Verses 1-2
Chapter 7 begins with Micah looking around at the current state of Israel and he is grieving and mourning that the godly seem so few. He is grieving the fact that it seems like everybody has abandoned God and there is no spiritual fruit being produced in Israel. He begins verse 1 by giving us a glimpse into his soul and he says, “Woe is me!” or as we might say today, “I am depressed. I am filled with sadness and sorrow. My heart is heavy.”
Micah compares the situation in Israel to someone who goes out to a vineyard for grapes because that is where you find grapes and there are no grapes to be found. There are no grapes to gather. And the person’s hunger is left unsatisfied.
Why does Micah use this illustration?
If you were wanting to find a person seeking after the one true God during Micah’s time you would think you could go to Israel because Israel was God’s chosen people. But how discouraging would it be to go to the place where God’s people should be and not finding anyone seeking after God? There was a day in Israel’s history in which godly men and women were seeking the Lord and spiritual fruit was being produced. But now the spiritual harvest of Israel was gone. Micah is saying I am longing to find those who seek after God and in my pursuit I am left unsatisfied.
Now when Micah says in verse 2 the godly have perished from the earth, this is hyperbole, an exaggerated statement to express how he is feeling. Micah is living during the same time as the prophet Isaiah. There were still a remnant that God was preserving. But Micah uses this extreme statement to express his frustration that the godly were so few and that evil was so rampant that he finds himself looking around and it seems like the godly have perished.
Verses 3-6
Micah goes on in verses 3-6 and he says when he looks at the men and women around him their souls only desire evil. And in verse 6, he says, everyone is seeking their own interest, you can’t trust anyone.
The hearts of the people of Israel have become so wicked that their primary enemies are no longer from the outside but actually from within. The very ones you should find safety, protection and comfort in are the very ones you are having to run from. Your loved ones have become your enemies. That is what evil does. It distorts the relationships that are given for our good and turns them against us.
It doesn’t take much for us to relate to the despair of Micah. It does not take much for us to sympathize with the phrase, “the godly are no more.”
Maybe you have felt that as the only Christian in your workplace. Or the only Christian at your school. Or the only Christian in your neighborhood. Or maybe as the only Christian in your family.
We can even feel that sense of despair sometimes as Christians in this country. We see how our leadership is leading. We see what our entertainers find to be entertaining. We look at the wisdom of our philosophers that deny the existed of God. We see moralities that are rooted in the pleasures and selfishness of man. And we can find ourselves saying, “the godly have perished!”
It doesn’t take much to relate to Micah. But the challenges with the type of statement “the godly have perished or the godly are no more” is that it can lead us to retreat. It can lead us to go inward. And it can lead us to a place in which we simply long for the good ole days. It can cause us to look back with longing and look ahead with despair.
One of the challenges with the statement “the godly have perished” is that it can cause us to curl up in the fetal position waving a flag of defeat.
I would imagine it would be easy for Micah to just run for the hills and say I am done. Have you ever been in that place? You see the ungodly all around you. You see the wickedness all around you. You feel like you are all alone.
Or maybe it is not the ungodly you are grieved by. Maybe it is your own Christian community that has grieved you. You see the body of Christ acting in a manner that doesn’t reflect Christ and it is disheartening and discouraging. Maybe even within the church you can find yourself saying, “where are the godly?” And you just want to say, ‘God, I am done. I am so discouraged by everything around me, that I just done.”
But what is wonderful about getting this personal glimpse into Micah is that we can see that the Godly response to ungodliness is to grieve. It appropriate to see a world filled with wickedness and to be filled with sadness.
What Micah is going to show us is that the grief and sadness does not need to define our life. That heaviness that we feel in this world does not need to steal our joy. Yes, Micah recognizes the despair of the situation. He sits momentarily in the “woe is me” even wondering if the godly have perished. But this isn’t a pity party. And He isn’t throwing in the towel. He is NOT running for the hills.
Look at Micah’s response in verse 7 when he considers the dreadful state of Israel.
Verse 7
What I love about this response is that Micah begins with his own attitude, his own actions, his own responsibility. But as for me, this is how I am going to respond.
Micah is saying, I see the evil around me and I see a country that has turned away from the Lord. I know of the coming judgment of the Lord, I know there is future pain coming our way and I can run from this. I can develop bitterness toward others because of this. I can develop bitterness toward God because of this. I can become discontent, I can become angry, I can allow my heart to be hardened. But instead I am going to look toward the Lord. That is where I will find my hope.
Every time you and I go through a difficult season, we have the opportunity to choose our response to that difficult season. The season or circumstance don’t own us.
One of the things I often tell my kids is that we get to choose our attitude. My kids will say the reason they responded a certain way is because he did this to me, she did this to me. And I will say, “I know that was a hard thing to experience. But you get to determine how you are going to respond to that. And you can ask God to give you patience. You can ask God to give you grace.”
Micah acknowledges in a vey vulnerable way that he is hurting. He is grieving. He sees the nation of Israel turning their backs on God and his soul is heavy but that will not steal his joy Because he will look to the Lord.
Joshua 24:15 : “But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”
In verse 7, Micah says, “my God will hear me.”
This idea that God listens to the prayers of the righteous is a phrase we hear a lot in Scripture.
1 Peter 3:12, “For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”
Proverbs 15:29, “The Lord is far from the wicked, but he hears the prayer of the righteous.”
Psalm 34:17 “When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.”
Now obviously God knows all and sees all. Nothing is hidden from Him. He hears the cries of the righteous and the wicked. But the idea of God not listening to the wicked is that when I am walking in disobedience to God, God is not going to bless that disobedience. I am not going to know the peace of God when I am in rebellion toward God.
One of the consequences of disobedience before God is a lack of peace in my life, a lack of contentment in my life, a lack of joy in my life. But when I am seeking the will of God that is when I know the peace and hope of God. That is when I am comforted by God. That is when I cry out to him according to His will and He responds to me according to His will. I know Him and hear Him because I am seeking Him.
And so when Micah says my God will hear me. He knows God will not abandon the righteous. And he will know peace, true peace, soul level peace. It doesn’t necessary mean that God is going to remove all of the pain from Micah’s life, but as Micah goes through this pain seeking the will of God, trusting in God that the Lord will hear Micah and sustain Micah according to the will of God and the pleasure of God.
At the end of the day, whatever season we are end must come back to the simplicity of Proverbs 3 that says, ‘trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all of your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight.”
It doesn’t say he will make your paths easy. But they will be straight in that we are walking according to the will of God because as it says in 1 Peter, “For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous…”
Psalm 32:8 the Lord says, “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
Isn’t that how we want to live, with the eyes of the look on our life, directing our life. Micah says I know there is despair all around me, but I will look to the one who instructs and teaches me in how I should live.
Verse 8
Micah continues in verse 8 and he recognizes that his enemies are going to look at him and see him in a place of defeat. He recognizes that his enemies will look at him and believe that his God has abandoned him. Have you ever been in that place where you have publicly professed your faith and trust in Jesus and then great trials come into your life and your unbelieving family and friends say, “where is your God now?” Micah knows that when he chooses to say, “But I will look to the Lord” that Micah’s enemies will see the destruction of Israel and say, “well, it doesn’t look like God rescues the so-called righteous.”
In verse 8, Micah is saying, “when you see me experiencing physical defeat, my God is still at work. I may experience physical trials in which I have physically fallen but my God is still sustaining me and my God will lift me up. It may look like I have fallen into darkness but I am never in the dark because my God is my light and my salvation.
Micah knows that his enemies may view his physical trials as a sign that God has abandoned him. But Micah’s hope is found beyond the things of this world.
Verse 9
What is interesting about this is that Micah does not remove himself from the judgment of God. He doesn’t say this judgment is because of the wickedness of those other leaders and those other people.
He recognizes his own sin. That God is just, that God is right for bringing judgment because of his sin. That if it was only his sin that God was examining that God is just in his judgment. He humbles himself before God recognizing the he too is a sinner and that sin requires judgment.
This humility from Micah is what it means to say, ‘But as for me I will look to the Lord.” When we bring ourselves under the authority of God we also recognize our sin before God. We are quick to say, “Search me and know heart, reveal disobedience in him. Reveal areas that do not please you.” And then we bring ourselves under the correction of God and the discipline of God.
That is what it looks like to walk humbly before our God. As Micah 6:8 says.
It is one thing to say, ‘God, I will seek you and you alone but it is another thing to say I will humble myself before you, acknowledge my sin before you and seek to walk again in your ways.” When we say, “but as for me (in this wicked world, in this ungodly world, in this depraved world), I will look to the Lord” that statement does not put us into a place of self-righteousness. I am not like those sinners. But rather it puts us in a place of humility in which we walk humbly before our God. Oh God, examine my heart that I may walk according to your ways. Oh God, I know I am prone to wander, direct my steps according to your Word.
Verses 9-10
I believe one of the greatest walls we can build between us and the non-believing world is when we point self-righteous fingers declaring their sin. But I believe one of the greatest bridges we can build with the unbelieving world is when they see us walking before God in repentance and humility. They will see in our lives a forgiveness, a grace, a mercy, a salvation that shines as we walk humbly before our God that causes them to recognize there is a God.