God's country, boy, with a powerful message, Micah, on this edition of Keylight. This is Keylight. If you are into playing games with God, turn off your radio now. This is a program designed to help beggars tell other beggars what they found bread. Here's Steve with a teaching for today. Thank you, Micah, almost said Micah, because believe it or not, that's where we are in our Old Testament survey, the book of the prophet Micah. Hope you had a great weekend and then I hope your pastor sermon ministered to you. The way mine did to me and I hope your worship time was a celebratory and real as was my worship time at my church. If you have your Bible open it to the book of Micah and the Old Testament as we continue with our Old Testament survey, and for those of you who are just joining us, we're not spending forever in each of the books of the Old Testament. We started in Genesis and we're producing many commentaries for these that you can put in your Bible. And I'll be telling you more about the final one that will be out in the next few weeks. And we're going through the entire book of the Old Testament. I've just about decided though, I may not, that we're going to continue doing this right through the New Testament. So we have a complete understanding of at least some of the basics of the entire Bible. And we're up to the book of Micah, who's a very old friend of mine. And we're going to look at some introductory things about my friend Micah on this edition of Key Life. But before we do that, it's our practice on Monday to pray. Let's do that. Father, we're thankful for your word. We're thankful you wrote it down because it would have been so confusing if you just spoken it. Father, we're glad for the scriptures, for the way they speak truth. They don't back off and they tell us the way things really are. But more important, the way you really are. We praise you for your word, but we praise you for so much, for sending your son to die on a cross in our place, for the many blessings that you pour on us. Father, we're acutely aware when we're in your presence that we don't deserve any of this. You are a gracious and kind God, and we praise you, and we worship you. Father, you know everybody who's listening to this broadcast, there's some folks that are going through a tough time right now. They sometimes even doubt whether you're there, and if you are there, whether you care. Father, come alongside by your spirit and be the comforter that the Holy Spirit is. Father, lift them up and give them the encouragement of the reality that you're good and you're good all the time. Father, we pray for the one who teaches on this broadcast. Forgive him his sins for they are many. We would see Jesus and him only, and we pray in Jesus name. Amen. Well, it's Micah, a brand new book, and let me just tell you a little bit about Micah, and then I want to give you a history lesson today if I have time. Micah was from Morischef. Now we have good reasons to believe that this was a town on the edge, the foothills, about 25 miles to the southwest of Jerusalem toward Gaza. And there is a good indication here that Micah was a country boy, a redneck, if you will. Nobody expected anything from somebody who didn't have the sophistication of the city, but Micah was God's man. Now the significance of the location that I just gave you is that it was near the Philistines and near the fortress city, some of which are mentioned in chapter 1. Lasius is one of, well we'll get into that. Micah didn't grow up in the power center of Jerusalem, he was an outsider. It's interesting when you go through election, how even those who are at the power center in Washington and they're outsiders, we're going to fix them, and I want to say but you are them. You've been there for so long, but Micah really was an outsider. And then Micah's name, just so you might want to make a note of it, means who is like Yahweh. And Micah 718, the name of the prophet is given in the question that he asked who is like you. Let me see if there's anything. Now I'm not going to go into this because it really doesn't require a lot of time. Various parts particularly of the fourth and seventh chapters are four through seven have been questioned as to whether or not Micah wrote them. There's some who say an editor stuck these in just to make it a little bit better. Now the difficulties are seen and I'm one of these are related to the flow of the book and the appropriateness of certain ideas or concepts to the immediate supposed historical situation. Now that's what they said, this is what I feel. The difficulties are nothing less than an anti-supernatural bias. You find that everywhere. Somebody just looks at it and says, I don't believe in the supernatural, therefore this had to be an addition. For example, chapter 7 speaks of the future hope and the rebuilding of the nation. Now if you don't believe in prophecy, you don't believe that God knows the future and you believe that God is limited is knowing, then Micah couldn't have known that and prophesied it before it happened. Well, if you believe that God is God and then prophecy comes from him and when he speaks it, it will happen then you don't have any trouble with the prophet Micah writing the book of Micah. It should be noted that there has been increasingly less support for much of the negative criticism of Micah, but enough said about that. What I want to do today is kind of give you a many historical lesson. I don't know if we're going to finish this many lesson in history today, but let's get to it. The year was 736 BC and it was the best of times and the worst of times. Two nations were constituted, made up, the divided people of God. It's real in the north and Judah in the south, and they were both being blessed by what seemed to be a grateful God for their goodness. And the northern kingdom under the masterful leadership of Jeroboam II, the armies of Israel had moved with mighty forcing against the armies had been a dead the third of Syria. They had won a gigantic plot of territory from the north pass between Lebanon and Herman into eastern Palestine, south to the Dead Sea, and they stood on the hills and beat their chests and said, we're godly and we're pure and we're holy and God has rewarded us. On the south with her magnificent capital city of Jerusalem, situation was sort of the same, only the names were different. Uzia had an Old Testament professor who called him a Z. Uzia in a display of military prowess had conquered Edom and the Red Seaport of Elath, giving Judah control over the rich caravan trade route with southern Arabia. Now, let me tell you the importance of that. The revenue from that rich caravan route or route developed the resources of Judah and increased its military efficiency. Judah became drunk with a power in the wealth. God loves us better than anybody else because we're pure and we're holy. But wealth, whether it's given to an individual or to a nation, is never in the mixed blessing. The nations of Israel and Judah were not the exception, the wealth of Israel produced a succession of weak and horrible and unwise kings. There was Shalom who ruled for only one month, then there were weak kings nobody even cares to remember. Manayem, he, well, Hoshia, we could go on and on. In the south in Judah, again the story was the same. Son of Jeroboam, Zachariah lasted only six months. He was followed by Jotham and then by Jehoah Azanehaz and then Hezekiah who was the only king in the lot by any stretch of the imagination who could be described as a good and wise king. Now usually when a nation or an individual is in trouble you get straight. Usually when a nation is in trouble there's a good chance for a great religious awakening. As a matter of fact that's what's happened in America on several occasions but that's not what happened in Judah nor in Israel. In fact just the opposite happened to people resting in the knowledge that they were God's people that God wasn't going to let anything bad happen to his people. Went on about their daily lives ignoring the rapid decline of their nation immorality and justice debauchery became the name of the game rich. Rich got richer and poor got poor and the ironic part of the whole story. He was all done in the name of God. Not only that, it was often the religious leaders who gave sanction to that whole story. Now into this more rast of depravity and wealth and everything else, a farm boy you might call him a redneck by the name of Micah King. He was a nobody from a small village as I mentioned before of Morris Chath some 30, 25, 30 miles from the city of Jerusalem. The city of Jerusalem and Samaria, this farm boy walked in the name of God, lifting up his voice as he watched the lands and the meager living of the poor being stolen by the rich for mere pittance. Micah was not from an honored family. He was not a rich man. He didn't have extensive education. His accent was unsophisticated and his language sometimes bore the crudities of the country. But his message was the message of God and frankly, the reason Micah is so important to us is because we're not all together different. I'm not proud of that. I love my country and those of you in Canada love your country but we got a lot. We've got a lot of wealth, we've got military prowess, we've got it all. But with the wealth comes a tremendous responsibility with a heritage in Christian and Jewish theology and truth. We have a responsibility. It's important we remember that. 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