Dennis Tuuri

# Micah 7:1-7

Micah 7:1-7. Woe is me. For I am as when they have gathered the summer fruits as the grape gleanings of the vintage. There is no cluster to eat. My soul desired the first ripe fruit. The good man is perished out of the earth, and there is none upright among men. They all lie and wait for blood. They hunt every man his brother, with a net, that they may do evil with both hands earnestly. The prince asketh, and the judge asketh for a reward, and the great man he uttereth his mischievous desire, so they wrap it up.

The best of them is as a brier. The most upright is sharper than a thorn hedge. The day of thy watchman and thy visitation cometh. Now shall be their perplexity. Trust ye not in a friend. Put ye not confidence in a guide. Keep the doors of thy mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom. For the son dishonoreth the father. The daughter riseth up against her mother. The daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.

A man’s enemies are the men of his own house. Therefore I will look unto the Lord. I will wait for the God of my salvation. My God will hear me.

We’ve reached the providence of God, the concluding chapter of the book of Micah. And we’ve reached it at such a point in time as which it is very appropriate for what we’re going to talk about this morning in terms of the Supreme Court decision named Roe v. Wade.

We’re going to go through this morning with the first seven verses in a very summary sort of fashion concentrating on the last few verses of that portion of scripture. We’ll return to this portion of scripture two weeks from today. Next week, Reverend George Grant will be here. The following week, we’ll return to this portion of scripture and go over it in some detail.

I think that this is a very important portion of scripture for us because with chapter 7, we see a lament on the part of the righteous man for the conditions of the land in which he lives. And I think that what we’ve come to in chapter 7 then is very applicable to us today.

I’ve been asked by several people as we’ve gone through this study, what do we do in light of all this judgment? What’s our response? And I think Micah chapter 7 gives us a response to the judgment that the first six chapters of Micah has outlined and also the flow of history that’s outlined there as well. And so it’s important that we don’t just rush through it. It’s important that we consider it and receive there the comfort and direction that is surely in that portion of scripture for us.

So we will return here, but I wanted to just go briefly through these first seven verses now to catch the flow of what’s happening and setting up really the last couple of verses, 5, 6, and 7.

Now the first verse of course in Micah chapter 7 starts with woe is me and so we have a woe oracle here. We have a lament on the part of the prophet and we’re told then a couple of metaphors here as to why he considers himself to be in such a lamentable state. For I am as when they have gathered the summer fruits as the grape gleanings of the vintage. There is no cluster to eat. My soul desired the first ripe fruit.

So he is as if one who comes to an orchard that should be bearing fruit. There is no fruit in it. And so there is frustration. We’ve talked in the past about the frustration of God’s judgment against the wicked. And we see here in these first couple of verses the frustration of the righteous in the context of a nation that is also wicked and has forsaken righteousness.

The metaphor is then clearly described in the next verse. The good man is perished out of the earth and there is none upright among men. And so the idea here is that as the vineyard or as the orchard should have fruit in it, so also the earth should have righteous men in it. And yet there is none. And so the righteous man who is there in the context of this sort of ungodly society finds himself frustrated.

And so there is no righteous man to be found there. On the other hand, there is no neutrality in men either. And so what we have left are not people that are kind of caught between righteousness and evil, but men who instead move on to do acts of wickedness. And so the text continues that they all lie and wait for blood. They hunt every man his brother with a net.

Now when he says the good man has perished out of the earth, that word—then we’ll return to this in future weeks—but the word there is the adjective form for the one of the three requirements that we talked about before of the godly man: to love kindness and to love acts of mercy. Hesed, this is the adjective form. The good man, the man who practices kindness, devoutness to God and his responsibilities to his fellow man as well.

And so completely missing from the face of the earth as it were is the man who would do that one requirement of loving kindness. So he’s perished out of the earth and instead he’s been replaced by those people that lie and wait for blood. Instead of a life-giving grace-giving source, man now becomes a source of murder and death and defilement.

And so they hunt every man his brother with the net. And the word brother there doesn’t mean your actual brother. It means your fellow citizen as it were in the context of the land, your covenant brother in that sense, part of the covenant nation that you’re a part of. And so we have this disintegration of society that goes on here. We have citizen warring against citizen. The social fabric, in other words, is disintegrating here before their very eyes.

Having moved away from the God of reconciliation, the nation then moves toward disharmony and warfare with their fellow man. At war with God, they then become increasingly at war with each other.

Then verse three reads that they may do evil with both hands earnestly. So there’s an earnestness to which they’re performing this evil. Then something that just sort of happens. They now are actively engaged in this social warfare and in this lack of harmony with their fellow man and indeed warfare and blood against him.

And then there’s a threefold conspiracy wrapped up here. The prince, the judge, and the great man, the man of honor, the man of repute, the man of wealth or whatever in society all conspired together to do mischief and to do evil with both hands earnestly and they wrap it up in their deliberations. And so the leaders of the covenant community, the magistrates, the influential citizens lead the citizenry in this civil war as it were in this increasing anarchy and the disintegration of the social fabric that’s talked about here.

And then verse 4, the best of them is as a brier. The most upright is sharper than a thorn hedge. So we’re looking at the best representatives of the community now and they’re like a brier and a thorn hedge. They don’t—they’re not a source of life and blessing and soothing to the people, but instead they’re just the reverse. They’re the source of pain and of curses instead of blessings. Instead of helping, they prick one another.

Instead of reflecting the righteous garden of God and the flowers that bloom there and the blessings of the garden, they have instead grown into a thorn patch, the howling wilderness where only thorns grow, the thorns of cursing and not blessing.

Second half, verse four: the day of watchmen, thy visitation cometh. Now shall be their perplexity. And so the spiraling judgment that’s been talked about in these first three verses, the disintegration of harmony with God being the precursor to all this leading to the disharmony with fellow man and civil war and citizen against citizen and violence and destruction in the midst of the land.

There’s a spiraling judgment here that’s talked about and it spirals down and he now says, “The day of thy watchmen and thy visitation cometh. Now shall be their perplexity.” In other words, what the watchmen, the prophets had warned the people of the judgment of God increasingly manifest in the nation about them. That was now coming upon them in a full-blown sense. Thy visitation comes. God comes. There’s an advent of God described here in which he comes to judge the mountain of man and to establish the mountain of God.

And this will result in their perplexity. While they may engage in these first acts of social rebellion and revolt against the covenant community and warfare with each other, seemingly plotting together and conspiring, there will be a perplexity as the full blown impact of their judgment falls upon them. And so the spiraling judgment is coming to full fruition.

The events prophesied by the watchmen, the prophets of God sent to his people to warn of the approaching calamity are unfolding before their eyes here and before our eyes as we read the text. They do not take the occasion to repent. They have been given many opportunities to repent, but they do not repent. And so they move into fuller and fuller judgment before God.

Instead of choosing repentance in life, they move towards stubbornness, evil and death. Instead of forgiveness, they move to wrath and judgment. And so we have a spiraling judgment here that is reflected in the New Testament in the book of Romans in the first chapter that most of us are familiar with. And there’s a spiraling down of judgment, continuing curses coming upon the people to which they can respond in repentance, but instead they harden their hearts.

God turns them over to increasing sin and depravity and judging them and cursing them. And so the cycle goes on. As you read these descriptions, the question that comes to mind is, is this a description of the sin of the people that’s going to call forth the judgment of God? Or is this a description of the judgment of God upon man? And I think what we find in Romans 1 and here again in Micah 7 is that both things are at work.

There’s this spiraling fashion in which man rebels against God. Doesn’t take the occasion to come to repentance when God judges him and curses him and the curse then becomes part of their act of sin and rebellion against God as well. And so we have both elements going on here.

The gracious God has dealt gracefully with the people in the book of Micah. He has warned them at their the consequences of their sin and of his judgment upon the unholy mountain of man as opposed to the mountain of God. God has referred to their sinning—these sinning rebels mind you that we are now described before us—He has referred to them remember in chapter 6 as my people and he has pleaded with them to remember what he had done for them in the past and what he would do again for them in the future if they but repent and move in obedience to him to confess their sins and then move on to the requirements he laid out in front of them: to love kindness, to do justice and to walk humbly with God.

In chapter 7, this concluding chapter, then the examination period, the trial, the test as it were, of the culture and society is coming to a close and God’s fiery wrath and judgment is now causing their nation to boil with uncertainty and violence. The day of their perplexity approaches. The roots under which they’ve been operating, that is, that they can build and keep the mountain of man in place apart from God, is being stripped away before their very eyes.

As the social fabric disintegrates and all institutions are judged by God, the result will be perplexity, a word connoting terror, amazement, confusion. The world goes mad before their very eyes and so judgment spirals on.

So God now traces the full-blown effects of sin and judgment in the land. And he does this by drawing in the next verse a tightening series of concentric circles of social relationships that are breaking down under judgment from God. He says in verse 5, “Trust you not in a friend, a friend or an acquaintance. Put no confidence, put you not confidence in a guide, a close counselor or confidant. Keep the doors of thy mouth from her that lieth upon thy bosom.”

And so increasingly the one who becomes closest to you is no longer a source of confidence and trust. And then in verse six, for the son dishonoreth the father, the daughter riseth up against her mother and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man’s enemies are the men of his own house. And that last statement is the end of this spiral of judgment. And it is now full-blown in the nation. And God’s wrath is poured out now upon the nation.

And Micah then turns to God in verse 7. So having talked about the betrayal of their fellow Israelites, their fellow citizens a couple of verses before this, he moves on now to speak of the betrayal of their friends, their buddies, their companions, their compadres will turn and betray their trust.

When society suffers judgment in breakup at God’s hand, there is at least in the beginning of that judgment comfort in knowing that we have a small circle of friends to whom we can turn for solace, trust, encouragement. But God will not let this supposed sanctuary stay in place. He judges it and removes it from us. The sin and judgment works itself into the small group of friends or acquaintances that could offer us solace and comfort. That comfort is removed.

But then perhaps we can keep one close confidant, one long friend. The old gang may be breaking up, but the trusted adviser who knows us so very well and whom we can count on and trust. Perhaps he can give us solace and comfort. The scriptures here refer to him as a guide. As I said, it means a close confidant, our closest buddy in the terminology. While the old gang may break up, perhaps with our best friend, we can keep ourselves afloat in the midst of a world gone mad and savage.

But no, God strikes here next in the second clause of this verse and brings us to the grinding realization that here also there is no trust, no confidence to be had. We cannot trust our closest friend. Those that refuse to trust in God will not finally be allowed to place trust in a friend or a close confidant. Those who turn not to God for counsel and refuse to put their confidence in him will finally lose all confidence in other guides or compatriots.

And finally, as the spiral of judgment, sin, and judgment works itself out in the nation, the final death throes of the culture are remarked upon in terms of the loss of solidarity, trust, and confidence in the family unit itself.

Now, we’re not speaking here of the extended family. We’ve already done that at this point in the verses. Your fellow citizens, your close your acquaintances and your close friends in the context of Israel would have been your relatives normally. Remember the land was apportioned on the basis of familial lines and relative lines and they were still pretty much intact at the time of Micah’s writing. And so we’ve already seen the disintegration of the extended family.

But now we get down to the third clause of verse 5 to the disintegration of the nuclear family. The wife, the one that lays her head in our bosom cannot be trusted. She like Delilah with Samson can be counted on instead not to be our helpmate but instead to be our destruction.

A rugged man needing no God in the heavens finds that without God no friend on earth not even the wife of his oneness his close companion from youth is to be relied upon. Man is left stripped of all relationships with fellow man because he has shunned relationship with the almighty creator of all men and all relationships. This is a dark scene of judgment that Micah paints for us. A dark scene of a nation in the final throes of judgment.

The statement here relating to the loss of trust, faith, and confidence in one’s wife is then followed by several relationships which I believe are chosen to demonstrate the complete breakdown of family authority and solidarity. It’s the wife that betrays the husband. The son calls the father a fool in essence here, which means not silly in the context of the word used but rather one who is immoral in whose eyes there is no god and the daughter and daughter-in-law rises up against their mother.

Now you’ll notice in these relationships here that we have pictured inferior superior relationships—inferior rebelling against superior and by that I don’t mean in terms of essence I hope you understand that by now but that I’m talking about in terms of function the way the Westminster Confession does. The daughter is inferior to the mother in terms of function, the son is inferior to the father and the husband is superior to the wife in terms of function in terms of God’s order.

And the picture that Micah paints is one totally of inferior rebellion against superior but I don’t think we want to limit the breakdown of the family to that particular set of occurrences. We’ve said before that Micah draws heavily upon the covenant curses found in Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26 for his description of the judgment to come upon the sinning covenant nation.

And indeed in Deuteronomy 28, verses 53-57 we find specific curses relative to the betrayal of the family and the breakdown of family as God’s judgment comes upon apostate man.

In Deuteronomy 28, beginning at verse 53: “Then you shall eat the offspring of your own body, the flesh of your sons and of your daughters, whom the Lord your God has given you during the siege and the distress by which your enemy shall oppress you. The man who is refined and very delicate among you shall be hostile toward his brother and towards the wife he cherishes and toward the rest of his children who remain.

So that he will not give even one of them any of the flesh of his children which he shall eat, since he has nothing else left during the siege and the distress by which your enemy shall oppress you in all your towns. The refined and delicate woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground for delicateness and refinement, shall be hostile toward the husband she cherishes, and toward her son and daughter, and toward her after birth, which issues from between her legs.

And toward her children whom she bears, for she shall eat them secretly for lack of anything else during the siege and the distress by which your enemy shall oppress you in your towns.”

This same synopsis of this is also contained in Leviticus 26, the other chapter detailing God’s judgments upon the people. And we find that it was fulfilled during the time of Jeremiah’s writing in Jeremiah 19, verses 8 and 9.

We read the following. Jeremiah 19 starting at verse 8: “I shall also make this city a desolation and an object of hissing. Everyone who passes by it will be astonished and hiss because of all its disasters.”

Now you should remember that from our last talk in the book of Micah. Hissing, desolation, an astonishment to the people. This is what Micah talked about in chapter 6 that would come upon the covenant nation when God’s was full-blown loss of prestige and in fact an object of scorn among the people.

Now, and this is followed up immediately as it is in the book of Micah by the description of family betrayal in verse 9 of Jeremiah: “And I shall make them eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters and they will eat one another’s flesh in the siege and in the distress with which their enemies and those who seek their life will distress them.”

And so we have in scripture this horrendous picture of judgment and the final throes of judgment. For there is complete family betrayal. Mothers and fathers eating their own flesh, devouring them as it were, hating each other. The delicate woman brought to eating the flesh of her offspring itself.

I know this is tough stuff to listen to, to ponder and consider, but this is reality. This is the reality of a nation in judgment. This is the reality of God’s curse coming full-blown upon a nation that refuses to take the opportunities that God provides in his providence for repenting and turning back to him.

Now in Micah, as I said, the order stresses, I think, the inferior superior relationship because Micah his primary concern is to show that this is the result of them rebelling against their superior God. And so when you rebel against God and you rebel against the ordained authorities that God has set up for you, that works itself out in society. We know from Deuteronomy, these other passages that the father rebels against the mother is or the father rebels against the children.

The mother, the father also treats his wife poorly. So we don’t want to restrict this to inferior superior. But Micah stresses out a very important truth here, one we’ve made before. You rebel against God’s ordained institutions in church and state. You teach your children rebellion against God and you can count on them then to rebel against you as they continue to mature and develop in the path that you put them into.

We’ve talked about that before. These texts demonstrate to us that family betrayal is a manifestation of sin and judgment in a society and further that in its most violent and abhorrent forms family betrayal marks a nation that stands at the door of its total and final ruin from God. And we live in such a nation today.

We live in a nation today where the righteous are so few as to be accounted for all practical purposes invisible in the nation. Where acts of goodness and kindness are absent from the scenes. We live in a nation where men seek blood, where jets are blown—in a world in which jets are blown out of the skies for some kind of vague political statement.

We live in a nation in which an individual picks up a semi-automatic rifle and kills little children for absolutely no reason. We live in a nation where cities are turned into a spasm of violence and racial warfare such as we’ve seen in Miami. We live in a nation where men are clubbed to death because of the color of their skin.

We live in a nation where a father and a husband, a father of small children whose job it is to protect the citizenry of Oregon by providing incarceration for prisoners was stabbed this last week at the place of his employment essentially. In the middle of the night, the chief, as it were symbol of incarceration, an attempt to protect the citizens from violent crime, is himself stabbed and made the victim of a violent murder.

We live in a nation and in a state and in a city where to walk in most parts of that city at nighttime is dangerous at best and completely foolhardy at worst. Where social relationships disintegrate and friends cannot be trusted. Where family violence accelerates, and the only answer that people seem to be capable of coming up with is the state then running the families. And this is the state that broke down those families of course with the authority of the state school teachers replacing and usurping the authority of the parents and of the home.

And so the state that ruined families that for a hundred years has declared war on the authority of the family through the common school today called today the public school is the very state that is turned to now to take care of these collapsing families. We live in a society where the state actually sanctions and pays for the murder of children and yet that state portrays itself as the great friend and savior of children.

We live in a nation in a state of hypocrisy. We live in a nation in a state where lesbian and sodomite case workers and juvenile justices decide the fate of small boys and girls. The judiciary as the judiciary of Micah’s day was corrupt and altogether pervert.

We mark this day the anniversary of a judicial decision. In other words, the decision made by those who are in the carrying out of their office and responsibilities to represent an image of God’s throne of justice in the heavens. But we mark this day not a decision imaging God’s holy court of justice. We mark this day a day of infamy and of horror and of family and judicial betrayal.

A day in which God’s rule in the nation and particularly his concern for those who are unable to defend themselves against vicious and brutal attack was set on its head. A day in which the leaders, the creme de la creme, the pinnacle of our judicial system in essence declared open season on pre-born babies for the personal whim and convenience of the mother or the society.

A day in which family betrayal was given official state sanction and eventually even tax supported assistance in most states including this one.

Now, I don’t want to gloss over the sins of the judiciary, past and present. We have turned a corner with Roe v. Wade in the judicial system. We travel now down a dark and dangerous judicial path. And a reminder of this terrible injustice that is perpetrated by the law courts of this nation on a daily basis was brought to mind this last week.

I saw a news account of a case in another state, I believe in the Midwest, in which a man strangled his wife in front of their two daughters ages four and six in front of them. The man was arrested, charged with murder, but did he get tried for murder? No. He made an arrangement with the district attorney to plead manslaughter. Maximum sentence 15 years.

Did the district attorney call for a 15-year sentence? He did not. The records indicate he asked for eight years for this man. Did the judge give eight years? He did not. The judge gave a four-year sentence to this man. And did he serve four years? He did not. He served 14 months of a prison sentence, was paroled. And are those children safe in the home where they had been placed? The home of the dead mother’s brother where they were now living securely and happily in another extended family.

Are they still there? They are not. They were given into the custody of that man who strangled their mother before their very eyes. Two girls now aged six and eight reside with the man who killed their mother in their sight.

Now this is abomination. This is abomination and horror for which a recompense is due and shall be enacted and exacted by the one who rules justly in the courts of heaven. So the judiciary must not be overlooked today. But we do not understand what is happening in America if we stop there and speak not to the family betrayal that is now a regular part of our American scene.

Every year somewhere around 1 million mothers betray the children of their family and of their womb. Not because Roman armies are at the door and they don’t have enough to eat. Not because their survival is the question here in their minds, but rather they betray those children to death and to the butcher’s scalpel because they want convenience, sexual activity without responsibility, a career, a thousand other such idols of destruction.

The state is not Herod today invading the home and hauling children off to death chambers. The judges don’t do that. No, the mothers are turning their children over to the death chambers of their own volition. Surely encouraged by the society in which we live, but nonetheless, it is still their choice and it is their betrayal of their own progeny.

And even the Christian community participates in this, if not specifically in the case of abortion, instead by trotting their children off to the state public school system where the children’s faith is absolutely destroyed and ravaged by that state. You know, there’s a new book out on the myth of the common school written by a person in favor of the common public schools, but he acknowledges that the public schools go back to Jefferson’s friends who in really concert with men out of the coming out of the French Enlightenment both started to develop a common school system for the purpose of creating a good citizen for the new republic.

You see, a good citizen for the new republic is like Antiochus Epiphanies did to the children of Israel during his day. You mold them into what you need and you destroy the individual religious faith of the individual members of that society for the sake of the common good. And that’s what the common school system is all about. That’s what the public school system is all about.

I talked to a lady this week who wanted me to go on either the radio show or television show I was going to be on this past week and talk about the fact that her son in high school was given a homework assignment, not atypical. First of all, she mentioned how he’s taught in a global studies class by communists and that the children all know their teachers are communists. Children are offended by that. I don’t know what the parents do.

And her son was also given a homework assignment to come home and to create a god to worship, to write a chant to worship you know, a force in the universe or something. And instead, the son when he when the question said to create a god, he quoted from the first law of the ten commandments. Thou shalt have no other gods. And he then instead of a chant wrote down the Lord’s prayer. And that student and his mother were berated by the public school which that student attends.

She also told me of a younger child she had I think second grader if I remember correctly whose teacher is homosexual who pats the child on the behind frequently and gets all the children to come over and tickle his back.

Now I bring this up because the problem is we do have choice in education in this state. You can send your child to a private school or you can homeschool with virtually no interference in the state. The state’s not the problem. The problem is the Christian parents refuse to pull out of that atheistic destroying system that is wrecking the faith of their children except for the grace of God. Pastors, as many of you know, in terms of vocational calling, are the group that has most support and most involvement in the public school system.

Pastors of churches who should realize with just a cursory reading of history that school system is there to destroy their faith.

Now, that’s family betrayal in the midst of the church communities that we have supposed church communities in this nation. We live today, as I said, in a very similar day to those of Micah’s time. We live in a time of family betrayal and judgment. We live in a day that is marked by a hatred of life and family.

Tom Wolfe in his book *Bonfire of the Vanities*, which I’ve read these past few weeks, remarks on the movement away from families and a chapter he has in this book talking about a dinner party in which the main character goes to of very well people and I’m going to read a couple of quotes out of this.

This dinner party that the man goes to is given by a couple called the Bavardas and let’s see I’ll read this quote from Wolfe. Wolfe is not a believer. Wolfe is however an excellent critique of American life. The book is essentially about New York City in 1988 and is as well about our nation in a very summary sort of form as you’ll see here as I read this quote from this dinner party.

And now one other term he’s going to use in this quote is the term social x-rays. And the character uses this term to describe the women that attend a lot of social parties in New York. He calls them social x-rays because first they go to all these parties and then secondly they’re x-rays because they’ve starved themselves to near perfection in the quote before us.

They become so thin he says that it’s almost as if you put a light bulb behind them. You see the rib cage. So he calls them social x-rays.

Okay, here’s what Wolfe says. And the man is now talking about who comes to these parties.

“The women came in two varieties. First, there were women in their late 30s and in their 40s and older women of a certain age, all of whom were skin and bones starved to near perfection. To compensate for their concupiscence missing from their juice, from their juiceless ribs and atrophied backsides, they turned to the dress designers. This season, no puffs, flounces, pleats, ruffles, bibs, bows, battings, scallops, laces, darts, or shirrs in the bias were too extreme.

They were the social x-rays, to use the phrase that had bubbled up into Sherman’s own brain. Second, there were the so-called lemon tarts. These were women in their 20s or early 30s, mostly blonde, the lemon in the tarts, who were the second, third, and fourth wives or living girlfriends of men over 40 or 50 or 60 or 70. The sort of women men refer to quite without thinking as girls.

This season, the tart was able to flaunt the natural advantages of youth by showing her legs from well above the knee and emphasizing her round bottom, something no x-ray had.

What was entirely missing from his view was the manner of woman who is neither very young nor very old, who has laid in a lining of subcutaneous fat, who glows with plumpness and a rosy face that speaks without a word of home and hearth and hot food ready at 6 and stories read aloud at night and conversations while seated at the edge of the bed just before the sandman comes. In short, no one ever invited mother.”

And that’s a commentary on our time. Mother’s not in fashion. Family is not in fashion. Family betrayal, lemon tarts are in fashion. Family betrayal through abortions and the social x-rays that have them is in fashion today in America. And so when you examine your wife, thank God for that extra layer of subcutaneous fat. Thank God that you have a wife who hopefully images in her presence motherhood.

Now, I’m not saying you got to have a lot of weight to do that, but you get the point.

Another quote from Wolfe: Well, we as society have moved beyond motherhood, which is to say that we’ve moved away from life into sensuality and death, lemon tarts, social x-rays. The hatred of family, however, is really only a corollary or a result in the days of Micah and in our day of a greater truth.

God states in the book of Proverbs, Proverbs 8:36, “He that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul. All they that hate me love death.” And so the hatred of family really is simply a corollary or an extension of the hatred of death that marks a culture in decline and judgment. And again, Wolfe has a quote on this.

At the same dinner party, there is a sodomite English poet who is dying of AIDS. And he’s really the guest of honor at this party because he came close to winning the Nobel Prize for his poetry. And he’s called on to give a dinner speech. And his dinner speech is not exactly what they had wanted to hear, but his dinner speech is quite informative as to Wolfe’s comment on our society today and also I think very appropriate to what we’re discussing this morning and this is a portion of this homosexual speech and he’s talking about Edgar Allan Poe.

“A drunk he Edgar Allan Poe was of course perhaps a psychotic but with the madness of prophetic voice, prophetic vision rather. He wrote a story that tells all we need to know about the moment we live in now: *The Mask of the Red Death*. A mysterious plague, the red death is ravaging the land.

Prince Prospero, Prince Prospero, even the name is perfect. Prince Prospero assembles all the best people in the castle and lays in two years provisions of food and drink and shuts the gate against the outside world, against the virulence of all lesser souls, and commences a masked ball that is to last until the plague has burned itself out beyond the walls.

The party is endless and seamless, and it takes place in seven grand salons, and in each the revelry becomes more intense than in the one before, and the revelers are drawn on toward the seventh room, which is appointed entirely in black.

One night, in the last room appears a guest shrouded in the most clever and most hideously beautiful costume this company of luminous masqueraders has ever seen. The guest is dressed as death, but so convincingly that Prospero is offended and orders him ejected. But none dares touch him, so that the task is left to the prince himself. And the moment he touches the ghastly shroud, he falls down dead. For the red death has entered the house of Prospero.

Prospero, my friends. Now, the exquisite part of the story is that somehow the guests have known all along what awaits them in this room. And yet they are drawn irresistibly toward it because the excitement is so intense and the pleasure is so unbridled and the gowns and the food and the drink and the flesh are so sumptuous and that is all they have.

Families homes, children. The great chain of being, the eternal tide of chromosomes means nothing to them any longer. They are bound together and they whirl about one another endlessly, particles in a doomed atom. And what else could the red death be but some sort of final stimulation, the ne plus ultra.

So Poe was kind enough to write the ending for us more than 100 years ago. Knowing that, who could possibly write all the sunnier passages that should come before. Not I, not I. The sickness, the nausea, the pitiless pain have ceased with the fever of madness that has maddened my brain. With the fever called living and burned in my brain, the fever called living.

Those were among the last words Poe wrote. No, I cannot be the epic poet you deserve. I am too old and far too tired, too weary of the fever called living, and I value your company too much. Your company and the world, the world, the world.”

Quite a comment on our day and age. So we live today in these similar days in which life is death for the people that reject God and reject his providence in all that they do. While the dying sodomite in this passage from Wolfe’s book, what he called living is itself life without God. That is the fever that maddens the brain that leads inevitably toward death. It is a death urge on the part of those who reject and who hate God. Nothing more, nothing less. And that is what we now as a society in America move towards. That is why we have family betrayal.

Now appearances are maintained the same way that the orchard was maintained in the time of Micah. But below the appearances, there is no reality, no fruit of the spirit, no life from God. Jesus, it is thought used this quote from the first couple of verses of Micah 7 relative to the orchard without fruit when he caused the fig tree to be withered.

When he went to Jerusalem and saw the leaves that indicated fruit should have been present and yet there was no fruit. The fig tree had appearances. It did not have life. It did not have relationship with God evidenced in spiritual fruit. And so in America today we have forms of orderliness and forms of concern and care for children. But God is not fooled by appearances. Those appearances belie the rotting dying corpse inside the nation that is America today as it turns away from God.

The appearances don’t fool Jesus. He cursed the fig tree and it withered. And so now the appearances don’t fool God. Men reject God in this nation and he curses this nation and it withers now. And that is what abortion is all about. An urge to death. The betrayal of the family. The judgments of God being worked out in the lives of those that reject him and instead move to death.

How do we end this kind of a talk? What do we do faced with this sort of bleak scenario? Micah gives us the only answer there is to such a people and to such a scenario in verse 7.

Therefore, I will look unto the Lord. I will wait for the God of my salvation. My God will hear me.

We look this day to God because in him and in no other is life and health and salvation and all history is his story. And his wrath and judgments are what we are talking about today. And his wrath and judgments are sure and are now being worked out in this nation as they were in the times of Micah.

And we look to God ultimately then to be the rescuer of the pre-born babies. He has declared himself to be their judge and defender. And he is. And we sin if we do not believe him. Ultimately, the horror of abortion and family betrayal is not sins against the unborn ultimately, but sins against the almighty God, the owner, the creator of all life. The woman has no right to her own body. That is a false issue. That body is the Lord’s. And when she moves not in terms of obedience to his law, but in terms of her rights, she moves away from life and she moves in terms of death and judgment and betrayal.

In judgment she will suffer as her own seed is destroyed and the progeny of her body is handed over to the butcher. But we turn to God and we call on him to come in judgment increasingly and to purge this nation and land and to establish right righteousness once more in the nation. We call upon him this day to bring his fiery wrath against the ungodly who murder his children his creatures to bring them to repentance or failing that to bring them to destruction and cause them to cease in the land.

David as well as many other in scriptures called for the judgment of God upon the wicked that they would either be brought to repentance or destruction. And for those of you who may have a hard time understanding this, I’d like you to turn to Psalm 69.

Psalm 69 tells us what Jesus expected for those who when he asked from the cross that he thirsted and asked for a drink instead gave him vinegar and increased his thirst. Psalm 69 tells us our Lord’s answer to those people.

Verse 21: “They also gave me gall for my food and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.”

We’re talking about the cross here, folks. We’re talking about Jesus Christ on the cross and what his attitude was to the people that gave him vinegar to drink.

Verse 22: “May their table before them become a snare. And when they are in peace, may it become a trap. May their eyes grow dim so that they cannot see, and make their loins shake continually. Pour out thine indignation on them, and may thy burning anger overtake them. May their camp be desolate. May none dwell in their tents, for they have persecuted him whom thou thyself hast smitten, and they tell of the pains of those whom thou hast wounded. Do thou add iniquity to their iniquity? and may they not come into thy righteousness.

May they be blotted out of the book of life and may they not be recorded with the righteous.”

Jesus called for curses on those men that gave him vinegar instead of wine. Now remember there was another person cursed that day. Jesus hung on the cross and was cursed. And there was a thief who hung next to him who was also cursed. Cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree. The scriptures say that’s why Jesus was put on a tree.

But there was another man who was under the curse. But in the midst of the curse of God in which he stood hanging on that tree. The thief on the cross repented and he came to the realization that he had sinned against Almighty God and he talked to Jesus repentantly and humbly acknowledging who Jesus Christ was. And to that man Jesus issued forth words of blessing and of comfort.

And so this day when we read forth God’s curses out of the law and call for him to deliver those curses against the unrepentant, we say that they may well end up as the thief on the cross in the midst of those curses coming upon their head, turning from death to life in the grace of God. But failing that, we are to ask for them the destruction that Christ asked for those who persecute him.

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Let’s pray. Almighty God, we thank you for your scriptures. We thank you that they tell us what is true because they tell us who you are. We acknowledge and thank you, Lord God, for our creation and acknowledge you to be the creator of all life and the owner of all life. And we thank you, Father God, that you give us your scriptures to help us discern what is right and what is wrong? What are the ways of life and the ways of death? And you call us to walk in the ways of life.

We thank you, Lord God, for the grace shown to us in Jesus Christ who became a curse so that we could be delivered from the curses, but that those who refuse his acceptance of his forgiving grace instead become curses themselves and come to destruction. Father God, we confess before you that we live in a nation in which great evil is in the land. And we ask for you, Lord God, to come forth in judgment and to purge this land that righteousness may once more dwell in it.

In Jesus name we pray. Amen.