Come back!
Joel, Jonah, Amos, and Hosea use the word return (shub, H7725) some 50 times. After that Israel is going into exile. Judah is next. And the next 6 prophets only use the word 9 times. Then the last three (Daniel, Zechariah, Malachi) use it 47 times. I urged you to return, to come back to Me, and you didn’t, so now you’re going away, but eventually you WILL come back. I will bring you back.
There are a couple of words which Micah uses more than these other prophets. One is the word, will. Future tense, indicative mood. It is the language of future fact. I will do this. You will experience this. They will do this. This will happen. "I will" is the language of the settled and decided future fact. The language of promise. I will, you will, they will, it will - 131 times (!) (in 105 verses) in Micah. Over and over again. This thing is as good as done. It is GOING to happen, as surely as summer follows spring. Basically at this point Israel is staring at the unavoidable consequences of her waywardness dead in the face.
[read verses 1.1-7]
Another word which we see in Micah is the word, hear. Israel (and Judah) have NOT been listening. They are not listening, they are not paying attention, in other words. Hear, hear!
What does it take to hear?
[story of Austin Chapman - deaf filmmaker whose poor quality hearing aids convinced him there was nothing much to hear but then who finally gets good hearing aids and hears for the first time: “When Mozart’s Lacrimosa came on, I was blown away by the beauty of it. At one point of the song, it sounded like angels singing and I suddenly realized that this was the first time I was able to appreciate music. Tears rolled down my face and I tried to hide it. But when I looked over I saw that there wasn’t a dry eye in the car.”]
[recording of lacrimosa - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE2muDZksP4]
Israel wasn’t listening. Altho, sometimes the enemy of hearing is actually noise. Isn’t that true for our world today? Isn’t there so much noise? And isn’t it true that we so willingly tune in to the noise, to the cacophony of the world, rather than tune in to the sounds of heaven?
You know how they test hearing? They put you in that small sound proof chamber, and put those headphones on you, and you’re supposed to listen for the tiny beep, that still small noise. And it wouldn’t be so hard - but then they turn on noise. They turn up this static background noise, and it makes it so much harder to hear what you’re actually trying to hear.
[picture of an ear] - Ear, ear drum, bones, nerves, neural/cerebral processing - and then it gets handed off to the mind and the heart, which control what kind of motor responses will result from the reception of the audio signals.
Talk about complexity [Darwin’s Black Box - the nucleus of a cell and irreducible complexity… “"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down," Charles Darwin]. When we encounter complexity in the world, our minds instinctively understand that there is intelligence behind that. Some intelligent being accounted for that “random” anomaly. I call complexity an anomaly because one of the most fundamental laws of physics tells us that randomness increases. In our current universe, randomness is always naturally increasing. Things get more random, they break down. Everything breaks down, doesn’t it? Our cars. Our houses. Our toys. Our bodies. Even relationships are prone to this. Without some measure of intervention, sooner or later everything breaks down. And we, the people of the Book, understand that this is a result of the Fall. All that which was designed by our Creator to last forever - now is subjected to what the Bible calls the law of corruption.
Romans 8:21
…that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
The entire universe is enslaved to this principle of corruption, of decay. Randomness increases. The Law of Corruption means Stuff breaks down - UNLESS acted upon by some external force. Unless you introduce some energy - AND intelligence - into the equation.
[pictures of peter ellenshaw paintings] - Take a look at this “picture”. Our fallen nature with an assist from Darwin assumes that what we glimpse in this screen is a photo of a place that it arose by a long series of successive helpful slight modifications. I.e. random. But what if I tell you that the image you see on the screen is actually a painting, a bunch of paint on canvas? What would be the best explanation for how this painting came about? If a bunch of paint were thrown onto a canvas, what are the chances that something like this would result? We look at a painting, and we can easily intuit that there is intelligence behind this beauty - but why then, when we look at the real thing, are our fallen corrupted minds wont to dismiss the idea that there is intelligence behind this?
[picture of trees in a row]
How many trees in a row does it take before the most reasonable answer becomes intelligence as opposed to randomness? And what if you had to stake your life on it? What is the most reasonable explanation for that row of trees? Just because you did not see them planted, or cannot even see the one who planted them, means nothing. Any reasonable open-minded thinking person can see that this is no random accident. But this is exactly what many thinking people are desperate to believe about the universe, and about humans specifically. That we are random accidents, hopeful mutations. We say hopeful mutation, because outside of the Marvel Comic Universe mutants overwhelmingly tend to struggle to even survive. Much less multiply.
Let’s go back to the ear. Look at the amazing complexity of this design. What is the most reasonable explanation to account for this? Random accident? Or the product of ingenious engineering? Complex structures do not arise from random accidents.
Psalm 94:9
He who planted the ear, does He not hear? He who formed the eye, does He not see?
Isaiah 42:20
You have seen many things, but you do not observe them; Your ears are open, but none hears.
A reality with which all parents are familiar. There is more to hearing than the mere physical anatomy of the situation. Ears are always open. They are always on. Like Alexa/Google/Siri - unless our battery dies. Or we get this…
[no signal logo]
But when it comes to our always-on ears, our mind has the ability to tune out. It tunes out when we’re asleep. And it tunes out the noise when all it is is noise. Our minds tune out what they perceive to be noise. It’s Charlie Brown’s teacher. Woh woh woh. When our child is not listening to us, when they are not hearing what we are saying, it’s not that their ears are not functioning. Ears are always on (assuming they are in fact healthy). No, something needs to happen in the mind and heart of this audio receiver. There is this thing called attention. Hearing is about paying attention. And yes, one could say that there is a cost, a price to pay when it comes to paying attention.
Another option for when ears don’t hear is when they’re operating in a vacuum. Sound waves cannot travel in a vacuum - did you know that? There is no sound in space. All those cool space explosions in Star Wars and the Marvel Universe - in space your ears wouldn’t hear a thing. And I do think that one plausible explanation as to why some people don’t hear the Word of the Lord is that they are operating in a spiritual vacuum.
But for most of us, the challenge of hearing is that of paying attention. And then there is this other thing called response.
Micah 6:3
“My people, what have I done to you, and how have I wearied you? Answer Me.”
God says His people's lack of response is because they have grown weary, they are tired of Him. Impatient. It is the law of diminishing returns. We get tired of the same old stuff - even when it's amazing 5-star stuff. And in our modern pop-culture age, things get old and tired and outdated not in years and decades but in minutes - and milliseconds. And so God says, Remember! Remember what I have done for you!
Micah 6.4-5
“Indeed, I brought you up from the land of Egypt and ransomed you from the house of slavery, and I sent before you Moses, Aaron and Miriam. My people, remember now what Balak king of Moab counseled and what Balaam son of Beor answered him, and from Shittim to Gilgal, so that you might know the righteous acts of the LORD.”
Remember! Never forget, never lose the awe and grandeur of Who I am and all I have made and done.
And Micah says, As for me, I will watch. I will wait for the Lord. I will even bear with His indignation - because I have sinned against Him. (7.7-9) I will remember who He is, and who I am.
Micah 6:8
He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, to love kindness (chesed), and to walk humbly with your God?
Walking. Humbly with your God.
And here’s a thing about our ears. Healthy ears are what make it possible for humans to walk. Structures in our middle and inner ears help us regulate our equilibrium and retain our balance. We can’t even walk right without our ears. And isn’t that true in a spiritual sense? Isn’t that what the Lord is saying? Hear! Hear, hear! Hear O Israel! The Lord is God. He is the One and Only. And you will love Him with all your heart. You will do what is right, and love chesed, and walk humbly with Him. Walk humbly with Him. Because it is so easy to grow tired of Him. To get sidetracked. To get out of spiritual balance. We start paying attention to other things. The noise! So much noise! We lose sight of Who He is. What He has done - His righteous acts. His wonders! The grandeur and perfection and majesty of Who He is.
But there must be an initial humbling, this initial lowering of ourselves, where we initially acknowledge that God is God. That there is a God, and I am not Him. That He made the heavens and the earth and all that is in them. Unbelievably complex. Including me. And therefore I am accountable to Him. He is Lord, and I will bow my knee to Him. I think this initial humbling is about removing the spiritual vacuum. It is about emerging from the vacuum chamber and out into the atmosphere, the world of sound, not only where your physical ears can hear beautiful music and birds and all the attendant noise, but where your spiritual ears can hear the still small sound of the voice of God. I will bend my ear and listen to Him. I will pay attention to Him and rank myself under Him and do what He wants. This is the price we must pay. I will live into doing what He wants. He has told us. He has shown us. He has made it perfectly clear. The heavens - everything around us - is declaring that there is a God, and He is glorious. We just need to choose whether or not we will pay attention. Whether or not we will humble ourselves, get off our high horse and acknowledge that He is God. But in the end we find with the saints of old, that whatever price I think I have paid, that it was all more than worth it. In the words of Hudson Taylor, I never made a sacrifice.
And for those of us who have done that, who have made this initial acknowledgement, there is the need to keep paying attention, the daily need to walk humbly with our God. Walking humbly with God means we defer to Him, we tune in to Him. Every day. Because as we see with Israel, it doesn’t take much. It doesn’t take much to get off track, to tune out. We’re not talking about signal loss as much as we are talking about competing stations. Isn’t that what happens on the radio? You have this one station you really like to listen to, and invariably it seems as tho some other station will come along, set up shop closer to where you live, and it starts crowding out the station you’ve been listening to. That’s what happened to the Israelites. They were camping out in Shittim, in the plains of Moab, God had brought them so far and through so much, and King Balak hires Balaam to curse them, and instead God speaks through a donkey and through Balaam and blesses His people. But there they are, camping right beside the banks of promise. And [Num 25.1-3] they begin to play the harlot.
It doesn’t take much. It doesn’t take long. Every day brings with it a new need for fresh grace and fresh fire from the Lord, fresh spiritual fuel for our journey. And the challenge is the same for us as it was for Israel. Hear, O Israel. Hear, O church. Hear, hear! Listen up! Pay attention! Pay attention to the Lord. You and I and all God’s people need Him today. We need to listen to His Word and His Spirit and depend on Him today, because apart from Him there is nothing we can do. And the problem is not with our ears. The problem is with our hearts. We tune out. Our hearts and our minds tune out - we turn the voice of the Lord into so much noise. Woh woh woh. Or there’s too much noise in our lives, so much noise that it’s drowning out the Lord. We need to find ways to eliminate the extraneous noise. Silence - that’s what we need. The sounds of silence. So that we can really hear. Taking the time to listen.
When do you do your best listening? And where do you do your best listening? What does it take for you to be able to hear the still small voice of the Lord? Silence. It is a spiritual discipline.
Luke 5:16 But Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray.
Matt. 14:23 After He had sent the crowds away, He went up on the mountain by Himself to pray; and when it was evening, He was there alone.
Mark 1:35 In the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went away to a secluded place, and was praying there.
Luke 6:12 It was at this time that He went off to the mountain to pray, and He spent the whole night in prayer to God.
Morning - or evening. It made no difference to Jesus. Where is your mountain? Where do you find your wilderness? Your alone time? Where do you & I find silence in our lives? When? Jesus would find it often. In our day, it is an increasingly fleeting commodity, so many messages and voices and stimuli coming screaming at us - even from the moment we wake up?
Psalm 46:10
“Cease striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”
The moment you wake up each morning, all your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists in shoving it all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other, larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. C. S. Lewis
C.S. Lewis was heavily influenced by a Scottish author named George Macdonald. Macdonald wrote this about heaven: he described it as "that region where there is only life, and all that is not music is silence." It is an interesting thought - one on which Lewis then elaborates in The Screwtape Letters. There, the “senior demon” Screwtape reveals one very interesting plan of the devil.
Music and silence–how I detest them both!….[Hell] has been occupied by Noise–Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile–Noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end….The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end. (The Screwtape Letters, 119-120, emphasis added)
In order to drive us away from God, Satan chooses to distract us with “Noise.” He knows that if we are overrun by countless distractions that we will be unable to hear the voice of God in silence.
[turning off the tv]
Jesus - "My sheep hear My voice…"
Samuel - "Speak Lord, Your servant is listening..."
Ending promises
2.12-13
4.1-7
5.2-3
7.18-20
Outline of Micah
• Hear I: Judgment Will Come (ch 1-2)
- 1.1 - Hear the Word of the Lord
- 1.5 - Israel AND Judah
- 2.1 - Woe
- 2.3 - Thus says the Lord
- 2.12 - A remnant
- 3:1 - Hear Heads/Rulers
- 3.5 - (False) Prophets
- 3.9 - Hear the judgment on leaders (rulers, priests, prophets)
- 4.1 - Last days
- 4.9 - Purposeful punishment
- 5.1 - Messiah/Bethlehem
- 5.10 - The Pruning
- 6.1 - Hear (shama) the indictment
- 6.3 - God’s heart
- 6.9 - The indictment
- 7.1 - The perishing
- 7.7 - The watching (for the Lord instead of for calamity)
- 7.11 - The Come Back
No comments:
Post a Comment