters into covenants with foreign nations that are idolatrous and whose God is emphatically not Yahweh, the God of the covenant, the people are counseled then that there is prosperity and well-being by not being so fanatic in terms of making covenants only with Yahweh worshippers. The people are counseled into the covenantal arrangements being imaged by the civil state.

Implying that it’s okay to go into covenants and actually produces peace and prosperity in the land with the ungodly. And then as that’s worked out when Ahab rips off the land of another man and kills him for it. And when lawlessness is increased in the land and prosperity is a result of the civil state, then the people walk in that council as well and law and order fall apart.

When Ahab identifies the prophets as the troublemakers of the people and he did when he met with Elijah, he said, “Are you the guy that’s troubling Israel?” This is Ahab talking to Elijah. Okay, but you know, that’s not unusual, is it? The civil state goes to the true people that are proclaiming God’s word and say, “You’re troubling the people. You’re the problem here.” And when Ahab identifies the prophets as the trouble of the people instead of the state, the people are counseled to see their problems originating in the religion, the fanatical religion of Yahweh.

Civil policies inevitably have a profound effect upon the peoples because they represent overt official council to the people relative to their actions apart from the law structure itself. So the law the civil state both through its laws that it forms apart from God and through its actions produce a teaching device a counseling device to the people and that counseling then increases the people in that particular sin.

Man’s counsel however doesn’t stand of course scriptures are emphatic about that. Isaiah 8 says, “Take counsel together and it shall come to naught.” It won’t happen. It’s interesting because that’s in verse 10 of Isaiah 8. In verse 9, it says that you’ll be broken in pieces. Give ear all ye of far countries. Gird yourselves and ye shall be broken in pieces. So the point is, it’s kind of like a restatement of Psalm 2.

You may take your counsel together against the Lord, against his anointed, and against his prophets, but the end result of that was will be that you will be broken. And indeed, Ahab was broken and cursed by God for those actions. The Lord brings the counsel of the heathen to naught. He makes the devices of the people of none effect. And in fact, he says in the scriptures and other verses that false counsel leads to a people not going forward to a people going backward.

And that’s what we now move into then is the section on the judgment of these specific sins. So what we’ve seen in part two is the failure the civil state’s law structure, its deeds, and then its council to the people. And it is interesting that there’s a correlation between the three requirements of a godly man to do justice. In other words, to walk in conformity to God’s law. And that’s a requirement not just of the individual man.

That’s a requirement of the civil state. And the civil state is specifically said here to create a separate law structure. And so, it doesn’t do justice. A requirement of the godly man to enter into God’s holy temple is to love mercy, to extend grace in our actions. And of course, Ahab and his example given in verse 16 is a direct reversal of that. at he doesn’t extend grace to Naboth. He takes it from him.

He takes the grace that God had extended to Naboth and attempts to remove it and remove Naboth’s life. And so Ahab is the reverse of loving mercy. He loves wickedness in his deeds. And so we see the condemnation of the civil state because it doesn’t love mercy and extend act of kindness and instead extends acts of destruction. And to walk humbly before your God. The council of the civil state is they are God walking on earth.

And so The condemnation is told here in verse 16 that ye walk in their councils instead of walking humbly with God. The civil state doesn’t walk humbly with God. It is a requirement of it to do so. When it doesn’t, the people fail to walk that way as well. And so we have in the condemnation of the idolatrous state in verse 16 a parallel set of clauses relative to the three requirements of the godly man.

And that shows us that the civil state also has these requirements upon them to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before God. Of course, we’ve talked before book of Deuteronomy said the king was to meditate upon the statutes, not see himself lifted up above the people. He was to be subjected to the law code of God. He was to see his actions is being directed by that law code. He was to extend mercy to the people and not puff himself up before the people.

He was to meditate upon the first and second tablets of the law, his obligations to God, to walk humbly with God, his obligations to man, to walk justly and to extend mercy because it’s required of the civil state. Then the civil state also reaps the consequences of the violations of those requirements. And so God then tells us through the prophet that there are three specific clauses relative to judgment.

“I will make thee a desolation and the inhabitants thereof an hissing and therefore you shall bear the reproach of my people.”

First clause bleakness begins with the phrase that I should make you a desolation. And that phrase that I should implies an inevitable result. Result of the sins of the first half of the verse. In other words, it doesn’t say, “I did this so I could do this.” It says, “You’ve done this. This will come to pass.” There’s a certainty to the inevitability of these curses coming upon the nation that refused to come to repentance for its sins. In the first half of the verse, and the first section of cursing then is talked about in terms of bleakness. The preeminent archetype as it were, the judgments of God relative to covenant breakers is Of course, in Deuteronomy 28, we talked about Deuteronomy 28:36-45 before.

Last week, we talked about the fact that one of the results of the curse is to be a debtor and that they will be the head and you’ll be the tail. You’ll loan to the foreigners coming in or rather you’ll borrow from them and they’ll loan to you and so you’ll be the tail and they’ll be the head. And Deuteronomy 28 also includes these phrases that are talked about here in Micah 6:16. In verse 37 of Deuteronomy 28, it says that thou shalt become an astonishment a proverb and a byword among all nations with the Lord shall lead thee.

Then in verse 46, they shall be upon thee for a sign and for a wonder and upon thy seed forever. And so we have these things repeatedly throughout the scriptures, oftentimes in Jeremiah and other books, this progression as it were, this multiple description of the judgments of God, desolation, hissing, the reproach of the people by word, etc.

First one is desolation and the word means essentially to be found barren. Barrenness or emptiness. It’s very interesting here that the correlation to the garden again in Joel 2 chapter 3 it says a fire defth before them behind them a flame burnth. The land is as the garden of Eden before them and behind them a desolate wilderness. Yay and nothing shall escape them. The description there is the judgment of God progressing ing the judgment of God moves people from the garden of Eden to a desolate wilderness.

And so it is said here in the summation of the judgments of God upon the idolatrous state is they be moved from what you perceive as the garden of wilderness, the garden of Eden rather, into a holy wilderness into desolation, bleakness, isolation. Essentially, you’ll move from Omry’s peace and prosperity to Ahab’s full-blown judgment when God brings his entire generations to an end and kills off all of his offspring.

It’s interesting too because instead of being the gatherer here, the one who consolidates and brings together Omry in his attempt to consolidate not on the basis of Yahweh but on the basis of religious and commercial pluralism becomes the one who brings through his doctrine and through the actions of his son desolation and isolation and aloneness to the people. Instead of gathering, Omry has scattered.

When you attempt to gather apart from the secondary means of God’s law, you end up scattering. Psalm 129:5-7 rather says, “Let them,” speaking of the wicked, starting verse 5, “let them all be confounded and turn back that hate Zion. Let them be as the grass upon the housetops which witherth after it growth up. Wherewith the mower fillth not his hand, nor he that bindeth sheaf his bosom. Neither do they which go by say, The blessing of the Lord be upon you. We bless you in the name of the Lord.”

The curse called on the wicked by David or by the psalmist rather in Psalm 129. I’m not sure David wrote that one. is that the they would be as the grass that sticks on top the house that isn’t included in the sheaf of production. The grass doesn’t come to maturity. Its maturity is in its dying and withering away. And so Omry’s kingdom instead of being a gathered kingdom becomes a scattered desolate judged kingdom.

And of course that’s worked out fully with the fall of Samaria and the captivity of the people that results from that fall.

Secondly, in addition to the bleakness, there is astonishment and the inhabitants thereof an hissing. Now, I listed a verse there, Judges 5:16, because it helps us to understand the term hissing. Judges 5:16 says, “Why abodeest thou among the sheepfold to hear the bleedings of the flocks and that term bleedings there is really probably more properly translated pipings for?” It’s the same word that’s here translated hissing.

And in other place, what it indicates here is that the it’s not the hissing of the sheep. It’s the hissing for the sheep. It’s the blowing of the whistle. It’s the pipe being played that gathers the sheep. And so the idea of hissing is a is an audible sound sometimes in derision. It’s sometimes used that way in scriptures and it could have that connotation here, but more often than not, it’s used in terms of astonishment.

Look at what that what look what happened there. You go into a place that had once been beautiful, you see a total devastation and wreck. You know, you might whistle, you might go, you know, something like that. It might go like that. That would qualify as the hissing sound for here as well. Or it might be a hiss of derision. But I think that the idea is that the devastation is so complete and the desolation and bleakness are so evident to all that go by and the judgment of God hand upon them is so heavy that people look at it with astonishment and the nation say, “What happened?

How did they go from Omry to Ahab overnight as it were? It’s an incredible thing.” And so there’s a sense of a punishment. instead of being known to the nations as a rich and prosperous nation, the nations now the nation is rather becomes a cause of astonishment to the people and the isolation of the gatherer is remarked upon by the people through hissing.

And third, there is condemnation if not at least hinted at in the hissing explicitly stated in the third clause of the verse, which is “therefore ye shall bear the reproach of my people.”

Reproach Proverbs 14:31 says that he that oppresses the poor reproaches his maker, but he that honoreth him hath mercy on the poor. Omry and Ahab had reproached not the poor people, they had reproached God. And God now creates them as a reproach to the people. From Solomon to Ahab, from ruling the globe to dogs licking your blood, and the nations see it and comment upon them. Serves them right. Good. I’m glad they got their comeuppance they’re to be gloated at by the other nations.

And so the judgment is complete.

Now the fourth part of the outline this morning I’ve entitled America circa 2000 from Omry to Ahab. And I put a question mark at the end of that. We said that in 2 Kings 21:13 that God stretches over Jerusalem the line of Samaria and the plumb line of the house of Ahab and measures them. And believe me, God does the same thing today. He takes the line to Samaria, the plumb line of Ahab, and he brings it against our nation, and he judges us on the basis of that standard as well.

James Montgomery Boyce commenting on these few verses in Micah 6 says the following. Each of the elements, the judges that we’ve talked about, can be seen in contemporary America. But of the three, the most evident of all is frustration, which we talked about last week. Within the memory of at least half the Americans living today, there is remembrance of this land as the land of opportunity. and high ideals.

Here was freedom’s home. Here were unending personal possibilities. Here was progress measured in such tangible things as safe homes, good schools, abundant jobs, and fair prices. An individual could plot your advance year by year and the country’s advance decade by decade. In those days, we were proud to be Americans, but things have changed. In less than a lifetime, the conditions of our national life have been so altered that nothing seems to work any longer.

Our economy is struggling. Our military has proved to be inadequate to several challenges. Prestige abroad has plummeted and within a national life once marked by moral standards and high aspirations has become a cesspool. People do what they wish without regard either to God or man. Our cities are dirty and unsafe. Crime abounds. Structures collapse. Perversions flaunt their evils in our faces. This is precisely what God told Israel would happen.

To that favored nation. Israel’s case is our own. And we can see it in the three specific sins mentioned in the first half of verse 16. The law code change from Omry from the Yahweh from Yahweh’s law to the statutes of Omry is what has happened in our lifetime. And indeed the Christian church which has the prophetic office hasn’t even addressed that. In fact, most of the Christian church today calls for the statutes of Omry.

They say explicitly, we don’t want the statutes of Yahweh to be the standard for our nation. We want the statutes of the civil state, whatever that is. Religious pluralism is heralded as some sort of great thing. But this is revolution. Law codes and the change in law codes represents a change in one’s God. And that is what revolution is all about. This country, without getting into the long debate of are we a Christian nation, there is no doubt by anybody who reads a smattering of American history that this nation was heavily influenced and essentially Christian in all of its structures 150 years ago.

Sabbath laws were kept for heaven’s sake. The constitution itself made provision for a Sabbath rest for the legislators and assumed it. The constitution reads that it was ratified in the year of the Lord. What lord? The only lord that came 16 or whatever it was. How many years before the constitution was ratified? the Lord Jesus Christ. This was an explicitly Christian nation. The law codes of the nation reflected the law codes of the scriptures.

But things have changed. We’ve moved. We’ve moved from David as it were to Omry. We now have the law codes of pluralism. And because the religion has gone through this phase of so-called pluralism, it now drifts into a radical anti-Christian bias. As it works itself out, the actions of the civil state become more and more like Ahab. increasingly openly persecuting the church and righteous men and women and accumulating all wealth for the civil state.

They own over half the state of Oregon is federal land. Do you understand that? The civil state accumulates all things to themselves. And as a result, death becomes increasingly what America is all about. Between 1 and 2 million babies murdered every year many times, probably most the times with the assistance of the civil state. Certainly at least political assistance and more often than not monetary assistance to kill those children.

Breakdown of the families, the resultant child abuse, child abuse in Oregon has gone from a couple of deaths a year to 25 or 30 infant deaths due to child abuse every year. Is that because the population has gone through some quantum leap? It’s because the state continues to break down God’s preserving institution relative to children, which is the family. And as the state allows that to happen and encourages live-in lovers and this sort of thing through their law codes and through their actions and through the welfare programs, children are being murdered increasingly at a higher rate.

And the answer only is more state intervention. It’s to become more like Ahab than just being kind of pluralistic like Omry was. The ghettos in America are disgrace and they are direct result of state intervention in terms of the welfare system. We always had poor areas. We did not always have poor areas that were incredibly unsafe to walk through. Walter Williams talks about when he was growing up as a boy in the in the slums of Philadelphia.

You could sleep outside in the summer in the ghetto and now you can’t walk down the street in daytime in the daylight because the civil state through its programs of welfare well-intentioned to try to bring peace and prosperity to the ghetto built upon the statutes of Johnson instead of the statutes of Yahweh. And as a result, what we see worked out is Ahab and not David. The council of the civil state moves us increasingly to a Mussolini style fascism where business and government are one entity increasingly as they were in the days of Omry.

Increasingly the state becomes the monolithic sphere, the only sphere of authority left instead of being a separate sphere or government if you will. Omry’s practices reign today and counsel the people. Increasingly people are counseled by the civil state through its tax structures for instance toward indebted slavery, paid abortions, the irrelevance of Yahweh taught throughout the primary counseling agency of the state, which is the public school system.

And increasingly, the council becomes more and more overtly and self-consciously anti-Christian, essentially anti-theistic and force-oriented. We have passed Omry and we move increasingly in this nation to for Ahab. I was listening to the radio the other day as we went to pick up I was with my girls in the car and I hit two stations, one a station that plays contemporary music and the other one that plays ’60s music and I went from a song by Tom Petty and I won’t tell you the lyrics but they are very vile and disgusting, very evil.

And I went from that to Neil Sedaka, a sweet something about girl who just had her 16th birthday. Sweet little sign. That’s how does it go? Happy birthday, sweet 16. That’s what it was. And you know the contrast between those two songs was incredible. I mean this Neil Sedaka song was godless, but it was so moral. It was so what you want your kids to be involved with at some point in time in this nation. You know, a nice relationship.

A father’s talking about it was well, I’m not sure who’s talking, but anyway, it was a nice, you know, song and this Tom Petty song was an incredible, you know, I won’t again discuss the lyrics, but it was all based upon raw, savage, violent sexual activity. Patti Smith, I think, wrote the song, and she’s pretty vile herself.