I suspect if you're like me reading the prophets is not easy. Micah is probably not one of the more well-worn parts of your Bible. Oh yeah, you may know about the prophecy of Jesus coming out of Bethlehem in Chapter 5. But I suspect a few of us would be able to go chapter by chapter through this book without some help. I myself have never really studied Micah before this study. Again, if you're like me, you run into the prophets and man, it's hot and they're cold. Grace, wrath, light, darkness, and they turn on a dime. It reminds me of being in Great Britain when you face their washbasins. The hot water is on this side and the cold water is on this side. And when I first was there, I tried to figure out how to get warm water. And it's stick your hands under the cold and then rush it over into the hot. Hopefully some of the cold water stays on your hands. And the problem of blending the two, sometimes we struggle as we read the prophets. I would suggest to you part of our awkwardness, brothers and sisters, maybe that our familiarity with God may not be as great as we might want to think it is. For the prophets that they reveal anything, they reveal the heart of Almighty God. In a very raw, a very direct and a very candid way. He reveals his heart for his people and how we impact him. And so when we're finding ourselves in unfamiliar grounds, there in mind it may not be just the history you're unfamiliar with. It may be the God of history that you're less familiar with. And so let us pray as we seek the Lord's illuminating and guiding hands of Micah to. Let us pray. Father, we do thank you for your word. We thank you that you don't leave us in darkness, but that you give us your word as a light into our path. Father, we ask that you therefore now would open our eyes to understand that you would give us ears to hear. For Lord, we are not as familiar with you as we long to be. So we ask you to show us your way, show us your heart through these pages of Holy Scripture. Father, even as we pray for ourselves in this way, we are reminded of the needs of one another around us. There are many who are hurting here today, Lord. Many who are grieving the lost of loved ones in this past year. Many who have grieved the loss of loved ones for years and years. Especially this morning, we lift up to you two who've lost loved ones this past week. John Loud Jr. on the loss of his mother, Virginia Loud. And for Gaye Johnston on the loss of her father, Jack Morris. Oh gracious Lord, won't you bring comfort? And won't you bring peace? Won't you bring the consolation that only your Holy Spirit can bring? And Father, for all who dream and ache this morning, we ask for your tenderness and your care upon them. Father, we as a nation continue to seek you as we seek out your guiding hand as the official sort out the selection process. Father, may this all be done with fairness, with justice, with righteousness. And Father, may it be in the truest sense in the end of fair and true election. Father, we pray also for the spread of your word around the world. We pray for our missionaries. We pray in particular for a christened genomics down in Argentina. We ask you to bless them and to show and grant their ministry as they seek to plant a new church, great success. Oh Father, grow your church for the glory of Christ that he might receive the worship he has due. And now again Lord, speak for we, your servants, are listening for you. Amen. Micah, chapter 2, from verse 1, this is God's word. Whoa, to those who plant iniquity, to those who plot evil on their beds. At morning's light they carry it out because it is in their power to do it. They covet fields and seize them and houses and take them. They defraud a man of his home, a fellow man of his inheritance. Therefore the Lord says, I am planning a disaster against this people from which you cannot save yourselves. You will no longer walk proudly for it will be a time of calamity. In that day men will ridicule you. They will taunt you with this mournful song. We are utterly ruined. My people's possession is divided up. He takes it from me. He assigns our fields to traders. And therefore you will have no one in the assembly of the Lord to divide the land by law. Do not prophesy. Their prophets say, do not prophesy about these things. This grace will not overtake us. Should it be said, O house of Jacob, is the spirit of the Lord angry? Does he do such things? Do not my words do good to him whose ways are upright. Lately my people have risen up like an enemy. You strip off the rich robe from those who pass by without a care like men returning from battle. You drive the women of my people from their pleasant homes. You take away my blessing from their children forever. Get up, go away. For this is not your resting place because it is defiled. It is ruined beyond all remedy. If a lyre and deceiver comes and says, I will prophesy for you plenty of wine and beer. He would be just the prophet for this people. I will surely gather all of you, O Jacob. I will surely bring together the remnant of Israel. I will bring them together like sheep in a pen, like a flock in its pasture. The place will throng with people. One who breaks open the way will go up before them. They will break through the gate and go out. Their king will pass through before them, the Lord, at their heads. All men are like grass and all their glory is like the flowers of the fields. The grass withers and the flowers fall. But the word of our God stands forever. Amen. Well, I was in Scotland. I was asked to go and preach in a little village called Alapool, which is up in the very northwest corner along the coast of Scotland. And the pasture was showing me around the village and around the surrounding environs to give me a sense of the history. And along there in Alapool outside of the village proper, you find a whole variety of stone ruins, all of these little stone homes. And they have no roof, but there are no windows, but the stone structure of their little homes remains. And they're rather quaint and charming until you understand the history. For many of those homes were the happy and warm, dwelling places of many of Scott, until the early 1800s, when a mouse infamous period of history came into being, the Highlands Clarences, when it became clear to the clan owners that it was far more profitable for them to have sheep grazing their land, then to have the small tenet farmers that had been on that land for century after century after century. And so what they did was they digitized others to go in to drive the people out of their homes, to ship them, like slaves. In fact, many of them became slaves here in the United States in the 1800s, shipped either to the US or to Canada. Their homes were burned, they were burned out, that the sheep might graze the land, and the stone remains to this day. Dear friends, it was such a time in Israel's history. When the wealthy did not accept their responsibility to take care of and to serve their brothers and sisters in Covenant, but instead took opportunity to abuse them, use their power and their prestige and their wealth in order to make themselves far greater and to make those around them far less. It was a profoundly abusive time in the life of Israel. And God took notice because these people were in covenant with Him, and they were in covenant with one another. It would be the same as taking these new members and abusing them and exploiting them and pillaging them. That's how God took it. You're abusing my people. You're robbing them of my blessings, and I'm not going to stand for it. And dear friends, I have three very brief points that I wish to make this morning, as we consider the Lord's table behind us and ready ourselves to sit with the Lord Jesus Christ. And the first of these is this, the justice of God trumps our evil. The justice of God trumps our evil. You see here in the beginning of this text that the wicked had planned. They were planning and scheming all night. Couldn't wait to get up for them, and justice was like a young child on the eve of Christmas, dying for the morning to come that they might rush out and open their presence. So it was the wicked dying to get up so that they could rob and steal and pillage and grow themselves at others' expenses. And God says this, if you've got plans, I've got word for you. I've got plans. And if your plan is to bring evil on them, my plan is to bring calamity and evil upon you. And if your plan is to steal their fields, my plan is to take your fields from you. And if your plan is to rob them of their covenant and inheritance, that's a key word at the end of verse two, inheritance. You find it throughout in Joshua and elsewhere in the Scripture. The inheritance spoke of all of the covenant blessings that God had given to His people in their covenant relationship with Him, these wealthy you were trying to rob the people of God of their covenant and blessings. And God says, you want to steal my covenant blessings from them? I've got plans for you. I'm going to take them from you. You see, God's sense of justice will always trump evil. Oh, He may be slow to anger, but the wheels of justice, though they roll slowly, they roll exceedingly fine, and the sins of the people will find them out, because God's commitment to root out injustice among His people, and in His creation is sure and steadfast, even among His people. Now we find all of a sudden with God promising to trump their evil, we find the false prophets gone. No, surely that wouldn't be the case. You go back and look at the history of the Highland Clarences, the ministers, the churches of Scotland, through our Presbyterians, their fellow Presbyterians. We're hired by the landowners, and so is the people who are being driven off their land and packed like cattle, worse than cattle onto these boats. The ministers stood along the side of the road and waved goodbye, and told them to go, it was God's will. And here you find, similarly, the prophets, the preachers saying, no, it couldn't possibly be. The Lord is good. The Lord is nice. The Lord doesn't get angry. Surely Micah is wrong, and they try and gag God. I was watching TV earlier this week. I was on the religious channel, and the preacher was talking about the sickness and sufferings that people of God suffer, and he was arguing that surely this was not the provision of God. And then he asked this question rhetorically. Will the God who brought me into covenant break my bones? Then he said, I dare him. Not that moment I was not feeling very nice or spiritual. Did you hear him, Lord? Did you hear him? This world loves an eroticling preacher who says, nothing but blessing, nothing but grace, nothing but lightness, wine and beer, have your fill. That's the kind of preachers we want. Dear friends, no matter how much you may convince yourself that that's the theology of the Bible, God doesn't change. And though you may change with his character, you cannot change his character. God remains true, and so he again reaffirms his commitment to justice, his commitment to righteousness, his commitment to holiness, and his commitment to have a people that would reflect that justice, that righteousness, and that holiness. So he reaffirms that his people, though they may not like it, are his enemies because they will not walk with him. You see, God's truth trumps our lives. His justice trumps our evil. His truth trumps our lives. But thirdly and most importantly, his grace trumps our sin. Look at those last two verses. Out of nowhere, it appears without even a transitional word, however, or not with standing, or there's no transition. Suddenly, God breaks forth into blessing. I will surely gather all of you, O Jacob. I will surely bring together the remnant of Israel. God cannot help promising blessing to his people. Now you think, how in the world do these last two verses connect at all with these prior eleven? Well here it is dear friends. God wants to bless his people. He loves his people. He cares about them. And when God comes to trump your evil with his justice, he's doing it for your own good. And if God wants to trump your lies or false understanding of who he is, by bringing to bear the truth of who he is, he's doing it for your good. You see, for the people of God, chastisements and severity, no matter how tough they may be, are always for our good. And he might gather us. And he might restore us. And he might lead us into greener pastures. What Father allows his child to drink poison. My brother showed me in his medicine cabinet some liquid. Some of you are a parent, you know what I'm talking about? It's what you do. You pour it down your kid's mouth if they've eaten the wrong thing. It forces them to vomit. Is that not the case? What you're finding here in the first eleven verses is God is administering severe medicine to his people. He wants them to vomit up the sin and the wickedness that keeps them from his goodness. And his blessing that he might love all over them. That's the message of Micah. It's not about how God's going to just trash his people. It's about how God's going to purify his people by doing radical surgery and rooting out evil. And he's sending a breaker. The breaker, one who will break through the walls of bondage, the bondage to sin and our lousy love affair, our perverse love affair with sin, to break the wall and to break the bondage and to lead his sheep of the flock out. And to go ahead of him. So we find here the great prophecy, ultimately fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ that he would be the one who would break through those bonds, break through those prison dungeon doors and lead his people out. Even the people, they sometimes ask to call his enemies. Do you really believe it? We sit here before a table this morning. The breaker has broken through the you and I might have a seat at this table. Yes, there is injustice constantly in our hearts. Yes, there is falsehood constantly in our hearts. But the grace of God trumps it all by inviting you to this table, saying that Jesus has paid the penalty and has bought your liberty and bought your deliverance. Let us come humbly but gratefully. Let us pray. Gracious Lord, we thank you that the Lord Jesus Christ is our breaker. He has broken through into the darkness of our hard hearts. He has broken through the darkness of our own love affair with sin. And he is changing all of that. Who is a God like you so full of grace, so full of mercy? Even for those who would be your enemies. Gracious Lord, as we come to this table, we ask you to receive us, not because we are righteous, but because Christ is. And to receive us for His sake, and to change us that we might be all the more, like Him, and all of His glory and all of His purity and all of His righteous holiness. It is in His great name we pray. Amen.