Micah’s little boom is only seven chapters long, yet in six of them he has taught us much, and having done so Micah now turns his full attention prophetically to the Lord Jesus Christ. It is as though he wearied of moving the stubborn mountains, and for relief he turns to see Christ Jesus as the One Perfect Man who should alone carry out the revealed will of God, fulfilling all the law and the prophets completely. Perhaps if we too follow Micah’s example we shall derive more benefit than if we see only the folly around us. The soul who delights in the Lord needs occasionally to sit solitary and view the Lamb of God in the glory of His perfection, as one would rest his eyes in a garden enclosed. But Micah’s view is of the Man of Sorrows. “Woe is me! for I am as when they have gathered the summer fruits, as the grape gleanings of the vintage: there is no cluster to eat: my soul desired the firstripe fruit.” Micah sees the Lord at the end of His ministry as it were. Christ Jesus has given of His best to all who same unto Him. The blind have received their sight from Him, the dumb have received speech, the deaf have received hearing. The lepers are clean, the demon-possessed are rid of their awful burdens, the paralysed are restored to health and strength. Even the dead have in selected cases received life from Him. The sick are healed, the people are taught, and the poor have had the gospel preached to them. And in the end this so-fruitful Vine stands stripped in the presence of His enemies. “Woe is me! for I am as when they have gathered the summer fruits.” Having given His all, and brought joy to so many, now stripped and alone He waits quietly for His own crucifixion.
“The good man is perished out of the earth: and there is none upright among men: they all lie in wait for blood: they hunt every man his brother with a net.” Micah turns his prophetic gaze to the scene outside the city wall. He sees the fierce cruelty of the mob, the insensate destructiveness of the soldiers, the lingering agony of the Cross. Behind the curtain of darkness he senses the death throes of the only good Man left on earth, and his cry is a cry of absolute despair, of most bitter anguish, of hopeless bereavement – “The good man is perished out of the earth.” Micah is only allowed two short verses in which to compass the whole scene, and in one line he packs all the bewilderment, the hopelessness, the desperate unreasonableness of that dark hour at Calvary. His cry is a wail of catastrophe – “there is none upright among men” – for he sees prophetically as the Light of the world is extinguished. Micah is standing by the side of God here, seeing the world from God’s point of view. His words come down to us as written in fire, words written with the finger of God. He sees the blood-thirsty mob, the liers in wait, as one steps forward to thrust a spear into the Lord’s side, and he hears the exultant shout as they see the blood. “They all lie in wait for blood.” This was what they were waiting for. And Micah sees that this is the outcome for everyone who wants to walk with God. He sees the church with its martyrs following in the footsteps of the Man of Sorrows, and how the world would delight to hound them down. “They hunt every man his brother with a net.” It is a sorry tale of murder and butchery than began to unfold at the Cross and continues to this day, and the prophets were by no means happy men. Micah is terse, but Micah gives us nevertheless the complete picture, the whole story, in two verses.
Then Micah sees that evil permitted becomes in the end an evil way of life. He says, “That they may do evil with both hands earnestly, the prince asketh, and the judge asketh for a reward; and the great man, he uttereth his mischievous desire: so they wrap it up.” Micah sees the evil of his own day continued as a way of life among the people of God. In his day the princes accepted gifts and ruled accordingly, and the judges accepted bribes and their judgment warped and the covetous got their own way. It is also a picture of our own nation today in fact. But in the end it is a picture of how Christ was betrayed. Judas Iscariot, numbered among the apostles, is literally the great one with the mischievous desire. He was a thief. He lusted after silver. He sold his Lord – and he sold his own soul – for thirty pieces of silver. The infamous betrayer is directly the cause of the Lord’s death. It is as an informer that Iscariot stands out. So he meets with the rulers of that day, and the money changes hands, and everyone stands to gain, and the bargain is struck – “so they wrap it up.” And Micah, standing by the throne of God, sees the truth in its stark clarity; the apostle selling his Lord, the chief priests paying the silver, the warped judge setting aside the law to curry political favor, the ruler of the land smiling approval. “The best of them is a briar: the most upright is a thorn hedge: the day of thy watchmen and thy visitation cometh.” Calvary is the hill of the watchers, they watched Him there, and the day of the visitation of the wrath of God poured out against sin on the head of the innocent Victim. But Micah sees also, ere he turns away in disgust, a startling sight behind the scene of the Cross of Christ, a momentary glimpse of a risen Christ, and revenge on the oppressors – and concludes with that grim sentence, “now shall be their perplexity.”
Few prophets have managed to convey more briefly than Micah, the whole counsel of God, yet, for all that, the account is complete. Every word is made to count, every line tells the story. We have neither the time nor the desire here to fully explore this little book, for a man could spend many days reading in Micah without ever exhausting the material. Our object is two-fold – to point out that Micah is no minor prophet and thus redress an ancient wrong; and to bring the teaching of Micah to the fore in a day and age similar to his own. Our land, once a Christian nation, is now corrupt, our leaders for political gain are again prepared to sell their own souls. The church as a religious body is in a state of spiritual depravity and iniquity. False teachers abound in every community, and heresy and blasphemy are accepted as a way of life. In such a situation we need to see again the place God has given to the Cross of Christ, and the hill of Calvary. We need to be reminded of our Redeemer’s precious blood, and we need to see again the appalling ugliness of sin. It is not enough to maintain the status quo. It is a time for believers to arise, to stand up and be counted, to band together as those who in their own life time seek to be true to the Cross of Christ. Micah goes on to warn us that a man will betray his own brother in the last days, and we must be prepared to suffer betrayal and death to follow Christ. Times will grow harder, not easier, as we hurry into the end of all things, until the Lord comes for us in the splendour of His power and glory. Then, as Micah puts it well, “The nations shall see and be confounded at all their might; they shall lay their hand upon their mouth, their ears shall be deaf. They shall lick the dust like a serpent, they shall move out of their holes like worms of the earth: they shall be afraid of the Lord our God, and shall fear because of thee.” Who is a God like unto Thee? – God, how great thou art!
