Restoration from Among the Nations

Posted: November 6, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: Israel, Jesus, Kingship, Leadership, Outnumbered, Pain, Sermons, Trauma, Victory | Leave a comment

Thank you so much for your prayers and concerns this week for Lori and our family. One of the greatest blessings a person can have on earth is a church family who cares and prays for you. We have that at Temple! To give you an update, my wife Lori woke up on Tuesday morning with her hearting racing at 225 bpm. At the hospital, they were able to calm her heart without any invasive intervention. There was apparently no damage to Lori’s heart, so we are very thankful to God for answering our prayers. She is convalescing at home because she picked up a nasty bug this week as well. She told me yesterday that she has never been so sick in her life and she has tested negative for COVID. So much sickness is going around. Let’s pray for healing! PRAY!

Beep! Beep! Beep! I watched the monitor tracking heart rate and blood pressure. I found the green up and down waves on the black screen almost mesmerizing, if it were not that the monitor was tracking the vitals of a person I love. Through the years, some of you have been hooked up to one of those monitors in the hospital. I have watched you in pain, sometimes I just silently pray, other times I read Scripture or sometimes I try to crack jokes because laughter, as the Bible says, is good medicine (Proverbs 17:22). I am familiar enough with those machines to know when things are going well and when things are going poorly. This time the beeps came from a monitor hooked up to the one I ultimately love – my wife Lori. It was January 2006 and I rushed Lori to the hospital because her heart was racing. No matter how many people are in the ER waiting room, heart patients get to jump the line. So that day, Lori got to go into an ER room immediately. We had been at home and I was just finishing up packing. The next day I was supposed to fly to Israel with some other pastors, including two of my brother-in-laws. I had wanted to go to Israel since the time I was a toddler. My dad had taken a trip to Israel in the mid 1970’s and brought back souvenirs including a little clay jar with a Hebrew scroll in it and a menorah. Those trinkets intrigued my young mind as I would see them in our home or my dad’s study. So the trip to Israel was a 30 year old dream come true. But Lori’s fast heartbeats were a constant reminder that our dearest ones should come before our dreams. Life’s irregular rhythms remind us of who we are and more importantly, whose we are. In Lori’s case, we prayed and God calmed her heart down. I was still able to go to Israel and learned so much. But the lesson of who we are and whose we are what was even more important than seeing the holy land sites.

Today, I hope to remind you in the midst of life’s irregular rhythms who you are. I believe this is especially important when life changes so much. Many of us have been shaken by the earthquakes of life and it makes the ground seem so unsettling. Some of you actually might be suffering from trauma and a little bit of PTSD because of some of the changes you have faced. School being in-person, then online, then in-person, but with social distancing measures and no fun activities – and the cycle repeats. Just the threat of one of those measures again may trigger something for you – parent, student and teacher alike. Others of you may be triggered by disappointment so you struggle to even plan for the future any more. This is why we need a new hope and reminder of who we are and whose we are. I am not saying that trauma is easily fixed. In fact, you may need to talk to somebody trained to help in trauma, but trauma does not need to define you. I am calling you to transition your identity to Christ who suffered great trauma, but who triumphed as well. This is who you are and whose you are!

We find that in Micah 4:8-13. Micah is the Old Testament Book of the Bible that we have been studying this Fall. We started with the “top and tail”[1] as the English would say. We started out studying both Micah 1 and 7 – the first few and last few verses of the book, which are often so telling. This gave us the overview that God’s justice and forgiveness to the nations gives hope and should motivate us to act justly, with loving kindness and walking humbly with our God. Micah was a prophet who wrote in very disturbing and confusing times. Despite the tonnes of hard truth he declared, there was enough hope in his messages that one could find hope like a miner digging for and finding a gold nugget. May God help us to find such golden hope today. And if you are about to give up, let me remind that the Lord reigns from His mountain and He is gathering all those who He has allowed to become lame, rejected and afflicted. That is context. Let’s read Micah 4:8-13 now.  Read Micah 4:8-13! 

In order to find out who we are and whose we are, we need to understand that though Micah seems to be talking to an inanimate object of a tower in verse 8, the Lord’s message is not to a thing, but to a people. Certainly, God can talk to an object and it must respond because He created, owns and sustains every atom in the universe. However, in Micah 4:8, the “tower of the flock” has personal connotations. Think less about God talking to a tower and more about the Good Shepherd talking to His flock. “To understand the allusion to the tower of the flock, it is necessary to go back to Genesis 35:16-20. One of patriarchs Jacob had just lost his life! Here is what is says in Genesis 35:20-21, “And Jacob set up a pillar of Rachel’s tomb, which is there to this day. Israel journeyed on and pitched his tent beyond the tower of Eder.” This tower refers to Migdal Ader near Bethlehem, King David’s birthplace.”[2] Migdal Ader traces its origin to the time of Rachel and particularly, the tomb where she was buried. Rachel was the favoured wife of Jacob. And Jacob was one of the patriarchs of Israel – Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We learned last week that Jacob was lame. He literally walked with a limp after wrestling with God (Genesis 32:22-32). So it should come as no surprise that Jacob’s wife Rachel is alluded to as well because Jacob is such a focus in Micah being referred to 11 times (1:5; 2:7, 12; 3:1, 8, 9; 4:2; 5:7, 8; 7:20).  And so this tower reminds us that this was a place of death, but also a place of life. It was where Israel’s greatest finite king was born – King David. This emphasis should not be lost on us because the very next chapter is Micah’s most famous prophecy. It usually read at Christmas time and points to where the Messiah would be born (5:2). What is that little town called? Bethlehem! 

Bethlehem was the place known for shepherds who watched their flocks by night and day. The tower of Migdal Ader aided in that watching. It served as a watchtower and lookout. With both allusions to Rachel and her great, great, great, great, great, great … grandson David, we discover a link to the lame in Jacob and a link to the royal line in David. That is important because it reminds God’s people who they are and where they came from. But importantly as Ian Rowe, who works in neighbourhoods in New York City where over 80% of people do not know who their father is, reminds, “The family that you form is more important than the family you are from.”[3]

Remember that and let’s look into the rest Micah 4:8, “And you, O tower of the flock, hill of the daughter of Zion, to you shall it come, the former dominion shall come, kingship for the daughter of Jerusalem.” Though God’s people had a godly, even royal heritage, especially the people of Jerusalem, there was a problem. They were leaderless. This is made apparent in the first part of verse 9, “Now why do you cry aloud? Is there no king in you?” This brings us to our big question for the day and first point. Who are God’s people? It is an important question: who are God’s people? Are you one of them? Ask yourself that question throughout this message. Here is the first promise of hope: God’s people are those: 1) without a king … (v. 8-9). If you recall, God was to be their king. In 1 Samuel 8:7, God told another prophet by the name of Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me from being king over them.” The Israelites wanted a king like all the other nations, when God was to be their king. But that was roughly 300 years earlier. Israel did have a king in Micah’s day. In fact, a pretty decent king in King Hezekiah. Hezekiah was the king who turned to the Lord in crisis and sickness. He reigned when Assyria laid siege to Jerusalem as we have learned about the last couple of weeks. Hezekiah when overwhelmed by an enemy, spent his time in prayer, more than protest. So when Micah says, “Is there no king in you?” He wasn’t mocking them or cancelling King Hezekiah. He was reminding them that our ultimate leader is God. God’s people who are without a king will find one in the Lord. (v. 8-9). I think this truth is really relevant and timely for us. We are living in a time when the church’s interaction with government needs greater Biblical alignment. There are some who think the church is at war with government. They see the church as the ultimate authority on earth and try to hold government accountable. They would interpret the statement in Micah 4:8, “the former dominion shall come,” as a fulfilled promise that the new Israel, the Church, has dominion over society. They hold to a view that the Church has replaced Israel whereas I believe Romans 11 teaches that God still has a plan for ethnic Israel. The dominionists, as they are called, fall into the camp as Christ against culture and talk a lot about culture wars. This is especially prevalent in the U.S. where religion is mixed more with politics and the military. Sure, we can acknowledge and be thankful for fallen soldiers like we did today with the upcoming Remembrance Day, but let’s not think the church militant hasn’t crept into our thinking in Canada. Some church leaders use Canadian sarcasm to mock government leaders as well as church leaders and thus are violating in principle Acts 23:5, “You shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people.” (Exodus 22:28) Do not follow church leaders that clearly violate Scripture, even if you feel neglected, frustrated and “persecuted” by government. Follow Jesus’ example! Jesus lived a hostile society. His nation was rule by Roman oppressors, but He didn’t talk about culture wars. Instead, when Jesus was persecuted and He died for His enemies! One of the telling questions to test us is, “Would we be more upset if we found out that the person we voted for didn’t get in office or we heard that somebody we knew never received Christ as their savior and king before they died?” I echo the words of Russell Moore, “We must say to those who spread lies and who fuel violence, “You will not do this in our name, and you will definitely not do this in the name of Jesus Christ.”[4] In other words, are they seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness or are they seeking their own regurgitated vision of a messianic dictatorship that even the post-resurrection disciples longed for? In Acts 1:6, the disciples asked Jesus this question in light of not fully understanding passages such as Micah 4 that we are studying today, “So when they had come together, they asked Him, ‘Lord, will you at this time, restore the kingdom to Israel?” Let’s make that personal, are you and I seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness or do we want our earthly kings, presidents and prime ministers more? God’s people are those without a king, but seek one in God alone! Is Jesus your king?

To be truly one of God’s people you must have Jesus as your King. This does not mean that you and I will experience no pain. Here is the second promise of hope: 2) God’s people are those who are in pain … (Micah 4:9). This isn’t preached to you by the televangelists but the Apostle Paul told his protégé Timothy that “all those who are godly must suffer.” (2 Timothy 3:12) This echoes what Micah 4:9 goes on to say, “Has your counselor perished, that pain seized you like a woman in labor?” Suffering is a consistent thread of the gospel. Remember when I told you about Lori’s racing heart. I left a detail out. What elevated her priority status as a patient in that hospital that day in 2006 was that she was also 7 months pregnant with our third child Noah. I have never been pregnant and I don’t plan to be. Apparently, the pain seizes you as I have observed from watching 5 births – one in Haiti and 4 of my own children. Lori loves to show me videos and maybe you have seen them too where men, especially husbands, are hooked up to machines that mimic labour pain. Apparently, the machine lets the operator adjust the amount of pain during contractions. The women love to see how we men can’t take such pain. I am happy to give you women the pride of being tougher in childbirth. You can wear that badge of honour and it doesn’t undermine my sense of masculinity at all. Male and female bodies are made to take different types of pain. God made men and women different and we should celebrate those differences. I’m just glad to have children and have the easier part in the reproductive process. How many guys agree with me? By the way, our son Noah was more than okay and is now at 16 year old in high school and an incredible artist. (I think I owe you some money Noah for using you as an illustration with your permission.)

Getting back to our passage, the pain that the Jews in Micah’s day were about to experience was being exiled to Babylon (v. 10). This prophecy is amazing because it occurred well over a hundred years before it happened in 586 B.C (c.f. Jeremiah 51:33). God’s Word shows itself to be true once again! But with the pain, there is a promise of hope. Look again what Micah says in Micah 4:10, “Writhe and groan, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in labor, from 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 hand of your enemies.” And so who you are is found in this promise of hope: God’s people who are in pain will be rescued (v. 10) God may give us over to pain, but He does not give us up. He hasn’t given up on you. As He was committed to His people the Jews with their failures and setbacks, so He is with us. Pain is not just a trait in God’s family, but those in pain who turn to God and His Son Jesus have them as their Heavenly Father and Brother.

So we know that we are God’s people if we are without a king, but find one in the Lord. And we also know that we are God’s people if we are in pain and will be rescued by the Lord. But there is a third promise of hope. This last promise in Micah 4:11-13 may be the most helpful – we know that 3) we are God’s people when we are outnumbered … (v. 11-13). Look again at verses 11-13, “Now many nations are assembled against you, saying, ‘Let her be defiled, and let our eyes gaze upon Zion.’ But they do 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.” These verses are saying that the world will come against God’s people. This has been true from the birth of the nation of Israel. They were enslaved for over 400 years (Exodus 12:40-41). They then faced nearly 400 years of war and skirmishes with the Philistines once they entered the Promised Land during the time of the Judges. They were exiled by the Assyrians and then the Babylonians. The Romans enslaved them during and into the time of Jesus. Persecution and hatred continued through to the Nazi regime last century and the 6 million Jews killed during the Holocaust. And to this very day, even certain NBA players have been anti-Semitic[5] as this dominated the headlines this week. Hatred for God’s people does not go away. Why can’t the dominionists accept this? Wait for Jesus to come back and then we will rule with Him! 

And yet, though the nations rage against God’s people, the nations will not win (c.f. Psalm 2). The nations can quickly unite as we have seen in common causes. But the nations don’t understand God’s plans, which can never be thwarted. “What appears to the enemy as victory in battle leads to defeat in war.”[6] “The nations will stare insultingly at God’s people as she experiences the pain and shame of her rape and the desecration of her holy places.”[7] But, “the nations are unwitting tools of their own destruction, for the Lord is using their animosity and pride to bring about their own defeat, just as He outwitted Satan in the cross of Jesus Christ.”[8] We are God’s people who are outnumbered but will be victorious (v. 11-13). Remember the context of this passage, The Lord will reign forevermore as verse 7 promises. We might be in leaderless, in pain and outnumbered, but we have hope. Those traits should lead us to trust in Jesus and it is Him who ultimately makes us part of God’s people. Jesus is the King, Rescuer and Victor! He showed all 3 characteristics at the Cross. Recall when He said in John 16:33, “I have said these things to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world, you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” May I need Jesus’ ultimate promise of hope when we look at the news and what is happening around the world, or what is happening in our schools or what is happening in our homes, like waking up this past Tuesday to watch your wife struggle to breath. Do you need that promise? Here is the truth and ACTION POINT of the week: With Jesus, you’re victorious! With Jesus, you find out who you are and whose you are!

[1] I learned this term from Jonathan Griffiths in his lecture at the Heritage Preaching Lectures, October 17, 2022.

[2] Walter Kaiser, Mastering the Old Testament (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1992), 60.

[3] Ian Rowe, “Wisdom Conversations,” Cornerstone University, Grand Rapids, Michigan, October 27, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLVPO60wDQ0&feature=youtu.be

[4] An example of how disturbing this trend has been is https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2022/november-web-only/nancy-pelosi-politics-violence-post-truth-church.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=article. Accessed November 2, 2022.

[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/03/sports/basketball/kyrie-irving-apology-antisemitic-documentary.html. Accessed November 2, 2022.

[6] Bruce Waltke, Obadiah, Jonah & Micah (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 1988), 178.

[7] Kaiser, 62.

[8] Waltke, 180.