Would you turn pleased to Micah chapter 4? Prophet Micah in the Old Testament. Chapter 4, as he talks to us about the mountain of the Lord. The prophets, you know, maybe you didn't know, but they are the least preached portion of the Bible. I think that's for a number of reasons. Modern men consider oftentimes their message to be harsh because unlike the New Testament, it includes a very strong note of judgment. They're also difficult to outline. They're combination of pros and poetry and prophetic literature. It's hard to tell sometimes where one oracle begins and where another one ends. We also have trouble applying their message because they lived in a world where the church and the state were one and the same. Of course, we don't. And so what we can apply to our lives from the prophets sometimes becomes questionable, but perhaps the thing that makes most difficulty for most people is the time perspective of the prophets. Because each prophet, except for Jonah, which is really not a prophecy, it's a story about a prophet, all the other prophets from Isaiah to Malachi that all speak from four time perspectives. They all, first of all, preach to their respective contexts, to their day, to the challenges and difficulties of life in their own lifetimes. They also speak about the near future. Without exception, all of them speak of an immediate judgment that's going to come upon the Old Testament church, either the Assyrian dispersion or the Babylonian captivity. So they're not only preaching to their own day, but they're looking a couple hundred years down the road and prophesying about a great day of sifting, as one of them calls, of the Old Testament church under the hand of God. They have, with rare exception, all focus in the distant future to a messianic age when a Christ, a deliver, a messiah will come. And they speak about that golden age, as if it is the solution to all of the world's problems and then inevitably, each one of them looks way down the corner of history to the very end of time and prophesize or foretells the futures of the end days and the coming of the new heaven and the new earth. Micah is no exception. He speaks from these four reference points. Let's hope you will at chapter 1, verse 1. The word of the Lord that came to Micah of Mura, chef, in the days of Jotham, a. has Hezekiah, kings of Judah, which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem. This Micah lived, we're told, in prophesied, from 750 to about 710 BC, in the days of these kings about things concerning Samaria and the northern kingdom in Judah, his own capital of his own country. And like all the other prophets, his first concern was about his own day and time. But he also talked about the future. In chapter 1, verse 6, he talks about the judgment that is coming upon Samaria. Therefore, I will make Samaria a heap in the open country, a place for planting vineyards, and I will pour down her stones into the valley and uncover her foundations. And in verse 16 of chapter 1, he prophesies about the captivity of Judah into Babylon. Make yourselves bald and cut off your hair. For the children of your delight, make yourselves as bald as the eagle, for they shall go from you into exile. He has that third perspective, as he prophesies about the coming Christ. Look over in chapter 5, verse 2. But you, O Bethlehem Afrata, who are too little to be among the plans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me, one who is to be the ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from old from ancient days. We know that he's speaking about Jesus Christ because in Matthew chapter 2, verses 1 through 6, this verse is quoted as a fulfillment of the prophecy concerning the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem. And finally, he speaks about the end times, the last days, the coming of a new world, a new heaven and a new earth, in chapter 4, beginning in verse 1, which is our text for today. It shall come to pass in the latter days. Sometimes in the prophets, all of these time frames are compressed into what is called by Old Testament scholars, a thickness of time. In fact, in many passages, as in the one before us today, they will be mixed and matched and sometimes brought together as one perspective in one message. And that is what Micah is talking about in chapter 4. When he talks about the mountain of the Lord, in fact, it appears that chapter 4 and 5 could be one long sermon, but for time purposes, we divide it into two. He talks about this special time when the Lord will exalt Jerusalem above all the other places in the earth and bring her great glory. It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and it shall be lifted up above the hills and peoples shall flow to it. He talks about this thing called the latter days. It was a term introduced by Moses. Moses, in the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 4, told the people that they would go into the Promised Land, they would turn away to other gods and God would do two things, scatter some of them among the nations, that was the Assyrian invasion, and take a group of them into captivity and that was the Babylonian exile. But he said, in the latter days, you will return to the Lord your God and obey His voice for the Lord your God is a merciful God, who will not leave you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers and the Lord to them through me. All of these prophets, beginning with the great prophet Moses, have one time perspective in the back of their mind, which is the ultimate time perspective, which is the latter days. Jeremiah talks about it, Daniel talks about it, Isaiah talks about it, and that idea is imported into the New Testament when the prophet Joel spoke about a outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the latter days. Peter says, and in the last days, it shall be God declares that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see vision, and your old men shall dream dreams, even on my male servants and female servants, shall my spirit call, and those who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. So this whole idea of the latter times is an idea that's pregnant with significance for you and me as we read the Bible. Commentator David Pryor says generally in the Old Testament, the phrase latter days seems to denote an unspecified future time, a prolonged period rather than an actual date, when the situations that have remained in place for thousands of years will be reversed or replaced. In the New Testament, this phrase seems to take on a special and specific reference to everything that results from the first coming of Jesus Christ. So we, you and I, according to the Bible, are living in the latter days, or the last days, and Micah has something to say to us. Now, some of us will say, no pastor, I don't really need a sermon on the end times. I'm burned out on that stuff. I have a troubled marriage. I have a son who's failing geometry, a daughter who's dating a wrong guy. I've got bills I can't pay, an aging father, and a nursing home who's slipping into dementia. I've got a lousy job. I've got no retirement. I need to hear about some pie in the sky world that will come someday soon. And I would say to you with all love and affection, my dear friend, that's exactly what you need. Because these latter days, according to the word of God, bleed out of our own day. And this cross of Jesus Christ that spans times past and times future draws us into one big perspective. God's perspective where all time fits together. That means that all of the events of our lives have some significant part to play in our past, our present, and our future. We cannot, as modern Americans, ignore what happened yesterday and forget what will happen in the future and live only for the moment. That is the secular mindset. Secular means. The Latin word, from which we get the word secular, secular means the present time. It's living only for the present. And not thinking about what's happening in our lives is having grown out of the past and pushing those towards the future. But that is exactly how God sees time and works with mankind. I know that I'm probably just like everybody else in this world. I find one of the most difficult things to do is to keep perspective when things in my present time are not right. I have different default modes as you do. I can get frustrated and angry because things aren't working according to my plan. And then I take matters into my own hands only makes matters worse. Or I can default and look at the culture around me and see how people are coping with their own problems and attempt to mimic them, which is only to take a step away from Christ, a step backward into a pagan world. And that's not a solution to anything. Or I can start listening to other people and let them influence my decisions rather than listening to God's Word. And that simply compounds and confuses the entire issue. Now, what I really need, when I really need when things are going in a difficult way in the present, is I need perspective from God about the latter days. And that is the perspective that we're about to see from Micah. Why is it important? Peter Craigie, who's an Old Testament scholar, said that this message from Micah is significant for us today because he says the beauty of this passage is that it is totally out of harmony with the reality of our world yet fully in harmony with what we would like the world to be. It's completely out of step with the way things are. But completely in step with what we think things ought to be, the world that God intended for us in the beginning. So there are in this little message, chapter four, 13 verses and three paragraphs and three perspectives of time. Once you look at the first perspective in verse one, in the latter days, then verse six, in that day, then verse nine, now, what Micah does is to work backward. He starts in the latter days, then comes to that day, the day of the Lord, and then from there to now, here and now in his life, and the life that we need in this world. So let's follow that order of thought. It will happen in the latter days, the last days, the end times, called the mountain of the Lord. It shall come to pass in the latter days, that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and it shall be lifted up above the hills, and people shall flow to it. And many nations shall come and say, come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways, and that we may walk in his paths. For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between many peoples, and shall decide from nations far away, they shall beat their swords into plough shells, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore, but they shall sit every man under his vine, and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid, from the mouth of the Lord of host has spoken. For all the peoples walk, each in the name of their God, but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God, forever and ever. Now what you'll notice, right off the bat, you've heard those things before. You've heard about weapons being turned, into implements for farming, swords and plough shells, and spears into pruning hooks. You've heard that from Isaiah. Turn over to Isaiah chapter two for just a moment, where Isaiah gives the exact same prophecy about the latter days in identical words. Isaiah chapter two verse one, the word that Isaiah, the son of Amus, all concerning Judah and Jerusalem, it shall come to pass in the latter days, that the mountain that will horse of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills and all the nations shall flow to it, and many people shall come and say, come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his pass. For out of Zion shall come the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, he shall judge between the nations and shall decide disputes for many peoples, they shall beat their swords into plough shells and their spears into pruning hooks, nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn more anymore, or house of Jacob come. Let us walk in the light of the Lord. Exact same prophecy. Scholars debate about who said it first. Many usually say, most of them say that Isaiah came up with it first, but in reality Isaiah prophesied later. Mike was on the scene of good 10 or 20 years prophesying and preaching before Isaiah began his ministry. There is no conclusive support or evidence for who spoke these first, but they both speak of a golden age, far in the future, it shall come to pass in the latter days. Days that were promised by Moses and the other prophets like Isaiah and Micah, days that were introduced when Israel came back from captivity, the last days that were begun by the ministry and the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and which come to fulfillment with the outpouring of Holy Spirit that pushes the church to a day in destiny towards the second coming of Jesus Christ. The prophecy is marked by an abrupt change. This prophecy in chapter 4 is so different than prophecy before it. There is, first of all, a change of speaker. It is no longer a Micah speaking, but the Lord who speaks. It is a change in mood from an oracle of doom and judgment to one of hope and peace. And it's a change of address from Jerusalem the unfaithful to the remnant who know God and live for him. What Micah is doing is that he is reversing everything he said in chapter 3. Chapter 3, verses 9 through 12, was a judgment. Look at it again. Hear this, you heads of the house of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel, who detest justice and make crooked all that is straight, who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with iniquity. Its heads give judgments for a bribe and its priests teach for a price and its prophets practice divination for money. Yet they lean on the Lord and say, is not the Lord in the midst of us? No disaster shall come upon us. Therefore, because of you, Zion should be plowed as a field. Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins and the mountain of the house, that is the house of God the temple, shall become a wooded height. Here in chapter 4, all of that, every bit of it, is reversed. It's as if God is saying to Micah, the last word from mankind will not be judgment. It will be mercy. It will not be destruction. It will be a building. It will not be gloom but hope. Look how this thing is reversed again. Look at chapter 3, verse 9, that the injustice and bloodshed in corrupt Jerusalem will be changed into an age of justice and mercy and truth. The Micah mandate to do justice, to love mercy and walk humbly with your God. Look at chapter 3, verse 9. Hear this, you heads of the house of Jacob, and rulers of the house of Israel, who detest justice and make crooked all that is straight. Now look at chapter 4, verse 3. He shall judge between many peoples. And he shall decide for strong nations far away. And they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up a sword against nation. Neither shall they learn war anymore. So all of the bloodshed and the injustice is gone. Look at Micah chapter 3, verse 12. Jerusalem is to be captured and plundered by Babylon. Only to be rebuilt and exalted above every city in the world. Chapter 3, verse 12. Therefore because of you, Zion should be plowed as a field. Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins in the mountain of the house of wooded height. Look at Micah chapter 4, verse 1. It shall come to pass on the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains. And it shall be lifted up above the hills and peoples shall flow to it. Thirdly, the false teaching from corrupt prophets and priests and judges will turn into a center of knowing the word of the Lord. Chapter 3, verse 11. Its heads give judgment for a bribe. Its priests teach for a price. Its prophets practice divination for money. But look at chapter 4, verse 2. And many nations shall come and say, come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord to the house of the God of Jacob that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his pass for out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. All of the violence and bloodshed in this corrupt city shall give way to a golden age of complete security. Look at chapter 3, verse 10. Who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with an equity, compare that to verse 4. But they shall each man sit under his own vine and under his fig tree and no one shall make them afraid from the mouth of the Lord has spoken. And the great age of apostasy where Jerusalem was drifting away from God and drifting into immorality and idolatry and judgment is reversed into a great coming back to the Lord in an age of faithful obedience. Chapter 4, verse 5. For all the people's walk, each in the name of the God. But we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever. What Mike is saying is that his prediction of judgment in chapter 3 is now reversed in the latter days by a prediction of the coming of the Lord and of his great blessings. When we interpret the prophets, there are seven things we need to keep in mind. If you write these down, they'll help you. When you read through Isaiah and Jeremiah and the minor prophets to make sense of what they're saying first of all, the prophets represent the realities of the New Testament age in which we live under the symbols of their own age. They talk about temples and mountains in cities and the people of Israel because that's the only thing they knew. They present our age and our world in images that they were familiar with. Secondly, the Old Testament worship of the temple was foreshadowing the reality of a worship in heaven. In fact, it is Daniel and Ezekiel and others as well as the book of Revelation who picture heaven as a temple modeled after the temple in Jerusalem. Thirdly, there is never the anticipation in the Old Testament prophets that there would be a return to the temple and a worship in an Old Testament through out all the ages of mankind. They realize that their worship, their cultists, their form of mosaic worship, had a time limit and they would come a golden age when all the nations would worship even though they could not all get to Jerusalem. That's what Jesus said when he said to the woman that, well, woman, believe me, the hours come that neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will we worship God. You worship that which you do not know. We worship what we do know for salvation comes from the Jews. But the hour is coming and in fact is now when the true worship worship God in spirit and in truth. For God is seeking such people to worship Him. God is spirit and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth. Fourthly, to show the exceeding greatness and glory of the future age of Jesus Christ, the prophets supercharged their language with purposeful hyperbole. They talked and exaggerated terms about numbers of people and then size of things and glorious events trying to call our attention to something that was larger than life and greater than self and lasting forever, something better and bigger than any of us had ever experienced. The prophets also compressed time. There was a thickness to their time. We're the past and the present and future blend together in the spiritual realities of God's people now and then. Sixthly, the prophets expected a spiritual fulfillment for their literal prophecies. They realized that there was something that was a greater version of their own but something that would be radically different even though they didn't know the particulars of it. And finally, lastly, the prophets expected all of these great promises to be filled in the coming of some majestic person known only as the Messiah. They didn't know his name. They didn't know his family. They didn't know much about him. Just bits and pieces here and there. But they realized what Paul later wrote in Second Corinthians in him. That isn't Christ. All of the promises are yes. They saw everything that they preached and hoped for and warned about and projected in the far future to move around this great hero of the whole story called the Christ. So Isaiah and Micah were looking forward to four great events when they talk about the mountain of the Lord. They were talking about the day that Jerusalem would witness in her own midst the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, this Messiah named Jesus Christ who would die in that city and raise himself from the dead on Easter Sunday. They had in mind that Jerusalem would have a visitation from God unlike ever before which happened on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came. They also saw in Jerusalem as spreading out throughout the world and going to the world and bringing the world to itself an image of the New Testament Church in the Great Commission going out to the nations. And finally, they had this glimpse of a new heaven and a new earth. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more. And I saw the Holy City new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God prepared as a bride adorned for a husband. And he who was seated on throne said, behold, I am making all things new. You know, we would understand the prophets and their view of things better if we realized that they looked at life like we look at North Carolina. If you're leaving Charlotte in your headed west, you're driving towards the mountains, the Appalachians or Appalachians wherever you call it here. And you get closer and closer, you know, the thing looks like one big massive hunk of earth. It just looks like a mountain. But as you rise over the first one and start down the other side, what do you notice? Well, there's another mountain on the other side. And then another one after that. And then a fourth one and a fifth one. And you realize that the mountain that you saw in the distance is really a series of mountains, one ridge after another. And that's how the mountain of the Lord is. From a distance, Isaiah saw it is one great massive thing, one entity out there. But as he moved towards it, and as we do through the scriptures, we realize that the mountain of the Lord is Jerusalem and the resurrected Christ and the Holy Spirit on Pentecost and our great mission to the world. And then, final, the coming new heaven and new earth, it is a series of great events that Jesus Christ is bringing about to bring the nations to himself. And that time perspective of Jerusalem of David that becomes the Jerusalem of Christ and the apostles and the new Jerusalem, the new heaven and earth, that is the time perspective that ties everything together in life. That's why thinking about this every once in a while. It's so vitally important for you and me, because it makes us realize that all that we go through, all the difficulties and the painful circumstances that Israel went through and that we experience are all part of traversing these great ups and downs of the people of God over the ridges of redemptive time and salvific events that take us finally to the plateau of the city of God. And I saw coming down out of heaven, Jerusalem, the mountain of the Lord. And without going through the ups and downs, folks, we don't get there. We simply stay at a distance and look at this big thing and say, wow, that's huge. I wonder what it's like. But it's only in moving through life. As Paul said, through many tribulations, we must enter the kingdom of God. It's only by going through these things of your son failing geometry and your daughter getting married to the wrong guy and your dad dying of Alzheimer's and your lousy job and your troubled marriage that you enter the kingdom of God. God weaning you off of the trifling things of this world to make you ready for an age and a place that is beyond your imagination. So Micah looks way down at the end to the latter days and then he takes a step back. He takes a step back to something he calls that day. He takes a step back to the time of Jesus Christ. Chapter four, verse six, and he talks about the remnant of the Lord. First, the mountain of the Lord. And then back to one of the peaks, the remnant of the Lord. In that day declares the Lord, I will assemble the lame and gather those who have been driven away and those whom I have afflicted and the lame. And I will make the remnant and those who were cast off a strong nation. And the Lord will reign over them in Mount Zion from this time forth and forevermore. And you owe tower of the flock. Hill of the daughter of Zion. To you shall it come. The former dominion shall come. Kingship for the daughter of Jerusalem. The Lord promises through Micah that he will return to his Old Testament people that he will gather them from all of the nations that they have been scattered. And that he will build a remnant. That's the key word in this little paragraph. A remnant. And the lame I will make a remnant. That happened, by the way, in 539 BC. When a man named Cyrus, the king of Persia, conquered the Babylonian kingdom and the oldest Syrian empire and reversed everything that the Babylonians and the Assyrians had done. Rather than take the people into exile, scatter them among the nations. He said, no, I want you to go back to your home names and rebuild your places for me. And so some did. Not the majority. The majority of Jews by that time had lived in Spain. Persia, Africa, Europe, on the steps of Russia where they were scattered. And they were inculcated with this culture and society of these pagan places they knew and they were comfortable there. It's the whole story of Esther and her family. But there was a small group, undesirubable, led by Ezra, Nehemiah, preached to by, hey guy, and Zechariah Malachi, a small group, a remnant that went back and inhabited the city and built its walls, constructed a second temple, experienced revival, and built what's called second temple Judaism, a way of life significantly different than the Judaism of Moses into which a little boy from Bethlehem would be born, a man named Jesus Christ. Micah sees that. He sees this rebuilding and re-enhabiting and restructuring and renewing of Jerusalem as a preparatory movement of God's grace for the receiving of Jesus Christ. Look at verse 8. And you, O tower of the flock, hill of the daughter of Zion, to you shall it come. The former dominion shall come, kingship, kingship for the daughter of Jerusalem. All their unfaithful, immoral, idolatrous kings would be gone, and into the remnant would come a new king, riding on a donkey, proclaiming a kingdom of grace and love and peace, saying such outlandish things as, if I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men kind to myself. When asked by the Roman procurator, tell me, tell me the truth. You hear all they're saying about you. Are you a king Jesus said you say rightly I am? But my kingdom is not of this world for it is the truth that I come. For this reason, I have entered into the world. He was of the truth as of my kingdom. He was not. We'll not enter the kingdom of God. This remnant that will receive Jesus Christ, Mike the Seas, a remnant returning from captivity, going through all kinds of trauma before it receives a time of blessing. That's always God's way, folks. Before the crown, there's always the cross. It's true for a young man who's an athlete. It's true for two people that fall in love and get married. It's true when you have children. It's true when you age. You always go through difficult times before you reach the glory of what is intended in that phase or that activity of life. And so it is with the people of God. Jesus, the shepherd king, is gathering his flock from all over the world. And as I mentioned a moment ago, they are, as Paul said, coming into the kingdom of God through many tribulations. It is the persecution of the church in places like Africa and Asia and in Russia. Bringing millions and in the end, billions of people into this remnant. It was one small, but it was becoming bigger and bigger and bigger. And as Isaiah would say in his prophecy, someday fill the earth with the glory of the Lord and the knowledge of his kingship. That is what's happening. James Boy says, Micah introduces a beautiful image at this point, saying that the Lord will rule over his people as a shepherd one who watches over his flock. It is a theme found elsewhere in the Old Testament. Micah is saying that this is what God will do with the captives of Judah. He will gather them as a shepherd, gathers limping sheep, assemble them into a flock, and eventually return them to their capital city. Micah is telling his readers that even in times of judgment it is the best thing to be in the gentle care of Israel's good shepherd. Who is Jesus Christ? So Micah goes from the latter days to that day. The day of Jesus Christ and finally takes one step back to now. Look at verse 9. Now. Now. Why you cry aloud. Is there no king in you? Has your counselor perished? That pain seized you like a woman in labor? Rhyth and grown odors iron like a woman in labor? For now. Now. You shall go out from the city. And dwell in the open country. You shall go to Babylon. There you shall be rescued. There the Lord will redeem you from the land of your enemies. Now. Now many nations are assembled against you saying let her be defiled. And let her eyes gaze upon Zion. But they do not know the thoughts of the Lord. They do not understand his plan. That he has gathered them as sheaves to the threshing floor. Arise and thresh. O daughter of Zion. For I will make your horn iron. And I will make your hoofs bronze. You shall beat in pieces many peoples. And shall devote their gain to the Lord. Their wealth to the Lord of the whole earth. Three times, Micah says, now, now. Not the latter days in the mountain of the Lord. Not the day of the Lord where he gathers his remnant to church. But now where we begin to understand the ultimate purpose of the Lord. Those are Micah's three perspectives here. The latter days is image of the mountain of the Lord, the new heaven and the new earth. The days of Jesus Christ and his redemptive work of gathering a church from all the nations of the earth and growing the remnant to be the city of God. And now an understanding of his ultimate purpose. He says of these people, they do not understand the plan of the Lord. That there is going on today, a divine rescue mission, where God is coming into the world through his son. And then going out to the world through his people and bringing people out of their misery, out of their spiritual bondage, out of their own Babylonian captivity in to the grace and peace of the Lord. This rescue mission, he says, will begin when Jerusalem returns from Babylonian captivity. But it will go on until many nations that were assembled against Jerusalem are now assembled with them. They will come to know the time of the Lord and they will finally begin to understand that is God's ultimate plan. God's ultimate plan always has been and is now, listen to me, not to destroy the world, but to save it. Jesus said, I did not come to destroy, but to save. For I have come to seek and to save that which is lost. God is going out into all these hostile nations, nations with other gods, with other laws, with other ways of living that do not include God at the center of things and certainly not Christ, but he's not judging them. He's bringing them to understand the purpose of God through the gospel. What is this plan? It's to send the church scattered among the nations, with the gospel of the kingdom, calling all men to forsake their gods and turn from their sins, to put their trust in Jesus Christ. And as Jesus said, to enter the kingdom of God is loyal citizens of heaven or or perish on the last day. There is a warning here, the warning for those who will not come willingly that they will not come at all. They will be left out when the gate closes in the mountain of the Lord, when the new heaven and the new earth come down, they will not be there. Because they would not gather to God's people into the king, they would not sue for peace against the God of heaven, so God will arise and thrash them. Like sheaves, he said, he will bundle them up for destruction, and all of their wealth will be brought to the city of the Lord. Blessed are those who believe in Jesus Christ, for they will inherit the earth. That's his ultimate plan. And now the kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He will reign forever and ever. I want you to notice the very opening words of this prophecy back in chapter 4. It will come to pass. Let me paraphrase it. It will inevitably happen. There is no way for you and I to stop this. It will come to pass. God will do it. And we will either come along willingly to be part of what is coming to pass, or resist it until it pushes us off of the edge of time, off of the edge of the world, often to what the book of Revelation caused the abyss at the bottom of which is a lake of brimstone and fire and utter darkness. God is on a mission to bring to the world four great freedoms. It was back in January of 1941, January 6 to be exact, that Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave one of his state of the Union messages. It was a time in which Europe was locked in a horrible war. And Japan was threatening our peace and security and actually plotting the invasion of Pearl Harbor. It was one time when worldwide fascism threatened the freedoms of all the men and women of the earth. And so FDR gave what was his most famous speech which has now come to be called the Four Freedoms. Listen to what he says. In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is the freedom of speech and expression everywhere in the world. The second is the freedom for every person to worship God in his own way everywhere in the world. The third is the freedom from want which translated into world terms means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants everywhere in the world. The fourth is the freedom from fear which translated into world terms means a worldwide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will ever again be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor anywhere in the world. This is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new world order of tyranny which the dictators of this world seek to impose with a crash of a bomb everywhere in the world. Where did FDR get these ideas? He got them from Micah. He was wrong when he said this is no vision for a distant millennium but it is but he was right in saying that what God's purpose for the world was was these four freedoms. I ask you to look one more time at chapter 4 and we'll close with this. That God says that in the time to come it shall come to pass. That first of all men will have the freedom of speech chapter 4 verse 2. Many nations shall come and say come let us go to the mountain of the Lord to the house of the God of Jacob that he may teach us his ways and then we may walk in his paths for out of Zion shall go the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. The freedom to speak the word of the Lord unhindered. That will come to pass. Freedom from want in verse 3. He shall judge between many peoples and shall decide for strong nations far away and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation neither shall they learn law anymore. All the money that we spent on war will be spent on raising food and providing for needs so there is no want in the world. It will come to pass. Freedom from fear verse 4. But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree and no one shall make them afraid for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. And finally a freedom of religion. Verse 5. For all the nations walk each in the name of its God but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God. Freedom of speech. Freedom from want. Freedom from fear. Freedom of religion. Sound far fetched well. It did to the people of Micah's day. It probably did to the Rome of Paul and Peter in the Apostles. It certainly does do our time when one of our presidents talks about it. But Micah's first words are ominous. It will come to pass. For unto us a child is born. And to us a son is given. And the government shall rest upon his shoulders and his name shall be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end. On the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from this time forth and forevermore the zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this. God will do it. It will come to pass. And the only question is this as we are pushed by that force of the zealous God more and more out of our day, into that day, into the end time. When we go willingly into God's new kingdom by faith or will we not and will we choose our own judgment instead. That's the only thing you have control over in all of life is your response to what God in Christ is bringing to pass. Let's pray. Father, we are both excited by and we are energized by and at the same time we are in awe of this great promise that you will bring these things to pass. Our world is changing. It is being transformed. You are as you said, making all things new. And so we are, as the prophets say, experiencing life as a woman in the birth pangs of labor is men who are watching an old order die and a new and uncertain one emerge. People being disciplined for their sins and redeemed from them at the same time as the hand of the Lord presses down upon us. We acknowledge this morning and elucid and clear moment that this is a good thing for us. For it would be the worst of all faiths and the most ironic of all mean tricks to leave us forever in the world like the one we possess. You are preparing for us the mountain of the Lord, a new heaven and a new earth that only the redeemed can enter. And you are in the day of the Lord now in the time of Christ and His work gathering this people from all of the nations into this wonderful remnant called His church. And now, in our own lives and our own times, you are sending us through all sorts of difficulties, sufferings and pains to prepare us to leave this world to join your remnant and be carried with it to the city of God that awaits us in the future. All of this is your great plan. And all of this is afforded to us as we have the freedom to choose into which world we will live the one that is dying or the one that is being born and to give us perspective on all that we experience as pushing us one way or the other. Give us faith and give us repentance, give us hope to trust in Jesus Christ this day to enter His kingdom by faith, to follow Him, to become a Christian and to be part of the new world that you are building as a gift to your Son, whom you sent to save a world that you love and encourage us in this we pray. Day in and day out, for we ask this for our sake and for your glory. And we pray this in Jesus' name, Amen.